The California Supreme Court has permanently stripped John Eastman of his law license, delivering one of the most consequential professional penalties yet for a figure central to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The court on Wednesday ordered Eastman disbarred and his name stricken from the state roll of attorneys, upholding a State Bar Court recommendation that found he violated professional ethics by advancing false claims about the election to mislead courts, public officials, and the American public.
Eastman came up with a questionable legal plan to pressure then Vice President Mike Pence into stopping Congress from officially confirming Joe Biden’s win, a move that helped lead to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Evidence presented by the House January 6 committee showed Eastman acknowledged the plan was not legal but pushed for Pence to reject electors from contested states anyway. Days after the insurrection, Eastman emailed Trump allies requesting to be placed on a pardon list, he was not pardoned at that time, though Trump issued sweeping pardons last year covering Eastman and over 70 others involved in the fake electors scheme, pardons that apply only to federal crimes and do not affect state disciplinary actions.
The disbarment proceedings began in 2023 when the State Bar filed 11 disciplinary charges following an ethics investigation. A judge in 2024 found Eastman guilty for 10 charges and recommended disbarment, noting that “in a democracy nothing can be more fundamental than the orderly transfer of power” and that Eastman’s conduct represented “one of the gravest assaults on the American election system”. Eastman argued he was being punished merely for giving legal advice, but the Supreme Court rejected that defense and ordered him to pay $5,000 in sanctions.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, announced plans to seek U.S. Supreme Court review, claiming the decision “departs from long standing precedent protecting First Amendment rights” and raises “pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech”. However, constitutional law experts counter that the ruling properly targets abuse of the judicial system, not protected speech. Eastman joins a growing list of Trump attorneys facing professional consequences, Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., while Sidney Powell, who called Eastman’s disbarment “disgusting and so wrong”, pleaded guilty in Georgia and received a presidential pardon. With his California license revoked and his D.C. license already suspended, Eastman’s legal career appears effectively ended, marking a rare case where someone faced real, lasting consequences for the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
