John Eastman, the former Trump lawyer who authored the infamous coup memo, suffered a devastating blow this week when a judge determined that he should be disbarred for his actions in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This isn’t just devastating for Eastman’s career, it is also a massive blow to the criminal cases that Donald Trump is still facing. If the courts are determining that his lawyers acted illegally or unethically, that is going to absolutely hurt his legal defenses, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

After roughly six months of hearings, a judge in California this week in a 128 page ruling said that John Eastman, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, the author of that infamous coup memo, should in fact be disbarred. Now, just for clarification, this decision from, because I’ve seen a lot of people on social media not understanding, the decision from the judge does not disbar Eastman. That is now up for the California State Bar to decide based on the judge’s decision. They don’t have to do it, but I’m pretty sure they’re gonna do it, and Eastman is going to lose his law license because like so many other lawyers before him, he decided to go all in on Donald Trump and he lost everything. But there’s a couple of choice quotes from this ruling from this judge that I wanna read to you. First one, given the serious and extensive nature of Eastman’s unethical actions, the most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public and preserve the public confidence in the legal system.

He turned a blind eye to any information that would not support his position of election fraud. Eastman conspired with President Trump to obstruct a lawful function of the government of the United States, specifically by conspiring to disrupt the electoral count on January 6th, 2021. The judge also added for the record, and this is very important, that not only were his actions unethical, but the judge also suggested that they were likely illegal. Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good, especially when the guy you were working for is of course facing multiple criminal charges for the very things that you basically are about to be disbarred for. So this ruling from the judge is not just bad for John Eastman and of course, detrimental to his future career. This ruling can be brought up in these other cases that Donald Trump is facing, specifically the case in Georgia, along with the case for the, the one in front of Judge Tanya Chutkan, the election interference case.

So this is very bad for Donald Trump, and here’s why. Obviously Donald Trump wants to go into court and say that, listen, I got bad advice from my lawyers. It’s a sound defense, especially with how many of his lawyers are also getting in trouble here, Jeffrey Clark as well, but that’s coming up later. But he can’t make that argument when a judge is already out there saying, you conspired with the lawyer. So you can claim you got bad legal advice all you want. The truth is you are a central figure in it, and you are the one who pushed the lawyers to do the bad things. Okay. They didn’t do this on their own. They did it because you wanted them to do it. The bad advice was because you refused to listen to any good advice, so you put yourself in this position. This judge’s ruling is very clear about that, that it’s not just Eastman acting on his own, trying to overturn the election results. Eastman did it at the direction of Donald Trump.

Farron Cousins is the executive editor of The Trial Lawyer magazine and a contributing writer at DeSmogBlog.com. He is the co-host / guest host for Ring of Fire Radio. His writings have appeared on Alternet, Truthout, and The Huffington Post. Farron received his bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of West Florida in 2005 and became a member of American MENSA in 2009. Follow him on Twitter @farronbalanced