Trump's legal henchmen could finally face penalties for failed coup

Two of the ringleaders in Donald Trump's coup attempt may face legal consequences for their role in the failed insurrection.

Conservative attorney John Eastman hatched a theory that vice president Mike Pence could reject Joe Biden's election win, and Jeffrey Bossert Clark urged his Justice Department superiors to put pressure on state legislatures to ignore the will of voters and give their electoral votes to Trump -- and a bipartisan group of lawyers want them both thrown out of the profession, reported Slate.

"Both men remain practicing attorneys," wrote legal correspondent Mark Joseph Stern. "Now, however, their ability to practice law is under threat. On Monday, a bipartisan group of lawyers, including two former federal judges, asked the California bar to investigate Eastman. One day later, a different bipartisan group of lawyers, including two top-ranking Justice Department officials under George H.W. Bush, asked the D.C. Court of Appeals' disciplinary panel to investigate Clark."

The requests could result in legal penalties and stigmatize the theories that nearly overturned American democracy.

"Given that the conservative legal movement has refused to criticize their work as out of bounds, the complaints also provide a new opportunity for the mainstream legal establishment to confirm that a lawyer who tries to overthrow an election has proved himself unfit to practice law," Stern wrote.

"If conservative lawyers won't ostracize Eastman and Clark," he added, "the job falls on those officials responsible for protecting the practice of law from corruption."