John Eastman has amassed a small army of support from conservative legal voices backing his bid for the Supreme Court to help him keep his law license.

Among the many amicus briefs urging the justices to grant review of Eastman’s petition are Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah. Sounding a similar note to briefs from other supporters, they told the justices that “[p]olitical activists have turned the bar disciplinary process into a weapon against lawyers on the disfavored side of public controversies.”

Whether that support from Cruz, Lee and others will help convince the justices to consider Eastman’s appeal remains to be seen. It takes four justices to grant review. If the court grants review — we won’t find out for at least a few weeks — that wouldn’t necessarily mean that it will side with Eastman in the end.

It would mean that the justices will consider doing so and will issue a ruling one way or the other after holding a hearing. The court denies most petitions.

The California authorities found that Eastman’s disbarment is needed “to protect the public, the courts, and the legal profession” following his misconduct in representing President Donald Trump and his 2020 campaign.

The state bar waived its right to respond to Eastman’s petition, which could signal to the justices that the matter is not worth their time, a sign that the amicus briefs urging review are attempting to counteract.

This litigation is developing as an unrelated bar complaint was filed in California against Trump’s new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, asking the state to investigate whether she violated California law by holding herself out as a lawyer despite apparently not being admitted to practice law. Among Eastman’s backers are a pack of 17 current and former Trump lawyers and a coalition that includes a group called the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund. Not all the amicus briefs are as partisan-aligned.

A filing from law professors warned that disbarments based on political advocacy “are likely to arise again, both from the left and from the right.”The professors noted that Eastman’s case “also involves other allegations of impropriety, such as alleged false statements to courts,” which the academics said they weren’t weighing in on.

Eastman’s petition is currently set to be considered at one of the justices’ upcoming private conferences on Nov. 6. If the court doesn’t call for the state to respond to the petition, then that would all but guarantee that it will deny it. If the court requests a response, that wouldn’t mean that it will grant Eastman’s petition, but that could prolong the review process.

It only takes one interested justice to get the court to request a response. Like the secret vote tallies when the court grants review of petitions, the court does not publicize which justice or justices request responses; the public dockets reflect the actions as taken on behalf of the court. Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Eastman clerked, previously recused himself from an Eastman-related case.

But the justice did not explain why, so it is unclear whether he will weigh in on this petition.

If Thomas recuses himself from this one, too, then that could make it more difficult for his former clerk to attract enough votes for review. The California bar court rejected Eastman against the backdrop of what the court called his “attempts to actively undermine the results of an election to the most powerful office in the United States with the goal of delaying or invalidating the lawful installation of his client’s electoral opponent and thereby keep his client in office.”

The bar court agreed that Eastman committed several instances of professional misconduct, including trying to mislead the courts, the public and Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, whom Trump tried to pressure to overturn his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden through the vice president’s ceremonial role in presiding over the Senate’s certification of the election results.

“Eastman made numerous false claims to help accomplish the conspiracy’s shared objective: to have former Vice-President Pence run interference on the electoral vote count with the goal to have him reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021,” the court said.

In an opinion affirming a hearing judge’s culpability findings, the court also agreed with the judge that Eastman was not culpable for one of the counts alleged by bar authorities due to a lack of evidence that his statements contributed to the assault and breach of the U.S. Capitol. Eastman turned to the justices in Washington after the California Supreme Court made his disbarment official earlier this year. Announcing the filing of his high court petition, his lawyers said the case isn’t about relitigating the 2020 election but rather “whether a state can strip a lawyer of his license — and his livelihood — because government officials disagreed with the legal arguments he made on behalf of his client.”

They said that if it can happen to Eastman, then it can happen to any lawyer who takes on unpopular causes. They said Supreme Court review is needed “to remove the threat the decision below poses not just to the First Amendment but to the ability of attorneys fiercely to advocate for their clients without fear of politicized disbarment.”

Meanwhile, Eastman is continuing to work as a lawyer. He has filed briefs in several high-profile Supreme Court cases over the years, including in support of the Trump administration’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a divided court rejected in June.

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