April 16, 2026 09:34 AM UTC

Colorado's Favorite Coup Plotter's Disbarment Upheld

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• by: Colorado Pols

NBC News reported late yesterday on the fate of former University of Colorado Professor of Conservative Thought John Eastman, who served as counsel for the Colorado Republican Party in its legal battle to opt out of unaffiliated voter participation in their primaries. After a long, contested struggle through the state of California’s complicated attorney oversight system, the recommendation that Eastman be disbarred for his role in the Trump administration’s plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has been upheld by the California Supreme Court:

Evidence laid out in 2022 by the House’s Jan. 6 committee showed that Eastman acknowledged the plan was not legal but pushed for Pence to reject electors from contested states, which would have effectively overturned the election results. Days after the Jan. 6 riot, Eastman asked another former Trump attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to be included in a list of people Trump would pardon, the committee found. Eastman was not pardoned at that time…

The disbarment proceedings for Eastman began in 2023, after the counsel for the State Bar of California asked a court to revoke his law license following an ethics investigation by the state bar. He faced 11 disciplinary charges over allegations that he pushed a dubious legal theory to help overturn the election. A judge in 2024 found him culpable for 10 of the 11 charges and recommended that he be disbarred.

Politico:

The decision ends a three-year disciplinary process punctuated by a lengthy and high-stakes trial that reviewed Eastman’s emergence as a key architect of Trump’s effort to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to singlehandedly block Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

A judge on California’s State Bar Court ordered Eastman’s disbarment in 2024, but the decision was tied up in appeals ever since. In the interim, however, Eastman was suspended from practicing law.

Though the decision only applies to Eastman’s license to practice law in California, disbarment decisions are typically adopted by authorities in other jurisdictions in “reciprocal” rulings. Eastman is also a member of the bar in Washington, D.C., though his license has been suspended there as well.

Eastman had been issued a pre-emptive pardon by President Donald Trump, which like Trump’s “pardon” of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters carries no weight in a state-based proceeding. Pardons also have no effect on professional licensure, as Eastman’s fellow coup plotters Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis both found out to differing degrees.

Although the California Supreme Court has upheld Eastman’s disbarment, his attorney has vowed to keep fighting on the principle that everyone has the constitutional right to, you know, plot coups:

“The California Supreme Court has allowed to stand a State Bar Court recommendation that we contend departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context,” Miller wrote. “We disagree with that outcome and believe it raises pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech.”

No doubt there is legalese to put a finer point on this, but while Eastman may have the First Amendment right to plot an illegal coup, as a lawyer he has–pardon us, had–the professional responsibility to not plot an illegal coup. He has been found in violation of professional standards for attorney conduct that his peers are sanctioning him for to protect their institution.

Donald Trump has gone to extreme lengths since retaking office to rewrite the history of the 2020 elections to assuage his terminally bruised ego. In many cases he has succeeded, pardoning even the violent January 6th rioters, and firing anyone in government positions involved in accountability after the 2020 coup attempt failed. But every time he fails to protect his 2020 co-conspirators, as he has with Tina Peters and now John Eastman, a gap opens in Trump’s wall of lies and the truth shines through for posterity.

Here’s the truth: John Eastman lost his law license for helping Donald Trump plot to steal the 2020 election.

And that means…well, everyone knows what that means. But even as Trump’s subordinates continue to pay the price, not everyone can admit it.