Trump’s attacks on judge’s daughter test gag order as ex-attorney facing disbarment: Latest

Former Trump attorney John Eastman should be stripped of his law licence over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election on behalf of the 45th president, a California state judge said on Wednesday.

Eastman, a former personal lawyer to Trump who is now one of his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia criminal case over efforts to sway the election, was accused of violating California attorney ethics rules against misleading courts and making false public statements.

“Eastman’s actions were carried out with deceit or dishonesty,” Judge Yvette Roland of California’s State Bar Court wrote in her 128-page ruling.

She held that his plan to derail Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory “was unlawful and lacked any factual or legal support”.

Judge Roland presided over a disciplinary trial against Eastman last year. The California Supreme Court has the final say on all disciplinary matters.

Randall Miller, a lawyer for Eastman, said in a statement that “Dr Eastman maintains that his handling of the legal issues he was asked to assess after the November 2020 election was based on reliable legal precedent, prior presidential elections, research of constitutional text, and extensive scholarly material”.

George Cardona, the chief trial counsel for the California state bar, said in a statement that “the harm caused by Mr Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment”.

Eastman was separately indicted in August 2023 in Fulton County, Georgia, and charged along with Trump and others over efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election win in the state. Eastman and Trump pleaded not guilty.

A former law professor at Chapman University in California, Eastman drafted legal memos suggesting then-US vice president Mike Pence could refuse to accept electoral votes from several swing states when Congress convened to certify the 2020 vote count. Pence rebuffed his arguments, saying he did not have legal authority to do so under the Constitution.

Trump was also represented by Eastman in a long-shot lawsuit at the US Supreme Court that sought to invalidate votes in four states where the Republican former president had falsely claimed evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Eastman repeated many of those claims at a rally outside the White House on 6 January 2021, after which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and delayed congressional certification of the election.

Several other lawyers in Trump’s orbit have also faced criminal or ethics actions or both over their 2020 election efforts.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had his New York law licence suspended in June 2021 and is facing potential disbarment in Washington, DC. Former US Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is also facing a disciplinary hearing this week in DC.

Both men were charged alongside Trump and Eastman in Georgia and have pleaded not guilty.

Additional reporting by agencies.

Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate and part-time Bible salesman, appears to be testing out the boundaries of a new gag order imposed on him ahead of his hush money criminal trial, which is due to begin in New York on 15 April.

Judge Juan Merchan granted the request from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, which prohibits the former president from talking about anyone involved in the case or their families.

The former president had already lashed out at the judge and his daughter on Truth Social before the order was signed on Tuesday and then doubled down on the attack on Wednesday morning.

Here’s Alex Woodward with everything you need to know about the latest gag order.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has defended her bid to oust Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson – after threatening to do so in January – and insisted that she was not seeking to throw the government into “chaos”.

The Georgia representative and other far right members of the House opposed the $1.2trn federal spending package that passed Congress this past week, and claimed that it was full of wasteful spending.

She denounced Mr Johnson as “willing to do the bidding of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer”.

“Republican voters want fighters in the House of Representatives to fight like President Trump, and that is exactly what I’m doing,” Ms Greene said.

John Bowden has the story:

She told Garrett Haake that she believes the party is “past” litigating the 2020 election but Donald Trump, the former president and Ms Trump’s father-in-law, will soon be facing two juries on charges that he tried to overturn the results while he runs for re-election.

“I think we’re past that. I think that’s in the past,” Lara Trump told NBC News when she was asked whether it will be the RNC’s position that the 2020 election was not fairly decided.

“The past is the past, and unfortunately, we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020,” she continued. “Believe me, we are applying them all across this country in every single state, and we want to ensure that, indeed, every single legal vote is counted.”

Meanwhile, Mr Trump continues to say that the election was rigged, that he should still be president, and that it was stolen from him partly because of mail-in voting — something that the RNC wants to encourage even as their candidate rails against it.

Asked about those comments, she told Haake:

“Well, I actually think if you talk to him right now, you will see that he is very much embracing early voting,” she said.

“I think that the message that the people of this country have sent to Donald Trump, and you saw it in the primaries, is that they want to get out and they want to vote for him as soon as they possibly can,” she continued. “And if that means Day 1 of early voting for people, he’s very happy for them to go out and do it.”

Ms Trump also said that the party will not directly fund her father-in-law’s legal costs directly despite previously having told Newsmax that “every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J Trump,” adding that Republican voters would be interested in paying the former president’s mounting legal bills.

Asked to assure people how their money would be spent if they donated to the RNC, she told NBC News:

“Trust me, I am the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump. I will ensure that every penny of every dollar is going to causes that Republican voters care about.”

“Well, the No. 1 job of the RNC is to, of course, support the Republican candidate for president. That is Donald Trump. But of course, we are paying attention to all about down-ballot races, as well,” she said.

“The truth is, it’s great if we win the presidency, and I think that’s imperative, but we also want to expand our lead in the House. We want to take back the Senate. So we are paying very close attention to all those races. We will be supporting [them] in a very big way.”

Donald Trump has claimed that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential run is providing “a great service to America” by syphoning votes away from President Joe Biden – despite concerns the Independent candidate could also damage the Republican former president’s chances.

The former president’s New York fraud case has been branded as an incident with no victims, particularly by commentators on Fox News.

The Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary even declared that everything Mr Trump was found liable for in the civil fraud case “is done by every real estate developer everywhere on Earth in every city. This has never ever been prosecuted.”

“Leave it to Kevin O’Leary to be unaware enough to say the quiet part out loud,” Stewart responded incredulously on The Daily Show.

Amelia Neath reports on what else he had to say…

A Texas man has legally changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else” and has launched a bid for the 2024 presidential election.

“It’s not necessarily about me as a person, but it’s about literally anybody else as an idea,” the Dallas resident told news outlet WFAA88.

“Three hundred million people can do better,” he said of presidential frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Martha McHardy has the story:

Reddit and Trump Media are the first notable social media companies to begin trading publicly in the last five years. They’re also, thanks to the rabid reception among investors coupled with the companies’ fuzzy profit outlooks, the latest meme stocks.

Meme stocks are typically shares in companies whose underlying business fails to justify a surge in their price. The action is often driven by small investors who for some reason pile into a stock, be it belief that a struggling company can turn itself around, a disdain for so-called short sellers — or fidelity to a former president. Or simply opportunism.