John Eastman could be on his way to losing his law license, but that’s not his only legal problem. For one thing, the MAGA lawyer is still a defendant in the Georgia election subversion case. So it’s worth thinking about how his professional status could affect his Georgia outcome.
On that note, three of the four Georgia guilty pleas so far have come from lawyers, and they have included agreement from prosecutors that the crimes the defendants were pleading guilty to aren’t ones of moral turpitude, a stipulation that the defendants seemingly wanted to give them the best shot at retaining their licenses. The lawyers who’ve pleaded guilty to no-jail deals are Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis. The first defendant to plead guilty, bail bondsman Scott Hall, got similar language in his deal, apparently in hopes of keeping his own professional license.
Turning to the 15 defendants left in the racketeering case, there are still lawyers among them, including Eastman, though his professional future is currently in jeopardy. Politico reported that a California judge made a “preliminary finding” Thursday that Eastman breached professional ethics when he aided Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election. The former president is also a Georgia co-defendant, and both have pleaded not guilty.
Eastman’s latest reported bar trouble led MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance to note: “If John Eastman loses his license in the bar proceeding, it incentives him (or would incentivize a rationale person) to plead & cooperate in the criminal case to avoid prison (since he’s already lost his license).”
If John Eastman loses his license in the bar proceeding, it incentives him (or would incentivize a rationale person) to plead & cooperate in the criminal case to avoid prison (since he's already lost his license). https://t.co/lVwYEaTrIH
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) November 3, 2023
It’s also possible that stripping Eastman’s law license would all but guarantee that he goes to trial in Georgia. That is, to the extent that keeping his license would otherwise be a factor in plea negotiations — as it apparently was in other cases — eliminating that factor could make a deal less likely. It would be one less thing he wants that the prosecution could offer help with.
To be sure, that’s saying nothing of whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants to cut a deal with Eastman. Indeed, he’s among the remaining defendants who reportedly haven’t received offers. That’s not too surprising, since prosecutors might consider him higher up in the alleged criminal plot and also because he doesn’t have a trial date yet that could act as motivation for negotiations, as we’ve seen with the three lawyers’ pleas in cases that were about to go to trial. And if Eastman loses his license, far from leaving him chastened — as Ellis said she was during her tearful plea — it could make him double down on disclaiming any culpability in the criminal case. With that in mind, consider this, too, from Politico’s report on Eastman’s bar proceedings: The lead bar attorney, Duncan Carling, also pressed Eastman about his view of the recent plea deal reached by co-defendant Jenna Ellis, an attorney who admitted to orchestrating false testimony about election fraud to Georgia legislators in 2020. Eastman said her plea — which was connected to her role in a Dec. 3, 2020, hearing held by Georgia Republican lawmakers at which Eastman was also a key witness — had no impact on his continued views about election fraud in 2020, he said.
Time will tell if Eastman goes the way of Ellis and the other lawyers who’ve pleaded guilty in Georgia. As noted above, there’s some reason to doubt he will, though the pleas to date haven’t been completely expected in their own right. Rather, they’ve been at least partly propelled by both sides staring down uncertain outcomes on the eve of trial. So whether Eastman, who doesn’t have a trial date yet, keeps his license or not, his fate — and that of his remaining co-defendants — may only become clearer in the face of jury selection. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Blog newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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