‘Coup dominos falling’: Trump’s prison odds increase as lawyers face consequences

There is some major news tonight and holding Trump’s coup plotters accountable, even as some convicted Trump aides also threaten Putin style attacks on opponents if they actually get Trump re elected. Now this big news comes as a California judge has ruled against Trump lawyer John Eastman today, who also separately awaits a criminal trial in Georgia. And these mounting legal setbacks for Eastman are significant because he was the legal mastermind and architect of key planks of the coup plot, as those January 6th hearings showed. Adopt A slate of electors yourselves. He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal. I don’t think it’s just your authority to do that, but quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that. Did Doctor Eastman admit in front of the president that his proposal would violate the Electoral Account Act? Mr. Eastman acknowledged that that was the case, that even what he viewed as the more politically palatable option would violate several provisions. I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind? I only want to hear 2 words coming out of your mouth for now on orderly transition. Orderly transition. Now that’s about Eastman, as described by his own Trump administration colleagues. Those damning accounts came from people who generally backed Donald Trump’s policies and ideology. But they did stop short of the authoritarian coup that Eastman was plotting on Trump’s behalf. Now, a judge has just ruled that Eastman should be disbarred, expelled from his lifelong profession as an attorney over his conduct in those plots. The judge, citing Eastman’s lies and gross negligence involving the 2020 election that Trump lost and finding the State Bar investigative unit, did prove that Eastman conspired with Trump to obstruct a lawful function of the government. Through the January 6th plot, Eastman and another indicted Trump plotter, Jeffrey Clark, are both at risk of losing their law licenses, and that’s huge. They’ve already been searched by agents in the separate federal case. You can see some of that pretty dramatic and unusual footage here on your screen. Being disbarred forms a warning to other lawyers who might ponder similar actions on behalf of, yes, Donald Trump right now, but other politicians in the future. It’s an important line in the sand because some anti democracy lawyers might argue, well if they can figure out how to do something that’s not technically a felony, maybe they can go right up to that line. But here we’ve seen the bar process in several states is showing even if lawyers try to use their legal knowledge to be that tricky, a betrayal of their duty can still stop them from ever practicing law again. And for most of these people that is a big part of their life. It is also their main source of revenue. It is a big deal, and I want to be clear, that is separate from whether they are found to have committed crimes. Both of these two men, for example, are presumed innocent legally. They also both await criminal trials. Georgia will determine their criminal liability when they get their day in court. The other individual, Jeffrey Clark, who we’ve been covering, was back in court yesterday in a separate but obviously related disbarment hearing where he just ducked the questions that Mister Fox, I will invoke the 5th as to I will invoke executive privilege, law enforcement privilege, deliberative process privilege, and attorney-client privilege on the 5th amendment, executive privilege, law enforcement privilege, deliberative process privilege, attorney-client privilege, executive privilege, and the other three. And I’m taking the 5th and the other three and I’m taking the 5th. It’s almost like, you know, hey, I got so many reasons to be privileged and legally he may indeed have that right. For example, one of the rights you’re afforded in our Constitution is that if you’re facing potential prosecution and imprisonment, which is a very big deal, you cannot be forced to answer questions to provide testimony and evidence against yourself, not only in that prosecution proceeding but in other related judicial and legal proceedings. So he has that right. Here’s the bad news, though. When you claim that right, you’re only getting out of answering the question. You’re not getting out of being disbarred if the evidence supports it. And you’re certainly not helping your defense, because if you did have words to explain clearly why you didn’t commit a crime or conduct that you could be disbarred for, well, this would be the time to share it. So these officials in this process will decide whether it warrants disbarment. But there’s a broader pattern here that, however long it took, really matters. And yes, Trump has shown he likes to delay things. It’s his first and favored legal tactic. And sometimes we’ve shown ways that has worked. But the delays for many of these other cases have not worked. They are failing. And I’m going to show you right now in our lead story, Clark and Eastman joined four other Trump lawyers facing the disciplinary action and a whole lot more. The stamps show all the different places they’re in trouble. So Giuliani’s law license already suspended in New York. He also faces disbarment in DC, Ellis, Powell and Chesboro, charged and convicted. They’ve already pled guilty in the Georgia Rico case, and that also puts pressure on their effort to ever practice law again. Indeed, being convicted is worse than being disbarred. So those are the lawyers. I’m showing that to you and I’m about to show you something else. But the lawyers matter extra because I can tell you before the lawyers hatched the Jan 6 plot, 10 years ago, January 6th was not a date in American politics or history. It was not something that the news covered a lot. It’s not something that people looked at as some extra time to do anything. Because of course, by January 6th everything has been finished. It’s been finished at the state level, the courts have reviewed it. There’s nothing left to do. Which is why, partly why, what they tried to do beyond the violence was also unconstitutional. You know, you don’t have the vice president come in and reverse the outcome of an entire national election on January 6th. Never happened before. Didn’t work this time, not supposed to happen in the future. So how did that get so popularized that Donald Trump learned about it and cared about it, ’cause he ain’t no constitutional scholar? How did all those people come that day? All of that stuff started with these lawyers. And there are many people around politics who know about politics, and there are many people around Donald Trump who know about lying. But it took a relatively small number of lawyers to abuse their knowledge, to go beyond zealous advocacy for a client which is fully protected and go into something else. So that’s the lawyers. They started it. They masterminded it. They made January 6th a thing, at least for MAGA conspiracy theorists. But there’s a whole lot of other folks, key players in Trump’s cool orbit, that are also now facing real accountability. We are running out of room and stamps on the chart, but we’re just using the chart accurately. So I’ll walk you through some highlights. Peter Navarro is the first Trump White House official to actually report to prison as we discuss this news tonight. He has now been incarcerated since last week over defying Jan 6 investigators. Steve Bannon was convicted on the same charges. If he does not get a judge to intervene, he will also report to prison. Like Navarro, there is an unknown and unindicted Co conspirator who Jack Smith represents to the January 6 case who is facing that level of heat. Although so far the name is not public, you see that in the lower right there was the number one official during all of this, all the way up and through January 6th in the Trump White House. Mark Meadows, he is a witness in Washington and he has been indicted for Rico in Georgia. The dominoes falling all around. Trump, who himself we reveal here, faces his own criminal trials. Just if you look at the coup, put aside classified documents, put aside the New York business issues or the civil fraud case just on the coup. He has two indictments, and the DOJ case could still go to trial before the election, depending on what the Supreme Court does and other things. Prosecutors want those trials even amidst the packed election year. The argument being that the further to the right these trials go is not because of prosecutors, it’s because of Trump and the delay tactics. So you can’t simultaneously delay things and drag them out for a year, then complain that they’re close to the election when you or the defendant who made them close to the election. Not at least, is the legal argument. I will restate again Trump, Like those other defendants I mentioned though, in each of those trials is legally presumed innocent until prosecutors carry the burden, if they can, of proving a defendant guilty. Now is that it? No, There are other people facing other forms of accountability over these related lies. Mr. Bannon is very publicly telling his viewers that he plans, if he can, to be a part of a Trump second term where political prosecutions against Democrats are on the table. Where a Putin style effort at going after opponents not for what they might have done in an honest investigation, but just for who they are and a political attack. Meaning he basically says Democrats will be imprisoned in any second Trump term. The evening after we’ve won, The Accountability Project’s going to start, and it’s going to be thorough this time. It’s going to be they’re going to be in prison. Yes, prison, quote, they’re going to be in prison. Yes, prison that is designed to send a message, to wake people up, to scare people, to instill fear. It’s all in public, right? If it were just a private plan, you might send private messages and write up private blueprints. That’s a secretive approach. This is something that looks more like at least an attempt at an aspect of the Putin playbook where the use and singling out of government power against your opponents doesn’t just take them off the table or as it sometimes has been in Russia, worse. But it also sends a message to everyone else. Maybe you don’t want to be associated with that. Maybe you don’t want to be involved in that. Maybe you want to go back and just try to live your life and avoid being grouped in with this people. This group of people that Mister Bannon says are going to be in quote, yes, prison, you know, usually traditionally in American politics and either party. If people who worked at the White House were at that level. I’m not talking about the random loud gadflies with the White House level people. If you said to them is your boss going to pull up Putin and go after the opponents just for their free speech just because they’re in a different party people, you just say no, no, never. And here we have the opposite. Yes, yes, count on it. A Putin admission by a would be Putin movement here in America.