Sen. Mike Lee is asking the Supreme Court to take up the disbarment of John Eastman, the lawyer behind a plan to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday, Lee and fellow Republican Sen. Ted Cruz argued that California punished Eastman for political speech and that the move to strip his law license was politically motivated and unconstitutional.
The brief was first reported by Politico.
“Political activists have turned the bar disciplinary process into a weapon against lawyers on the disfavored side of public controversies,” the senators wrote.
They also warned that the sanction could scare other lawyers away from controversial clients and causes. “The … message is clear: Other attorneys should think twice before engaging in advocacy that the California Bar dislikes.”
California disbarred Eastman in April for orchestrating a scheme in which states won by Democrat Joe Biden would send alternate slates of Trump electors to Congress. The competing slates would have let then-Vice President Mike Pence throw out both sets of electors from those states. That would have delayed the certification vote or sent the election to the House of Representatives, where Trump was likely to prevail.
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Lee has played down his own part in the plan. He initially said he first learned of it on Jan. 2, 2021, and was “surprised” by the proposal.
Leaked text messages between Lee and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows tell a different story. They show Lee was among the first to pitch the idea to the White House. On Nov. 27, 2020, shortly after Biden was declared the winner, Lee texted Meadows about Eastman’s research on the idea. In another text, Lee said he was “spending 14 hours a day” on the alternate electors effort but couldn’t find anyone willing to go along.
