The Lawfare Against John Eastman and Jeff Clark Portend The Fate of Every Right-Leaning Attorney Who Fails To Stand Up For Their Persecuted Colleagues

To invoke an uncannily apropos sentiment famously attributed to Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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If the Biden Regime can be summarized by a single word, it would be: injustice.  No presidential administration in the history of the United States ever observed such an egregious assault on civil liberties and the rule of law, especially constitutional due process and the presumption of innocence, than what is now occurring under Biden and his weaponized Department of Justice today.  Donald Trump is, of course, Political Hostage Numero Uno of the weaponized justice system – and his white martyrdom at the hand of a deeply subverted justice system in this country has galvanized his base, and his countrymen, to levels that surpass anytime since he first entered politics in 2015. 

Americans recognize the grave injustice of what is now unfolding in courtrooms across the country.  But of course, the casualties of America’s weaponized justice system span well beyond President Trump, extending to lawyers who represented him during that most trying period for the republic, between November of 2020 and January of 2021, when the Constitution was put on the chopping block.  The few lawyers who did rise up to defend President Trump channeled the brave spirit of the Founding Fathers in doing so, putting literally everything on the line – their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor – when virtually nobody else in the profession (and that is without exaggeration) would do the same. 

Two such lawyers, John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, entered the storm as many of their peers turned a blind eye — or actively turned against them.  That most turbulent period in the days and weeks following the 2020 election put strains on our constitutional form of government to a degree not seen in generations, at least spanning back to the Civil War era.  But it is during periods of trials and tribulations, not of peace and tranquility, that the Constitution’s durability is put to the ultimate test.  In order to keep a republic amid great adversity, exceptional men of character must rise up – and go against the grain, to preserve the time-honored traditions and sacred way of life incubated and passed down from one generation to the next.  

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Eastman and Clark were two such men of exceptional character who rose to the occasion and heeded the call, of not just their President (and client, for which there are important attorney-client privileges attached), who asked them to make sound and reasonable enquiries into widespread allegations of election fraud affecting the 2020 race, but the rich heritage of their forefathers – who also sacrificed a great deal when faced with long odds, to preserve the cause of freedom.  Prior to their involvement in the 2020 election, Eastman and Clark were two of the most eminent lawyers in the country.  They each boasted impressive resumes: Eastman was a graduate of the University of Chicago, who later clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and worked as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the most prestigious law firms anywhere.  Clark also matriculated from one of this country’s top law schools: Georgetown, which, coupled with his Harvard degree in economics and history, helped land him a prestigious clerkship on the Sixth Circuit, followed by a position also at Kirkland & Ellis, where he made partner and worked for over two decades – interrupted only by two stints in the Department of Justice under George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.  Never once had either man’s character, ethics, judgment, or qualifications been doubted at any point in time prior to January of 2021, never mind been accused of having committed a breach of professional ethics, let alone indicted for a crime.

Eastman and Clark supplemented their encyclopedic knowledge of American law with deep studies in political philosophy, theory, and history.  Eastman was a student of Harry V. Jaffa, one of America’s foremost natural law theorists, who, continuing a venerable intellectual tradition that began with his own professor, Leo Strauss, famously made explicit America’s natural law-based constitutional underpinnings in works such as A House Divided.  

Clark, likewise, is a student of history, possessing an enviable grasp of Soviet history, in particular – and, pertinently, through his deep studies of the persecutions that occurred against political dissidents under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, as viscerally recounted in the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom he frequently invokes, with uncanny germaneness, when given the opportunity to do so in public speeches.

It is in part due to their scholarly backgrounds that Eastman and Clark understand, certainly better than most of their colleagues, the high stakes of not upholding the Constitution – as well as the tyranny that inevitably flows from inaction.  That tyranny they both are experiencing firsthand, in real time, with the disbarments they face – Eastman received news last Wednesday, midway through Holy Week for practicing Catholics (a faith to which both men belong), that he was being disbarred by the State Bar of California.  His crime?  Standing with President Trump and educating the President about Executive actions he could take, as Commander-in-Chief, to remedy perceived electoral fraud throughout the system.  Eastman now-famously advised Vice President Pence that he had the power, under the Constitution (which the Congress later amended in 2022, defanging the Vice President’s role in overseeing elections to a purely ‘ministerial’ duty), to return slates of electors back to states – particularly states, like Georgia and Arizona, subject to accusations, and evidence, of widespread fraud, last-minute rule changes, and irregularities of all sorts.  

Nothing of what Eastman advised the former Vice President to do was unconstitutional, much less unreasonable.  He offered a valid interpretation of the document, consistent with the text and longstanding history of election law, from the authority of a legal scholar well steeped in these issues, at the behest of a President of the United States, as the nation was teetering on the brink of outright constitutional crisis.  For these maneuvers, none of which impute criminal or civil liability under any statute, nor are equipped with the sufficient intent to establish liability by the requisite evidentiary legal standard (“clear and convincing evidence”) in the first place, Eastman is being penalized by the heavy hand of the State.

In a Substack article and press release published the day the California State Bar recommended he be disbarred, Eastman said that he would appeal the decision — all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be:

We will appeal the decision, of course, and hopefully the California Bar Review Court, the California Supreme Court, or the U.S. Supreme Court will step in to put a stop to this “lawfare” that has become a serious threat to the First Amendment, the right of controversial clients and causes to legal representation, and more broadly to our adversarial system of justice. Also attached below is the statement put out by my attorneys earlier this evening

Eastman’s willingness to appeal the sham disbarment ruling all the way to the Supreme Court is admirable, and something he should do. The Supreme Court, and particularly Trump-appointed judges and justices across the judiciary, should get ahead of the curve by either fast-tracking Eastman and Clark’s case through the federal court system, so that they can receive a fair hearing and not be subject to the indignities of Leftist lawfare via hostile judges, juries, and venues. Or, at the very least, issue a strong and emphatic public statement denouncing this sort of penalty against two of the bravest men in the profession. If Justice Thomas, for whom Eastman formerly clerked, for instance (or any justice of the Supreme Court for that matter), were to issue a public statement to rally judicial sentiment on behalf of this most important cause, that would go a long way towards increasing morale and sending a signal that this kind of lawfare against anyone, but especially lawyers who faithfully adhere to the original construction of the Constitution, is not to be tolerated.

Jeff Clark was serving as Acting United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice when he was summoned by President Trump to inquire into allegations of election fraud in the state of Georgia, among other places.  Clark has faced criminal charges for making honest inquiries into election fraud affecting the 2020 results, particularly in the Peach State, where the evidence overwhelmingly proves was riven with fraud, for which he was indicted, and forced to take a mugshot, alongside both Eastman and President Trump, last summer.

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It is an affront to the rule of law when professional lawyers are subject to criminal prosecution for simply upholding election procedures to a rigorous standard – which would appear more important than ever in an age where narratives of election fraud, conspiracy and subversion seem to consume at least half the news cycle, from both sides of the political aisle, twenty four hours of the day, seven days a week.  Jeff Clark did ask the tough questions, and, for making common sense inquiries about election procedures in Georgia, he is now being prosecuted for shining a light upon the incompetence of Georgia’s Uniparty, of whom both Kemp and Willis are kindred spirits. 

For exposing them, Clark, Eastman, Trump, Giuliani, et al. have had to pay a considerable price – to their lives, reputations, even health (the agonies of going through spiritually crushing litigation day-in-and-day-out have a lasting physical toll), as much as a mental and spiritual one.  It makes perfect sense, however, that in our DEI-regime, where all standards (and, especially, the standards for competence, integrity, honesty) are regularly demeaned and denigrated to no end – nay, to even propose objective standards for truth, morality, and competence in our day and age is considered an egregious assault on the egalitarian values of the Regime, certainly exposing oneself to being blanket-labeled a dirty racist and Nazi! That lawyers like Clark, who have tried to hold the legal profession to some form of accountability, are now being treated as the villains to democracy — is a sad albeit unsurprising development, given the Regime’s fetishistic tendency to exalt mediocrity over professionalism, traditional morality, and basic competence

And yet, as we all know (too, too well!) from the Fani Willis affair, Georgia’s Uniparty is the epitome of incompetence; and, as time would show, their broken election procedures – which included late night ballot drop offs, arbitrary rule changes that amplify the risk of allowing dead voters and illegals to cast votes via absentee ballots, a complete and total lack of transparency – or impartiality – in election counting procedures – only scratched the surface.  

The illegitimacy of Georgia’s regnant political class is being exposed, in real time, with the corrupt show trial taking place there, presided over by District Attorney, Fani Willis, and her special prosecutor and, infamously, ex(?)-paramour, Nathan Wade, who was patently unqualified to take on the most important criminal case in the country, a hatchet job against a President of the United States – having never so much as prosecuted petty misdemeanors before in his former post as a glorified municipal traffic court judge, before being tapped (pegged?) by Fani for the job that would immortalize him to the history books.  The egregious conflict of interest between Willis and Wade violated virtually every canon of legal and judicial ethics, every rule of professional responsibility, in the books – in any other time, both Wade and Willis would have not only been forced to recuse themselves but have been disbarred from practicing law for abusing and profiting off their public offices, at the expense of Georgia citizens.  Of course, Republican Governor – and known Trump-hater and regular Davos attendee – Brian Kemp, could immediately put an end to this charade, by requesting that his Attorney General, Chris Carr, take over the case from Willis and Wade, pursuant to Georgia State Constitution, Article V, Section III, Paragraph IV. That he still has not bespeaks to his character, and true allegiances, to the Uniparty over the values of the Republican Party, now in thrall to MAGA, to which he publicly professes.

Of course, the debacle that unraveled with Fani Willis’ office scratches just the tip of the iceberg of corruption within Georgia’s justice department.  As readily observed by anyone paying even the slightest attention to Clark’s ongoing Washington, D.C. disbarment proceeding, the D.C. Bar attorney for the prosecution has been reportedly very hostile to Clark’s own witnesses.  These are witnesses who were tasked with overseeing Georgia’s election procedures during the 2020 general election.  Witnesses have testified to cases of blatant fraud: one said there were more voters on the active rolls than eligible voters.  Another testified that Fulton County election officials failed to do any electronic signature verification for absentee ballots.  Others noted significant disparities between ballots counted by hand, and those which were counted by machine – with no explanation or resolution for those disparities.  Each and every one of these allegations, on their own, would unquestionably lead any reasonable observer into asking follow-up questions, and potentially opening up an investigation into allegations of fraud, if such fraud was deemed a systemic concern or insufficient reasons were given for the allegations, which did occur.  This, Jeff Clark did – and for simply doing what any reasonable person would have done under the circumstances (let alone someone in an official capacity as head of not one, but two divisions at the Justice Department), he is being persecuted – because the Left cannot stand Donald Trump, the Constitution, or the right to speak and think outside their extremely closed and narrow worldview.

As conservative so-called “legal professionals,” those belonging to organizations once considered esteemed such as The Federalist Society, by and large tergiversate on inconsequential trivialities, the Left has mastered the art of legal warfare – and punishes its perceived enemies, like Trump, Eastman, and Clark — with shameless abandon.  Members of John Eastman’s family have witheringly detailed Left-wing lawfare methods and tactics, conducted with inhumane callousness, by groups such as “The 65 Project,” which has, you guessed it, ties to George Soros.  

In a recent piece published on The Gatestone Institute, Elizabeth Eastman, John’s wife, discussed the disgraceful methods of Leftist lawfare groups like The 65 Project:

The group targets lawyers who litigated 2020 election irregularities or represented President Donald Trump. It does this by filing complaints against them in state bar associations, contending not only that the lawsuits were meritless but that anyone involved in them should be sanctioned — up to and including disbarment.

Further down in that same article, Elizabeth Eastman describes how the The 65 Project’s aim is to marginalize and stigmatize conservative voices out of representing controversial clients or standing for unpopular causes:

The head of the group has admitted that their goal is "to deter right-wing talent from signing on to any future GOP efforts" to challenge elections, not only by bringing bar complaints but to "shame them and make them toxic in their communities and their firms."

In a similar piece, Eastman’s children – Christina and Benjamin – writing for The Blaze, called upon conservative and right-leaning judges, lawyers, and legal academics to speak out against the Left’s weaponization of the justice system to persecute and silence political opponents, before it is too late.  In a bitingly powerful call to action, Eastman’s children demanded that more of their colleagues and friends stand up against the forces in this country that have ruthlessly targeted their father for the past three-plus years – including death threats, property damage, millions of dollars in legal fees, injuries to his professional reputation that he built up over decades, and other untold personal costs.  

Their demands to, as they phrased it, “the conservative legal nonprofit apparatus,” was especially poignant.  It is utterly appalling that very few other conservative lawyers, district attorneys, attorneys general, judges, law firms, legal nonprofits, and other legal (and non-legal, “constitutional”) professionals have done hardly anything to – forget about challenging the Left with offensive lawfare – but even so much as failed to offer, at the bare minimum, supporting words for their own friends, like Eastman and Clark, who have made enormous sacrifices standing up for what is right from the very beginning:

To the conservative legal nonprofit apparatus: There is no shortage of options to pursue an offensive or defensive lawfare strategy. Pick one and get into the fight. File bar complaints against rogue prosecutors. Refer corrupt judges to state judicial qualifications commissions. Campaign for the impeachment of partisan judges. Become involved with bar associations to ensure a more evenly balanced disciplinary process. Provide counsel or legal defense funds to lawyers weathering this storm on your behalf — because Eastman won’t be the last.

Their demands on the legal profession generally are equally harrowing, and important, given the incredibly high stakes involved for America and her future:

To lawyers on both sides of the political aisle: The integrity of your profession is hanging by a thread. Implore your state bars to keep political interests out of their work.

The whole piece is well worth a read, because it grounds Eastman’s ongoing fight in the broader context of what it means for the legal profession in particular, and civil liberties and due process rights for all Americans, in general.  

Eastman and Clark — who also faced pretty much the same challenges Eastman experienced in terms of injury to his professional reputation, to say nothing of untold millions of dollars of legal fees he has (and continues to) racked up — may be two of the most prominent names leading the vanguard of this battle. But if the Left is permitted to carry out its political prosecution against them with impunity, their fates will portend the collective fates of every single last American, who still, at this late stage, remains fearfully silent in the face of unspeakable evil.  In any other age, given their pedigrees, Eastman and Clark both would be at the top of every list to be considered for the next Supreme Court opening, or Attorney General post, or for White House Counsel (and, if God’s will prevails, they still might).  But, given Leftist lawfare, which has tarnished the good names of both men, they are instead using their valuable gifts entirely towards defending themselves – which is a tremendous waste of time, energy, and resources, that does a colossal disservice to not just these men and their families, nor even just the conservative movement, but to the country at large, because all of us are being deprived the fruits of their immense offerings.  

Call To Action:

Thus, if you can find it in your heart to donate to both these men – given the sacrifices they have endured on behalf of the cause of freedom, and the implications of their cases for the rest of us, they and their families would most appreciate your generosity.

John Eastman’s legal defense fund, which includes the latest updates from his disbarment proceeding, can be found here: https://www.givesendgo.com/Eastman 

Jeff Clark’s legal defense fund, which also includes the latest updates from his still-ongoing disbarment proceeding in Washington, D.C., can be found here: https://www.givesendgo.com/jeffclark 

Thank you, and, on behalf of both men, God bless and please continue to keep them, their families, and the United States of America – for which they believed the political crisis was great enough to put basically everything on the line for – in your prayers.

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A slightly modified version of this piece was originally published in The Gateway Pundit, and can be found here.

Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.