The California Supreme Court ordered attorney and former law school dean John Eastman disbarred on Wednesday for his role aiding President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The court ordered Eastman’s name be “stricken from the roll of attorneys” and that he pay $5,000 to the State Bar of California.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall A. Miller, told the Associated Press that the court’s decision “departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting 1st Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context.” Miller did not immediately return a call seeking comment from The Times.
George Cardona, State Bar chief trial counsel, said in a statement that the ruling “underscores that Mr. Eastman’s misconduct was incompatible with the standards of integrity required of every California attorney.”
“Today’s California Supreme Court order disbarring John Charles Eastman from the practice of law in California affirms the fundamental principle that attorneys must act with honesty and uphold the rule of law, regardless of the client they represent or the context in which that representation occurs,” Cardona said.
The Supreme Court’s decision affirms a 2024 ruling from State Bar Judge Yvette Roland that Eastman be prohibited from practicing law.
An image of President Trump appears on video screens before his speech to supporters from the Ellipse at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress prepares to certify the electoral college votes.
(Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call / Getty Images)
In a marathon trial that lasted off and on from June to November 2023, the State Bar, which regulates lawyers in California, argued that Eastman was unfit to practice law for peddling bogus claims that fraud cost Trump the election and for promoting a fake-elector scheme to block the electoral count.
“It is true that an attorney has a duty to engage in zealous advocacy on behalf of a client,” Roland wrote in 2024 in a 128-page ruling. “However, Eastman’s inaccurate assertions were lies that cannot be justified as zealous advocacy.”
Roland found Eastman culpable of 10 of 11 counts of misconduct.
Eastman fomented “predictable and destructive chaos” when he stood beside fellow Trump advisor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Jan. 6, 2021, and told an enormous crowd at the Ellipse that the election had been fraudulent, the State Bar argued. That day, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to illegitimately keep him in power. More than 100 police officers were injured in the attack, five of whom died.
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, pursued similarly false claims that Trump made about his 2020 election loss and has since been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York.
Eastman claimed he was acting in good faith and as a vigorous champion of his client. But State Bar attorneys argued that “the evidence, including his often not-credible trial testimony, shows that he held — and still holds — truth and democracy in contempt.”
Despite Eastman’s repeated assertions that Joe Biden’s presidential victory was illegal, Roland ruled, Eastman’s own words showed he knew that proof was lacking.
The judge cited an email that Eastman sent to a friend, Cleta Mitchell, on Nov. 29, 2020, acknowledging that fraud serious enough to sway the results could not be proved.
“It would be nice to have actually hard documented evidence of the fraud in the areas to which the analyses pointed,” Eastman wrote.
Senate and House lawmakers gather in January on the steps of the Capitol to mark five years since the attack on the building.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty Images)
After the 2024 ruling, Eastman responded on his Substack, writing that he hoped the California Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court would “step in to put a stop to this lawfare that has become a serious threat to the First Amendment, the right of controversial clients and causes to legal representation, and more broadly to our adversarial system of justice.”
Eastman has a long history in California’s conservative legal circles. He was hired by Chapman University’s law school in 1999 and was dean from June 2007 to January 2010, then continued to teach courses in constitutional law, property law, legal history and the 1st Amendment.
He retired in early 2021 after more than 100 Chapman faculty and others affiliated with the university signed a letter calling on the school to take action against him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Wednesday’s decision is a bookend in a lengthy investigation into Eastman’s actions that began in 2021. In October of that year, the nonpartisan legal group States United Democracy Center filed an ethics complaint calling on the State Bar to investigate Eastman’s Jan. 6 actions.
Christine P. Sun, senior vice president of legal at the States United Democracy Center, said on Wednesday that the court’s decision is “part of a broader reckoning for those who seek to undermine the rule of law.”
“Eastman played a central role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election — pressuring state officials, advancing baseless claims in court, and promoting a fringe theory that the vice president could reject certified electoral votes,” Sun said in a statement. “His unethical actions have had real, lasting consequences for our democracy, and we applaud the California Supreme Court’s decision to disbar him.”
Since reentering the White House, Trump and his administration have repeatedly sought to downplay the violence of Jan. 6 and to rewrite the history of the attack.
At the outset of his second term, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol, repeatedly referring to them as “hostages.”
On Tuesday, the Justice Department went a step further and asked a federal appeals court to throw out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders who were sentenced to prison terms for leading members of the far-right extremist groups in the attack.
Times staff writers Christopher Goffard and Kevin Rector and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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