During the 2020 presidential campaign, Eastman wrote a controversial op-ed in August 2020 that falsely suggested the then-presumed Democratic nominee for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was not an American citizen and thus not legally eligible for the position. [71][72] That same day, together with Giuliani and Boris Epshteyn, he appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast The War Room and promoted the idea that state lawmakers needed to reconsider the election results. The January 6 committee subpoenaed Eastman in November. Eastmans lawyer Randall Miller said in a statement that his client disputes every aspect of the Bars allegations, claiming Eastman shouldnt be penalize for simply offering legal advice to Trump. The court had already rejected a major election challenge, Texas v. Pennsylvania, 13 days earlier, and the participants in Eastman's email exchange were discussing whether to file papers in the hopes that four U.S. Supreme Court justices would agree to hear a Wisconsin case. Trump acknowledged Eastman's help during his speech Jan. 6, 2021. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) Article He served on the faculty of Chapman University in California until last year, worked as dean of the universitys law school from 2007 to 2010 and is now a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Pompeo calls $31 trillion national debt indecent at CPAC, Trump recites Pledge of Allegiance in collaboration on new song with J6 Prison Choir, Bidens laughable, late-to-the-game crackdown on massive COVID fraud, 2024 presidential hopeful Nikki Haley heckled by Trump supporters at CPAC, made similar statements outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. (Reuters) -California attorney regulators said on Thursday they will seek to disbar attorney John Eastman over his involvement in former U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Eastman is the author of the so-called coup memo, a six-point plan to overturn the election results. The strategy hinged partly on a dubious plan to get swing-state Republicans to sign off on alternate electors falsely deeming Trumpnot Bidento be the winner of their states: In a set of December 2020 emails to one Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker, Eastman suggested legislators could assert the right to appoint an alternate slate of electors or subtract mail-in ballots from Trump and Bidens totals at a prorated amount.. Not only did he help me massively in my business dealings as my lawyer but as a friend he was hard to beat.. Despite their enormous success, the Beatles were then on the brink of insolvency. Mr. Klein had a reputation as a ferocious negotiator and, as Mick Jagger once described him, a gangster figure the opposite of the refined Eastmans, whose townhouse office in Manhattan was lined with museum-quality paintings by de Kooning and others. Mr. McCartney had tried to persuade his bandmates to allow Mr. Eastman to represent them. His editing was reverted due to conflict-of-interest rules of Wikipedia, and on January 9 he appealed on the article's talk page, where some changes were approved but others were denied.[132]. [32][33][34], On February 1, 2010, Eastman resigned as dean of the Chapman University School of Law to pursue the Republican nomination for California Attorney General. Eastman also grabbed Trumps attention ahead of the 2020 election, when he suggested in a Newsweek op-ed that Bidens then-running mate Kamala Harris might not be eligible for the vice presidency because its unclear what immigration status her parents held when she was born in California. John Eastman, the mediocre lawyer who apparently participated in a treasonous effort to veto the 2020 U.S. Presidential popular vote and electoral count, resides in Santa Fe, which annoys many . Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's campaign paid John Eastman in January for unspecified "legal services." The payment was made to Constitutional Counsel Group, a firm founded by the Trump lawyer.. The California bar slapped former President Donald Trumps attorney John Eastman with nearly a dozen disciplinary charges for false and misleading statements alleging fraud in the 2020 election. The lawyer also repped Trump, 76, in a Supreme Court case seeking to overturn the election results in four states where Trump alleged there d been voter fraud. If Dr. Eastman and President Trumps plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution., Eastmans interest in the election didnt seem to evaporate after the January 6 riot. [130][131], On January 7, 2021, Eastman edited this Wikipedia article to portray his post-election role in a more favorable light. Eastman purchased the unit at. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history, Carter wrote in a March ruling. "[98][99][100] Douglas Letter, general counsel to the House, said about Eastman asking Pence to delay Biden's certification, "It was so minor it could have changed the entire course of our democracy. ET: This story has been updated to include more information about the disciplinary charges from the notice filed by the bar. [125][127], The University of Colorado cancelled Eastman's Spring 2021 courses due to low enrollment. John L. Eastman, a lawyer for musicians and artists whose representation of famous clients like Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and Willem de Kooning made him a force in the entertainment world, and who played a key part in a power struggle over the control of the Beatles business in the last days of the band, died on Aug. 10 in East Hampton, N.Y. Chesebro continued, "We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt." citizen. UpdateJan. The bar review of John Eastman's conduct in the run-up to and aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection has begun, and how the case unfolds is uncertain. A federal judge in California previously found that Trump and Eastman more likely than not violated two felony statutes in their attempts to overturn the election: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. ", Video (4:48) John Eastman Defends Trying To Overturn 2020 Election, Dean of the Chapman University School of Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Eastman&oldid=1139934632, Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States, National Organization for Marriage people, Controversies of the 2020 United States presidential election, Pages using cite court with unknown parameters, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 16:12. An entertainment attorney for high-profile clients, he was central to a battle over control of the Beatles business empire in the last days of the band. The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is expected to subpoena John Eastman, the attorney who crafted a memo outlining strategies about how to. [87][88][89] The FBI had announced two weeks earlier there was no evidence of antifa involvement in the siege. Eastman's brief included an array of unfounded claims and asserted "It is not necessary for [Trump] to prove that fraud occurred," and asserted it was enough to show that elections "materially deviated" from the intent of state lawmakers, adding, "By failing to follow the rule of law, these officials put our nation's belief in elected self-government at risk. It owns many valuable copyrights, including the music publishing rights to songs by Buddy Holly, Fats Waller and Carl Perkins and from hit Broadway shows like Annie and Grease.. Even after the insurrection, Eastman was still trying to overturn the election Even after Jan. 6, Eastman was still talking about the 2020 election not yet being certain. The state bar of California charged Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump, with 11 counts of ethics violations, including misleading courts and making false public statements about voter. It could have meant the popularly elected president could have been thwarted from taking office. The Notice of Disciplinary Charges alleges that Mr. Eastman violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy for which he must be held accountable.. Eastman laid out this plan in a pair of January 2021 memos obtained by news outlets last year, and reportedly spoke with Pence and his team in the leadup to January 6 to win him overbut Pence and his advisors firmly rejected Eastmans argument. Eastman has received widespread attention for his role as attorney to then president Donald Trump during which he suggested that vice president Mike Pence could refuse the results of some states' election results during the 2020 United States presidential election. A private Facebook group named "FrontLiners for Liberty," which included over 50 people and was created in August 2020, showed Thomas as an administrator. On or about December 1, 2020, Attorney General Barr, who headed the United States Department of Justice, which had monitored state elections for fraud and illegality, publicly stated that to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.'. [75][76][77], On January 6, Eastman spoke alongside Giuliani at the "Save America" rally that preceded the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol and asserted without evidence that balloting machines contained "secret folders" that altered voting results. [103][104], In May 2022, the University of Colorado, where Eastman was a visiting professor, released an email Eastman sent to Pennsylvania legislator Russ Diamond in December 2020. [85][86], Appearing on CNN on January 23 to argue that the Trump rally did not incite the siege of the Capitol, Eastman asserted that "a paramilitary group as well as antifa groups" had been organizing "three or four days ahead of time". Federal authorities had not identified the man as an antifa activist. John Lindner Eastman was born on July 10, 1939, in Manhattan, and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., the eldest of four children of Lee and Louise Lindner Eastman. They stated there was no connection between the op-ed and the birther movement. In the months following the election, however, the Trump campaign received information from numerous credible sources, including Attorney General of the United States William Barr and members of Trumps inner circle of advisors, that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome of the election, the notice states. [45][46][47] He sits on the board of advisors of St. Monica Academy[48] and the advisory board of the St. Thomas More Law Society of Orange County. With the Eastmans guidance, Mr. McCartney also acquired ownership of all of his recordings and songwriting rights since the breakup of the Beatles. John Eastman, a lawyer and fellow at a right-wing think tank, is now desperately downplaying the memos he wrote before January 6 laying out how then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election and subvert the will of the American people. John C. Eastman, a conservative legal scholar from California, came up with a plan that would . [36] Eastman finished second in the three-way Republican primary with 34.2% of the vote, behind Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who received 47.3%. Eastman wasnt shy about his beliefs: He spoke at a Trump rally near the White House just hours before the January 6 riot, telling a crowd of Trump supporters we know there was fraud and election officials had ignored or violated state law, while he stood alongside Rudy Giuliani (Eastman has argued the rally, unlike the riot, was peaceful). "[101] Eastman's assertion of privilege for 101 emails was rejected by Judge David O. Carter in March 2022, who ordered the emails to be produced to the committee. Carter concluded it showed the Trump legal team had decided to "evade judicial review to overturn a democratic election" and "forged ahead with a political campaign to disrupt the electoral count. The Daily Mail reports that John died on Tuesday, August 9th, after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. Eastman attorney Randall Miller said in a lengthy statement that Eastman "disputes 'every aspect' of the action that has been filed against him by the State Bar," and alleged the charges were. So who is John Eastman? [66] In a video taken secretly and made public that same month, Eastman suggested he believed that Pence's actions served Washington politics. Aside from Mr. McCartney, they were best known for working with Mr. Joel in the late 1980s and early 90s, when he sued his former manager and lawyer. Eastman briefly met with Trump campaign advisors in a Philadelphia hotel room the weekend after the 2020 presidential election. A professor at Chapman University Law School in Southern California until mid-January 2021, and once a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eastman was a former . [116] One of the eight emails showed Eastman agreeing with Chesebro that bringing a legal argument to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas would be "our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress."