From The New York Times:
A judge in California recommended on Wednesday that the lawyer John Eastman be stripped of his law license, finding he had violated rules of professional ethics by persistently lying in his efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump maintain his grip on power after losing the 2020 election.
In a 128-page ruling, the judge, Yvette Roland, said Mr. Eastman had willfully misrepresented facts in lawsuits he helped file challenging the election results and acted dishonestly in promoting a “wild theory” that Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, could unilaterally declare him the victor during a certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon,” Judge Roland found, adding that he had breached “his ethical duty as an attorney to prioritize honesty and integrity.”
I'm sifting through the ruling now.
The Times has this pesky detail:
Mr. Eastman, a constitutional law scholar who once clerked for the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, was one of the architects of a brazen legal scheme to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. He also promoted the plan to pressure Mr. Pence to use the fake elector slates in an effort to throw the election to Mr. Trump during the proceeding.
Ah, those pesky fake electors.
Politico has this on those fake electors:
The judge walked through Eastman’s extensive involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, from his early lawsuits that failed to gain traction to his bid to solicit GOP state legislatures to send “alternate” electors to Congress, a last-gasp bid to keep Trump in power. At every turn, Roland said, Eastman ignored evidence that was unfavorable to his case and accepted at face value claims of fraud or misconduct aimed at sowing doubt about the election results.
And so on.
And we can find this in the ruling:
That same day, Jacob sent Vice President Pence a memo Jacob had prepared which outlined and analyzed some of Eastman's January 6 proposals that had been discussed during the January 4 Oval Office meeting. In the memo, Jacob characterized Eastman's proposals as requiring Vice President Pence to skip opening and reading the electoral certificates for any state for which an alternate but uncertified slate of electors has been submitted; open and read the Arizona , Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania electoral certificates at the end of the Joint Session rather than reading the certificates for those states in alphabetical order; and to refrain from counting the electoral certificates for these states until their state legislature determines whether to certify a competing slate of electors. (p 54-55)And let's not forget the text of the fake certificate that our own fake electors in Pennsylvania signed:
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania, hereby certify the following... [Emphasis added.]
The plan. Always trust the plan.
Let's also not forget that Sam DeMarco, Allegheny County At-Large Representative and Chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County was one of those fake electors and that PA State Senator Doug Mastriano was the White House's "point person" on the fake elector scheme.
