Inset: FILE – Attorney John Eastman, the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power, talks to reporters after a hearing in Los Angeles, June 20, 2023 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File). Background: President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 31, 2025 (Pool via AP).
The legal disciplinary board for attorneys in California has affirmed a recommendation that former law professor John Eastman be disbarred over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to favor President Donald Trump.
On Friday, a three-judge panel on the California State Bar Court’s Review Department ruled on two separate requests by Eastman and the Office of Chief Trial Counsel – seeking review of a March 2024 decision recommending he lose his law license.
The panel, effectively a court of appeal in the Golden State’s lawyer discipline system, declined to disturb the lower court’s ruling.
“Attorneys have a fundamental obligation to be truthful and uphold the rule of law,” Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement. “John Eastman violated this obligation when, at the behest of his client, now-President Donald Trump, he engaged in a calculated campaign to falsely undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, which then-candidate Donald Trump lost. In so doing, Mr. Eastman lied to courts, Vice President Michael Pence, and the American people.”
Eastman is currently ineligible to practice law, according to his profile with The State Bar of California.
The onetime law professor was indicted once in Georgia, and then again in Arizona, for pushing the bogus legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn the 2020 election outcome on Jan. 6, 2021, by accepting “alternate slates of electors.”
In January 2023, a disciplinary case was filed against Eastman over his role in Donald Trump’s election subversion efforts.
Following the March 2024 ruling where a judge said the “scale and egregiousness of Eastman’s unethical actions” eclipsed those of a Watergate-era attorney for Richard Nixon, his law license was suspended.
While State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland recommended Eastman’s disbarment, the full process has yet to play out.
In April 2024, Eastman filed a 50-page motion with the California State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel asking to stay the judge’s order recommending his disbarment — pleading with the court to allow him to ply his trade so he could make money and represent his clients. Bar authorities fired back several days later — saying the pleading had been “stunningly deficient” to unpause the ban.
By May 2024, Roland issued a terse order rejecting the bid for leniency by citing the “gravity of Eastman’s transgressions, particularly those involving moral turpitude, and the increased likelihood of future misconduct due to his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing.”
In the original 128-page disbarment recommendation, Eastman was found culpable for 10 out of 11 charges.
Eastman tried to appeal his 10 losses and the overarching disbarment recommendation; the state bar’s counsel tried to appeal the dismissal of the 11th count as well as a rejection of an aggravation allegation based on the idea that Eastman caused significant harm.
After oral arguments were heard on March 19, both sides lost their appeals and Roland’s opinion remains unchanged.
Now, either party can seek review from the California Supreme Court.
While his disbarment recommendation remains in place, Eastman remains on involuntary inactive status.
“As the Review Department’s Opinion holds, for this conduct disbarment is both appropriate and necessary,” Cardona added. “This opinion serves as a powerful and timely reminder that whoever they are and whoever they represent, attorneys must remain true to the ethical rules that govern their conduct and respect the rule of law.”
