California authorities say Eastman disbarment trial should continue despite Georgia charges

California bar authorities seeking professional sanctions against lawyer John Eastman — an architect of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election — say his disbarment trial should continue next week even though he’s been criminally charged in Georgia.

State bar attorney Duncan Carling, who is leading the effort to strip Eastman’s license to practice law in the state, said it’s too late for Eastman to postpone the trial, which began in June but has been delayed amid scheduling conflicts and is scheduled to resume Aug. 22. Eastman intermittently took the stand during those June proceedings, Carling noted, and voluntarily waived his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

“Once the privilege is waived, that waiver cannot be revoked,” Carling wrote in a Tuesday filing.

Eastman’s ongoing bar proceedings are the first to reckon with the newly filed racketeering charges in Fulton County, Ga., against Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, including Eastman. It’s an early indication of the tangle of criminal and civil proceedings that have ensnared Trump and his allies and will likely continue colliding as the calendar flips to 2024.

Eastman sought to postpone the remainder of his trial even before the charges arrived in Georgia, worrying that he was about to be charged by special counsel Jack Smith, who described Eastman as one of Trump’s co-conspirators in a criminal indictment issued on Aug. 3. But Smith has not yet charged anyone other than Trump in the alleged scheme to derail the transfer of power.

Carling warned that the Fulton County case could take “years to resolve, particularly given the number of co-defendants.” Postponing the remainder of Eastman’s trial that long could result in the loss of key evidence and significantly damage the state bar’s case against him, he said.

Carling asked that if the judge in the matter, Yvette Roland, does side with Eastman, she permit the state bar to finish presenting all of its remaining evidence, with the exception of Eastman’s continued testimony.

But he urged Roland not to delay further, arguing that “public protection strongly favors timely completion of the trial.”

“The State Bar has presented extensive evidence to support … charges that [Eastman] engaged in acts of dishonesty and moral turpitude in matters concerning the peaceful transition of power in 2020,” he wrote. “[Eastman] disputes these charges and continues to claim, both in court and in public statements, that the 2020 election was stolen through fraud and that his actions to support efforts to reject the 2020 election results were justified and valid.”

“The public interest,” he said, “weighs strongly in [the] interest of resolving these competing positions as quickly as possible.”