DOJ sues DC Bar Association over ethics enforcement alleging 'blatantly partisan arm of leftist cause'

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities, reported The New York Times.

The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department.

In accompanying statements, Mr. Blanche accused the D.C. Bar of acting as a “blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes.” Mr. Woodward said that the bar would “no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations,” adding that lawyers in the federal government must “be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues.”

That position — that lawyers at the Justice Department or other federal agencies are above scrutiny by legal ethics officials — is likely to be challenged by a host of legal profession entities.

The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Mr. Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory in 2020.

While the lawsuit is focused on Mr. Clark, Justice Department leaders in the suit also argued in defense of Mr. Martin. Two months ago, the D.C. Bar filed disciplinary charges against Mr. Martin over what it cast as his misconduct in seeking to punish Georgetown University’s law school.

Mr. Martin has spearheaded efforts by President Trump to use the Justice Department to pursue the president’s perceived enemies — what the administration claims are corrective measures intended to end “weaponization” of law enforcement by Democrats.

Increasingly, the Trump administration has clashed with state and local bars, as interest groups and some lawyers argue that unethical conduct by government lawyers acting on behalf of the Trump administration should be investigated and potentially punished.

The Justice Department is pushing forward a proposal to try to stall or delay state and city bars from conducting ethics investigations of its lawyers, and the new lawsuit argues that the D.C. Bar is among the entities that has shown partisan bias.

To back up that claim, the lawsuit points to how the D.C. Bar handled the case of Kevin E. Clinesmith, a former F.B.I. lawyer who pleaded guilty to making a false statement when he altered an email to try to justify court-ordered surveillance of a former 2016 Trump campaign adviser. After his plea, Mr. Clinesmith had his bar license suspended for a year.

The suit called Mr. Clinesmith’s punishment a “slap on the wrist” for suborning unlawful surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and compared it to the effort to disbar Mr. Clark for “attempting to tell a lie” about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit also invokes the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting partial immunity to presidents, suggesting that if a president has immunity, lawyers working for him in the government are also protected from ethical discipline.

“The president’s constitutionally required immunity would provide little protection if executive branch attorneys could be targeted for internal executive branch deliberations,” the lawsuit argued.

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