John Eastman is a lawyer, jurist, and friend. As a former Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas clerk, California Attorney General candidate, and dean of Chapman University School of Law, I participated in the 2018 one-week legal session with the Claremont Institute, which John supervised. I met John during my fellowship. Since then we have kept in touch and he did at least one event together for Claremont.
Unfortunately, since the 2020 presidential election, John has faced more scrutiny than anyone else in American public life.
He was forced to retire from the law school where he had been a constitutional law professor and dean for many years. He was fired from the Benson Center for Western Civilization at the University of Colorado, where he was a visiting scholar. Armed Stasi — sorry, FBI — agents attacked him in the parking lot and seized his cell phone without a warrant. He was suspended from the Academic Council and lost his seat on the board. He and his wife have endured death threats, spikes in their driveway and threatening graffiti in their neighborhood. His bank accounts were terminated by Bank of America and USAA. He is being criminally prosecuted by District Attorney Fani Willis in scandal-ridden Fulton County, Georgia. And last week, California State Bar Judge Yvette Rowland devoted 128 pages to explaining why he should have his law license revoked.
This is all about what John is taught to do in his legal ethics class that all law school students do: defend your client, no matter how unpopular that client is; This is because he acted brazenly by passionately defending himself. In this case, John’s unpopular client was a high-profile client: former President Donald Trump.
There was an astronomical amount of misinformation about John’s activities in the weeks leading up to the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol Jamboree and the legal advice he provided to high-profile clients during that time. The corporate media and the Democratic Party-legal complex typically talk about John’s legal advice as encouraging “overturning an election” or “inciting an insurrection,” but such exaggerated narratives are irresponsible. This is grossly off the mark.
John successfully acquitted himself with a persuasive essay he wrote for Claremont’s American Mind Online Journal on January 18, 2021, titled “Setting the Record Straight on the President’s ‘Request.'” His accompanying arguments about the constitutional questionability of each state’s electoral rolls and the 1887 electoral count may not be correct (and may be), but they are as plausible and frivolous as any lawyer can make. It is well within the scope of legal arguments not to (and, in fact, should be pressed to beleaguered clients). That’s true. Countless more frivolous legal arguments are played out every day in courtrooms across the country.
And John Eastman is not the only person to be charged and possibly disbarred for his 2020 post-election legal activities. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Clark is also facing charges in Georgia, where he was recently found to have violated ethics rules, potentially leading to his disbarment there. Yes — it all stems from an internal Justice Department memo Clark never sent.
Once upon a time, the American left understood a moral obligation to ensure that all Americans had adequate access to legal representation, regardless of their popularity in the eyes of government or social elites. In fact, the definitive American example of such unpopular legal representation actually dates back to before America became independent. In 1770, a young lawyer named John Adams, who would become the young republic’s second president, took it upon himself to defend it. British soldier accused of killing five colonists in the Boston Massacre. Years later, as he went to sleep, Adams recalled that this was “one of the bravest, most generous, manly, and unselfish acts of my life, and one of the greatest services I ever rendered to my country.” “There was one,” he recalled.
Perhaps Fanny Willis and Judge Roland would have liked John Adams to be tarred and feathered for treason. I also can’t help but wonder how they would have viewed his NAACP legal representation in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era.
The ultimate goal of the Jacobins in prosecuting and disbarring lawyers for their legal bravery is clear. It is to subordinate the rule of law to the politics of the Jacobins’ own friend/enemy level, and to be cowed by the subordination of lawyers. He might as well consider representing prominent Republican clients or working for the Republican Justice Department. Ironically, they do all this in the name of “our democracy” without even realizing it.
To learn more about Josh Hammer and read features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website. www.creators.com.
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