John Eastman, the legal architect of the strategy to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election, has been permanently disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court accepted a lower tribunal’s recommendation and ordered his name struck from the roll of attorneys with immediate effect.
The ruling concludes a disciplinary process that began in 2023 when the State Bar of California launched an ethics investigation into Eastman’s conduct during the final weeks of the Trump presidency, and it represents the most consequential professional penalty yet imposed on any of the lawyers who participated in the post-election effort.
“After extensive proceedings before the State Bar Court’s Hearing and Review Departments, both of which found Mr. Eastman culpable of serious ethical violations, the Court has imposed the discipline warranted by the clear and convincing evidence that he advanced false claims about the 2020 presidential election to mislead courts, public officials, and the American public,” said State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona.
In addition to the disbarment itself, the California Supreme Court ordered Eastman to pay $5,000 in statutory sanctions to the State Bar Client Security Fund, a financial penalty that carries little practical weight compared to the professional consequence of permanently losing the right to practise law in the state.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, responded by announcing that they intended to seek review before the US Supreme Court, framing the disbarment as a threat to the adversarial legal system itself. Miller wrote that they would seek to “repudiate this threat to the rule of law and our nation’s adversarial system of justice,” arguing the State Bar Court’s recommendation departed from Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights in attorney discipline proceedings.
The 2024 State Bar hearing found Eastman culpable on 10 of the 11 charges filed against him and specifically cited his “lack of remorse and accountability” as a factor in recommending the strongest available sanction, warning that it suggested he may engage in further unethical conduct if permitted to continue practising.
Eastman was among the group of lawyers and political operatives who devised a plan to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to certify the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021, and was separately involved in the coordination of alternate elector slates in several states that had been won by Joe Biden.
Trump issued a sweeping federal pardon for Eastman and more than 70 others named in the Georgia RICO indictment in the early months of his second term, but those pardons covered only federal exposure and carried no legal weight in a state bar disciplinary proceeding, which operates on an entirely separate track from criminal prosecution.
Rudy Giuliani, who played a central role in the same post-election legal campaign, has already been disbarred in both New York and Washington DC, and Sidney Powell accepted a guilty plea in the Georgia case before also receiving a presidential pardon, making Eastman’s California disbarment part of a broader pattern of professional consequences that the pardons themselves cannot reverse.
The California Supreme Court declined to issue a detailed written opinion alongside its order, leaving the extensive findings of the State Bar Court as the primary record of Eastman’s misconduct and the standard against which any future federal constitutional challenge will be measured.
