John C. Eastman speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 21, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
After Donald Trump lost the United States' 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, MAGA attorney and far-right conspiracy theorist John C. Eastman did everything he could to help Trump overturn the election results. Eastman, an aggressive promoter of the Stop the Steal movement, is a close ally of the Claremont Institute — often promoting fringe legal theories that are rejected by traditional conservatives.
Many MAGA Republicans consider Eastman one of the intellectual thinkers of their movement. But he is facing disbarment in California, and according to jurisprudence professor Austin Sarat (who teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts) and attorney Neil Goteiner, his problems are going from bad to worse.
In an article published by Salon on June 18, Sarat and Goteiner explain, "Friday, June 13, was a truly unlucky day for John Eastman, a key architect of President Trump's plot to disrupt the results of the 2020 presidential election. A California appellate court, charged with reviewing recommendations to discipline lawyers in that state, affirmed the findings of a trial judge and recommended that Eastman 'be disbarred from the practice of law in California and that Eastman's name be stricken from the roll of attorneys.'"
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Sarat and Goteiner continue, "The judges found that his work on the 2020 election case was shoddy and deceptive. 'Disbarment,' they said, 'is necessary to protect the public, the courts, and the legal profession.' For any lawyer, this is a professional death sentence. But the court's decision is not only a devastating blow to Eastman, but also, to the Trumpist myth that the 2020 presidential election was stolen…. The Eastman case demonstrates again that misinformation and lies collapse in a courtroom where facts and evidence rule "
In 2025, Eastman, Sarat and Goteiner observe, continues to claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. And his problems, they point out, are bad news not only for Eastman, but also, for the MAGA legal movement in general.
"Eastman will likely appeal to the California Supreme Court and, if he loses there, eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds," Sarat and Goteiner argue. "It is also possible that when the next Supreme Court vacancy occurs, Trump may nominate Eastman. After all, if we can have a convicted felon in the White House, why not a disbarred, but loyal, lawyer on the nation’s highest court?"
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The legal experts continue, "Whatever unfolds for Eastman, and despite the profound damage that Trump's election denialism has done to American democracy, the Eastman case compellingly illustrates Alexander Hamilton’s confidence that this nation is well served by an independent judiciary."
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Austin Sarat and attorney Neil Goteiner's full article for Salon is available at this link.