John Charles Eastman (born 1960) is an American legal scholar and disbarred lawyer. Eastman became widely known after the 2020 United States presidential election, when he advised then-President Donald Trump. He wrote legal memos arguing that Vice President Mike Pence could reject or delay certification of certain electoral votes, for which he has been disbarred by the state of California from practicing law.
Eastman is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He is a former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He was the Republican nominee for California's 34th congressional district in 1990, and a candidate for California Attorney General in 2010. He is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
During President Donald Trump's last efforts to block the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, Eastman told Vice President Mike Pence on January 5, 2021, that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification. Pence did not accept Eastman's argument. Eastman also sent Republican senator Mike Lee a six-point plan of action for Pence to throw out the electors from seven states to keep Trump in power, which Lee rejected. On January 6, 2021, Eastman spoke at the White House Trump rally preceding the 2021 United States Capitol attack. He retired a week later from the Chapman faculty after controversy surrounding his speech.
In addition to his disbarment, John Eastman has faced multiple legal and professional consequences related to efforts to challenge the 2020 election. In March 2022, federal judge David O. Carter found it “more likely than not” that Eastman and Trump had engaged in a plan to obstruct the certification of the election. The United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack later recommended he, along with Trump and potentially others, be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. In 2023, Eastman was one of the six alleged co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department's federal indictment of Trump. Eastman was subsequently indicted in state-level election interference cases, including a 2023 Georgia racketeering prosecution and a 2024 Arizona fake electors prosecution, both arising from efforts to challenge the 2020 election.
In November 2025, Trump issued a federal pardon covering Eastman in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, although no federal charges had been made.
Early life and education Eastman was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. His family moved among several states during his childhood, and by the time he reached high school he was living in Texas. He attended Lewisville High School, where he was on the wrestling team and a member of the National Honor Society.
After high school, Eastman attended the University of Dallas on a scholarship and graduated in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in political science and economics. He then pursued doctoral studies in government at the Claremont Graduate School, where he focused on political philosophy, American government, constitutional law, and international relations. He wrote his doctoral dissertation under William B. Allen. He earned a Master of Arts in government in 1989 and his Ph.D. in government in 1993. His doctoral dissertation was titled, On the Perpetuation of Our Institutions: Thoughts on Public Education at the American Founding. During his graduate studies, Eastman also worked as a research associate at the Claremont Institute.
After receiving his doctorate, Eastman attended the University of Chicago Law School, earning his Juris Doctor (J.D.) with high honors in 1995. He was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. During law school, he was also a Bradley Fellow for Research in Constitutional History and an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.
Career
In 1989, prior to attending law school, Eastman served as the director of Congressional and public affairs at the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He was also the unsuccessful 1990 Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in California's 34th congressional district.
Following law school, he clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, who has since denounced Eastman for assisting Trump's efforts to remain in power and subvert the results of the 2020 election. Eastman also clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court of the United States. He then was an attorney with the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, specializing in civil and constitutional litigation. He later joined Chapman to teach constitutional law, was appointed dean, and founded the school's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. For the 2020–2021 academic year, he was the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy at the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Eastman served as an attorney for the State of South Dakota, representing it in a denied petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in a constitutional challenge to federal spending.
Eastman has represented the North Carolina legislature and the State of Arizona in unsuccessfully petitioning the Supreme Court in cases involving same-sex marriage, abortion, and immigration.
He testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2014 arguing that President Barack Obama's unilateral suspension of deportation for undocumented immigrants was unconstitutional and regarding the disclosure by the IRS of tax returns.
In addition to scholarly publications, Eastman has been a legal commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, BBC World News, and PBS, while his papers and commentary regarding the constitution and the courts have been published in the ABA Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, National Review, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, Slate, and National Catholic Register. He has also appeared on conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt's Fox News program The Hugh Hewitt Show, commenting on law.
Elections 1990 congressional campaign In 1990 Eastman was unopposed in the primary to become the Republican challenger of long-time 34th District incumbent Esteban Torres in California's San Gabriel Valley. He lost the two-candidate general election, getting 36,024 out of 91,670 votes.California Elections Page. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
California Attorney General campaign On February 1, 2010, Eastman resigned as dean of the Chapman University School of Law to pursue the Republican nomination for California Attorney General. On April 1, a Superior Court judge denied Eastman's choice for ballot designation as "Assistant Attorney General", fearing that use of this title, temporarily granted by South Dakota for his work on a lawsuit, would be misperceived as a California title. The judge further denied Eastman's second choice, "Taxpayer Advocate/Attorney", but accepted his third choice, "Constitutional Law Attorney". Such designations typically reflect a candidate's current employment or elected office. Eastman finished second in the three-way Republican primary with 34.2% of the vote, behind Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who received 47.3%. Cooley advanced to the 2010 California Attorney General election, where he was defeated by Kamala Harris.
Board affiliations Eastman was chairman of the Federalist Society's practice group on federalism and separation of powers. In 2011 he was named chairman the board of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage. He has served as a director of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which brings election lawsuits. He is both a member of the board and on the faculty at the Claremont Institute. He sits on the board of advisors of St. Monica Academy and the advisory board of the St. Thomas More Society of Orange County.
Controversies
Kamala Harris citizenship op-ed In August 2020, Newsweek published an op-ed by Eastman questioning 2020 vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris's eligibility for the office. He asserted she could not be a U.S. citizen by birth despite being born in Oakland, California, if neither of her parents was a permanent resident at the time of her birth. Eastman said that she could have subsequently obtained citizenship derived from the naturalization of her parents if one of them had become a citizen prior to her 16th birthday in 1980, which would have allowed Harris to fulfill the nine-year citizenship requirement necessary to become a senator.
Many prominent legal scholars disagreed with Eastman's position, and many compared it to the birtherism theory against President Barack Obama. Newsweek defended the column, while acknowledging that they were "horrified that this op-ed gave rise to a wave of vile Birtherism directed at Senator Harris". They stated there was no connection between the op-ed and the birther movement. Rather, the op-ed focused on the "long-standing, somewhat arcane legal debate about the precise meaning of the phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment", also known as the jus sanguinis or jus soli debate. However, Axios noted that other constitutional scholars do not accept Eastman's view, labeling it "baseless". Axios also criticized Eastman for dismissing the eligibility concerns of 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz, born in Calgary, Canada, in a 2016 National Review op-ed, claiming they were "silly".
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law School, told the BBC, "Under section 1 of the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen. The Supreme Court has held this since the 1890s. Kamala Harris was born in the United States." Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe was similarly dismissive, telling The New York Times "I hadn't wanted to comment on [Eastman's idea] because it's such an idiotic theory. There is nothing to it." One day after publishing Eastman's op-ed, Newsweek published an opinion piece by legal scholar Eugene Volokh, titled "Yes, Kamala Harris is Eligible to be Vice President", in which Volokh argues that Harris is a "natural-born citizen" under the U.S. Constitution and is therefore eligible to be vice president. Lorelei Laird, in an Above The Law article, pointed out that according to Eastman's legal theory, Harris would not even be considered a U.S. citizen at all.
This op-ed was cited by the New York Times as helping Eastman come to the attention of Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign adviser. Eastman briefly met with Trump campaign advisors in a Philadelphia hotel room the weekend after the 2020 presidential election. According to Eastman, he caught COVID-19 at that time.
In early December 2020, Trump contacted Eastman, asking him to challenge the results of the 2020 United States presidential election before the Supreme Court.
2020 presidential election
Legal strategies to reject electoral votes