Trump avoided punishments for his post-2020 abuses, but many of his lawyers did not

Thanks to the results of the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump managed to avoid any legal accountability for the abuses and alleged crimes he committed after losing his 2020 re-election bid. For the lawyers who helped fuel the Republican’s efforts in remain in office, however, the consequences have been rather severe.

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Last summer, for example, Kenneth Chesebro, the attorney who was widely credited as the “architect” of the infamous “fake elector” scheme, was disbarred in New York. A year earlier, Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. In 2023, Jenna Ellis admitted that she made post-election misrepresentations and had her Colorado license suspended for three years.

Jeffrey Clark, a key figure in Trump’s crusade to remain in the White House after losing, is also facing possible disbarment in the nation’s capital.

And then, of course, there’s John Eastman, who’s a prominent member of the same ignominious club. The Associated Press reported:

A California attorney who aided President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results has lost his license to practice in the state.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered John Eastman disbarred and his name stricken from the state roll of attorneys. … A judge for the State Bar Court of California in 2024 recommended that he lose his California law license. Eastman argued he was being punished for simply giving legal advice.

I’m mindful of the fact that there are all kinds of assorted figures in Trump’s orbit, and there may be some readers asking, “Wait, which one is John Eastman?” But there’s no mistaking his significance.

In theory, we should barely be aware of the Republican lawyer’s existence. After all, before joining Team Trump — in his first term, the president saw him on Fox News and was impressed — Eastman was a rather obscure figure.

Even after Trump’s defeat, Eastman, at least on paper, shouldn’t have been especially relevant. He didn’t work in the White House counsel’s office; he wasn’t the attorney general; and he had no office in the Justice Department. Eastman was, as MS NOW’s Chris Hayes described him, “a well-credentialed crank.”

But the radical lawyer had one important thing going for him: In late 2020, the sitting president of the United States was eager to buy what Eastman was selling, and everyone around Trump quickly realized that the Republican attorney’s views represented their boss’ views.

As a matter of law and politics, the lawyer may have been a fringe operator, better suited for a role on a C-list podcast than a seat in the Oval Office, but in the aftermath of Election Day 2020, Trump didn’t much care.