LOS ANGELES — Orange County attorney John Eastman is at the center of an ethics investigation into whether he violated laws while advising former President Donald Trump on how he could overturn his election defeat in 2020, the State Bar of California said Tuesday.
Eastman, a former professor and dean at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, emerged as a key legal advisor to Trump in the weeks after it was apparent he had lost the election to Joe Biden. Eastman wrote two legal memos that advised former Vice President Mike Pence he could declare that the results in several states were disputed and therefore their electoral votes would go uncounted. Doing so would have injected a new element of uncertainty and opened the door for several state legislatures to recast their votes for Trump.
The State Bar’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, announced Tuesday that Eastman has been the center of an investigation since September.
