The California Supreme Court disbarred John Eastman on April 15, the attorney who architected the legal strategy to block certification of the 2020 presidential election. The court denied his petition for review without an opinion or a recorded dissent, ordered his name stricken from the roll of attorneys, and directed him to pay $5,000 in sanctions and the State Bar’s costs.
Eastman faced 11 disciplinary charges tied to his efforts to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election loss. A hearing judge found him culpable on 10 counts, including misleading a court, making false statements, and failing to support the Constitution.
The State Bar presented nearly two dozen witnesses and more than 400 pieces of evidence documenting how Eastman wrote memos proposing fake electors to Congress, argued to then-Vice President Mike Pence that he had authority to reject electoral votes, and made false claims in court filings and in a speech to Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
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The House January 6 committee found that Eastman acknowledged his plan was not legally sound but pushed it anyway. Days after the Capitol riot, he asked Rudy Giuliani to include him in a list of Trump pardon recipients.
Trump’s subsequent pardons covered Eastman but applied only at the federal level— largely symbolic, as he faced no federal charges. He remains a defendant in the Georgia election racketeering case alongside Trump, where he has pleaded not guilty.
Eastman’s attorney Randall A. Miller said the firm will seek US Supreme Court review, arguing the ruling raises “pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech.”
Giuliani, who played a parallel role in the post-election legal campaign, has already been disbarred in New York and Washington DC. Sidney Powell, who pleaded guilty in the Georgia case, called the disbarment “disgusting and so wrong.”
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