Conservative legal scholar John Eastman, founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, was among the lawyers whose lives and livelihoods were targeted for ruination after they provided President Donald Trump with counsel on cases dealing with election illegalities and fraud following the 2020 election.

Years later, Eastman is still fighting off attacks by liberals apparently keen to ensure that Trump's constitutionally guaranteed right to legal representation doesn't go unpunished.

'This lawfare/barfare is metastasizing before our very eyes.'

The California Supreme Court upheld a decision by a lower court's judges on Wednesday to permanently disbar Eastman in the Golden State.

The state bar accused Eastman in 2023 of violating his obligations as an attorney in two ways when working "with Trump and others to promote the idea that the outcome of the election was in question and had been stolen from Trump as the result of fraud, disregard of state election law, and misconduct by election officials."

"First, he provided legal advice, formulated legal strategies, and engaged in litigation based on, and made public statements propounding, allegations of election fraud he knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, were false," alleged the bar.

Eric Thayer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Eastman's second alleged violation, according to the bar, was:

He provided, and proposed actions based on, legal advice regarding the unilateral authority of the Vice President to disregard or delay the counting of electoral votes that he knew, or was grossly negligent in not knowing, was contrary to and unsupported by the historical record and established legal authority and precedent, including the Electoral Count Act and the Twelfth Amendment, such that no reasonable attorney with expertise in constitutional or election law would have concluded that the Vice President was legally authorized to take the actions respondent proposed.

Altogether, the bar alleged 11 counts of misconduct.

Eastman, who initially began working with an election integrity effort requested by Trump in early September 2020, denied many of the bar's allegations including several of those above and the claim that there was no evidence of election fraud or illegality that could have affected the outcome.

Judge Yvette Roland — appointed to the State Bar Court by former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in 2018 — recommended in March 2024 that Eastman be disbarred for his alleged election subversion efforts, resulting in the revocation of his license.

"Eastman failed to uphold his primary duty of honesty and breached his ethical obligations by presenting falsehoods to bolster his legal arguments," wrote Roland.

While waiting for the California Supreme Court to weigh in on her ruling, Eastman, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, asked Roland to reactivate his law license during the appeal process, noting that he needed to be able to represent clients and pay his own legal bills.

The Democrat appointee denied his request, claiming that he had "failed to show that he poses no significant threat to the public."

The California Supreme Court ultimately denied Eastman's petition for review on Wednesday, ordering his disbarment from the practice of law in California and his name stricken from the roll of attorneys. Adding insult to injury, the court ordered Eastman to pay $5,000 in sanctions to the State Bar of California Client Security Fund.

Randall Miller, Eastman's attorney during his disciplinary proceedings, said the outcome "raises pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech."

Miller added that Eastman will ask the U.S. Supreme Court "to repudiate this threat to the rule of law and our nation’s adversarial system of justice."

Eastman confirmed to Blaze News that he will be filing a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court and underscored that the significance of a possible win "goes well beyond my particular case."

"As we have recently seen, leftist/activist bars are targeting current attorneys at the Department of Justice for simply doing their jobs in defending President Trump’s executive orders," said Eastman. "This lawfare/barfare is metastasizing before our very eyes and will only get worse if the Supreme Court does not take decisive action to put a stop to it."

Jeff Clark, vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, said that the California Supreme Court's decision "is a travesty."

"John represented the President in litigation challenging an election. That’s all. He lied about nothing. Reasonable minds can disagree about the 2020 election," wrote Clark. "He did what lawyers are supposed to do — represent disfavored individuals. And make no mistake, the elites, especially in bar apparatuses, disfavor and hate President Trump and anyone associated with him with a burning passion."

"No one representing Vice President Gore was disbarred for losing Bush v. Gore where the whole partial county-specific recount strategy Democrat lawyers devised there was ruled an unconstitutional violation of equal protection," continued Clark. "Two-tiered system of justice and of bar discipline."

This is hardly the only front in Eastman's battle with Democrat-aligned lawfare. In addition to having his law license suspended in the District of Columbia, he was arrested in Fulton County, Georgia, over the legal counsel he rendered to Trump following the 2020 election. The Georgia case was dropped in 2025.

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