Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 17
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 99 minutes
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Summary
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the disbarment of John Eastman, the Justice Department dropping the last Jan. 6 criminal matters, a warrant issued in the first state criminal charges against an ICE agent, the firing of 6 immigration judges, and more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is Friday, April 17, 2026. It is 4 o'clock p.m. Washington, D.C. time, and you are watching Lawfare Live. |
| 0:23.5 | I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, and I am here with a trio of Lawfare |
| 0:29.4 | senior editors, Eric Columbus, Anna Bauer, and Roger Parloff, and we've got a busy agenda this week, so let's get into it. |
| 0:41.5 | Some of you may remember the name John Eastman, a conservative law professor from Chapman |
| 0:51.1 | University, I believe, wrote some wacky legal opinions, made a speech on January 6th, |
| 1:00.3 | and now he has been disbarred. Next stop is Dancing with the Stars. Eric Columbus, give us the John Eastman update. |
| 1:14.1 | What is, and can the president pardon him and get rid of his disbarment? |
| 1:22.1 | The president cannot, for multiple reasons, the president cannot get rid of the department. |
| 1:30.1 | Pardon power is limited to offenses against the United States, which has been interpreted |
| 1:35.0 | to mean crimes against the United States, crimes, federal crimes. |
| 1:40.2 | And Eastman has not been convicted of a crime, and a fortiori, he has not been convicted of a crime, and forciori, he has not been convicted of a federal crime. |
| 1:47.9 | So there's nothing the president can do. |
| 1:51.3 | It would be like when Tiger Woods reportedly called the president after he flipped his SUV on a California road. |
| 1:58.6 | It would be the same effect. |
| 2:08.0 | So Eastman was, has been actually suspended since April 2024. And this just kind of makes it final. And this is California bar, |
| 2:15.4 | right? This is the California bar. He, a trial, like an interminable trial, I believe in 2024. |
| 2:25.5 | It was then upheld on appeal. |
| 2:28.0 | There's something called the State Bar Court of California, which has its own trial court |
| 2:32.8 | and then court of appeal. |
| 2:38.1 | And then Eastman sought review by the California Supreme Court, which this week denied his petition for review. So to summarize the lower |
| 2:47.6 | court, the state bar court opinions. |
| 2:56.5 | Basically, the conclusion is that Eastman lied in many ways. |
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