John Eastman Gets Bar Complaint, Loses Motion, Should Evaluate Life Choices

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump coup lawyer John Eastman is having a rough day. Again.

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When last we left our “hero,” he was weeping into Tucker Carlson’s soft bosom over the government’s gross violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, i.e. the seizure of his cellphone pursuant to a warrant.

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Tucker Carlson, interviewing John Eastman, urges people who didn't vote for Joe Biden to erase their text messages and emails "every single day" pic.twitter.com/O2QTvV3VCe

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2022

“It’s just another reminder to anyone who didn’t vote for Joe Biden to erase your texts and emails every single day,” clucked the outraged host.

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Spoliation of evidence — it’s a lifestyle!

Somehow US District Judge Robert Brack failed to be persuaded by John Eastman’s logic that the warrant for his phone and its contents was somehow not specific enough to cover the seizure of his phone and its contents. Nor was he incensed by the prospect of prosecutors “rummaging” through Eastman’s phone, reading attorney-client privileged material, since the warrant very clearly stated that “The investigative team will not review the contents of the device(s) until further order of a court of competent jurisdiction.”

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So Eastman lost the motion to force the government to give him back his iPhone. Don’t try to call him right now!

In the meantime, the government filed notice yesterday explaining that “Plaintiff’s cell phone and the manual screen capture currently are in Northern Virginia, in the possession of federal agents with the Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General.”

On July 12, the DOJ got a second warrant from a federal judge in DC for the contents of the phone, which will go through a “taint team” to protect Eastman’s clients.

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“The warrant includes a filter protocol, which has been provided to Plaintiff’s counsel,” writes Assistant US Attorney Thomas Windom, making clear that they’ve already got whatever it is he’s trying so desperately to claw back.

Womp womp.

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Eastman then got another piece of unwelcome news in the form of a bar complaint lodged at the Supreme Court by The 65 Project, whose mission is to hold accountable the attorneys involved in Trump’s Big Lie and the plot to overturn the election. This would be at least the second venue in which Eastman’s license to practice law is in jeopardy, since he already has a pending ethics investigation in California.

“We write to request that the United States Supreme Court review the undisputed and publicly available accounts of actions taken by John C. Eastman, a member of the Supreme Court Bar, relating to a concerted effort to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results,” they begin. “Although many attorneys participated in this scheme, Mr. Eastman largely orchestrated it, and a federal court has specifically identified him as having ‘more likely than not’ acted as part of a criminal conspiracy.”

That last bit is a reference to Judge David Carter’s invocation of the crime-fraud exception in the dispute between Eastman and the January 6 Select Committee over his work emails — where else would you plot a fakakta scheme to substitute fake electors for real ones and thus overthrow democracy?

The complainants request “that the Court issue an order suspending Mr. Eastman from practice before the Court and move forward with disbarment” and that “Justice Thomas recuse himself from considering this matter” in light of the fact that “Ms. Thomas herself played a significant role in pursuing many of the same post-election strategies as Mr. Eastman.”

Indeed, Ms. Thomas appears to have pursued those strategies with Mr. Eastman, inviting him to appear before her political club, pressuring state legislators to usurp the will of the voters, and even attending the pre-riot rally where Eastman addressed the crowd on January 6, 2021.

There’s also the minor matter of her text to chief of staff Mark Meadows two days after the election inquiring whether the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

Ughhh, awkward! Although, with Eastman smack in the middle of federal, state, and congressional investigations into the plot to overturn the election, awkwardness is probably the least of his concerns at the moment.

Eastman v. US [Docket via Court Listener]
Eastman SCOTUS Bar Complaint [via The 65 Project]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

Capitol riot, Crime, David Carter, Department of Justice, Government, John Eastman, Legal Ethics, Robert Brack