Coup Plotter Has Bad Start To Disbarment Hearing

The Daily Beast reports:

A highlight of Tuesday’s proceedings was Eastman’s attempt to call a man named Joseph Fried as an expert witness. Fried is a public accountant who wrote an eBook that questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s presidential win.

California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland saw right through the strange request. “I don’t see how Mr. Fried is qualified to be an expert,” she told Eastman, according to an NPR reporter in the courtroom. “He has no experience in voting or election matters.”

State bar attorney Duncan Carling agreed. “We don’t believe the opinion of a CPA… is relevant,” he said, adding that the accountant “never identified any instances of fraud” in the election.

Read the full article.

Eastman attorney Randy Miller says that Fried’s 40-year career as a CPA and his knowledge of statistics qualifies him as an expert on elections.

Judge Roland isn’t having it. “Please don’t interrupt me,” she tells Miller as he tries to press a case that “numbers are numbers.”

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) June 20, 2023

State Bar attorney Duncan Carling:
“We don’t believe the opinion of a CPA…is relevant,” and he adds that Fried “never identified any instances of fraud,” so it would not inform the court’s understanding of Eastman’s election fraud claims.

Judge rules Fried cannot testify.

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) June 20, 2023

We’re now on to Eastman’s proposed testimony from John Valentine, who has also argued that he used a data analysis to find widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

The State Bar says Valentine would not even turn over the database supporting his analysis as part of discovery.

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) June 20, 2023

Judge Roland is again questioning the proposed witness’s expertise, asking whether it’s merely “conjecture” or “speculative.”

Valentine will not testify.

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) June 20, 2023

One open question at the start of the hearing was whether Peter Navarro would testify. Eastman had listed him as a witness in his pre-trial statement.

Navarro will actually NOT testify, according to Eastman’s attorney.

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) June 20, 2023