Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche holds a press conference to discuss Tren de Aragua developments at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 1, 2026.
Disbarred Trump lawyer John Eastman wants the Supreme Court to reinstate his law license. A legal ethics expert has warned that if he wins, the real winners will be the lawyers currently running Trump’s Justice Department.
Writing in Just Security on Tuesday, UCLA legal ethics professor Scott Cummings argued that Eastman’s petition threatens far more than just one man’s career.
“This is where the Eastman petition is at its most dangerous,” Cummings wrote.
Eastman, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, was one of Trump’s lawyers in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He authored memos setting out how Vice President Mike Pence could simply refuse to count Joe Biden’s electors. He also spoke at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, telling the crowd that “dead people voted.” California disbarred him in April. The state bar’s review department found that “Eastman misled two courts, including our nation’s highest court.”
With Trump’s former impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow representing him, Eastman says the First Amendment protects him and that he’s been punished by partisan officials for doing his job. His petition compares his disbarment to the persecution of human rights lawyers in China and Uganda and positions him as an heir to the NAACP lawyers who were punished by racist Southern bars.
Cummings called those false equivalences, pointing out that Eastman was in fact acting as an enabler of authoritarian power rather than as a counterweight to it. He also said the petition essentially ignores what Eastman actually did, recasting his bid to subvert an election as routine legal advice.
The greater danger, in Cummings’ view, is who would benefit. Eastman’s argument that a lawyer’s political advocacy is outside the bar’s jurisdiction, and that disciplining conservative lawyers is presumptively partisan, mirrors what the Trump DOJ is arguing in order to get off the hook. The DOJ has proposed a rule that would allow the attorney general to request the suspension of ethics investigations into Justice Department lawyers, on the grounds that “political activists have weaponized the bar complaint and investigation process.”
The DOJ has sued the D.C. Bar to prevent it from disciplining Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice official who pressed his superiors to send a letter pushing Trump’s false election fraud claims. That suit was brought by then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is himself under ethics scrutiny over the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
A ruling in Eastman’s favor, Cummings warned, would give Trump’s lawyers the go-ahead to continue their campaign against the independent bar, including attacks on lawyers for representing clients the president doesn’t like.
First Amendment scholars have filed a brief in support of Eastman, warning that disciplining a lawyer for political activity opens the door to tit-for-tat retaliation from red and blue state bars. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will take the case.
As Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, Cummings pointed to a stark reality which is that more than a quarter of Americans and half of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was rigged.
