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Justice Dept. Sues DC Bar Over Disciplinary Action Against Trump Attorneys

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is suing to block disciplinary
proceedings by the District of Columbia Bar against attorneys who served
in the Trump administration in a lawsuit that asserts politics not
ethics violations is the key issue. 

The lawsuit argues that local authorities lack constitutional authority
to police federal lawyers for conduct performed in their official roles. 

The dispute is a test of local jurisdiction over attorney accountability
in Washington and has major implications for former Justice Department
official Jeffrey Clark and others who assisted Trump’s efforts to
overturn the 2020 election. 

The D.C. Bar counsel argues that Clark and other Trump administration
attorneys violated Rules of Professional Conduct that ban dishonesty,
fraud and deceit. 

Clark drafted a letter urging Georgia officials to reconsider election
results based on claims of voter fraud that started with President
Donald Trump. 

The Justice Department, as well as court judgments, Congress and the
U.S. Election Assistance Commission, later concluded that the voter
fraud allegations were unsupported by evidence. 

A D.C. Bar disciplinary panel recommended that Clark lose his law
license. 

Clark said in a message on X that he welcomed the lawsuit. “This is an
important step to vindicate the separation of powers,” he wrote. 

Another Trump administration lawyer facing sanctions is Ed Martin, who
currently serves as the Justice Department’s pardons counsel. Martin was
the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia when he told
Georgetown Law School’s dean that his office would only hire the
school’s students if the school discontinued its diversity, equity and
inclusion program. 

Trump has called diversity, equity and inclusion programs discriminatory
and not based on merit. He has sought to eliminate them in federal
programs. 

Georgetown refused to change its policy.

In March, the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel accused Martin of
professional misconduct for the letter he sent to Georgetown Law
School’s dean last year that included the threat. 

Martin responded by calling the disciplinary counsel’s action “uneven
behavior.” 

The Justice Department lawsuit raised similar complaints, saying, “The
Office of Disciplinary Counsel and the Board on Professional
Responsibility, as D.C. institutions, have no authority to decide
whether a federal government attorney — no less the interim U.S.
Attorney for the District of Columbia — is upholding his oath of office
or whether his official acts comport with the Constitution.” 

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia as United States v. Fox names Hamilton Fox and other D.C.
disciplinary officials as defendants. 

“The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive
branch deliberations and target executive branch officials with whom
they happen to politically disagree, and federal attorneys will once
again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and
colleagues,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a
Justice Department statement. 

Local disciplinary authority over lawyers is traditionally derived from
the 1998 federal McDade-Murtha Amendment. It says government lawyers are
bound by the state and local ethics rules where they practice. 

So far, the most prominent Trump administration lawyer disbarred in the
District of Columbia is Rudy Giuliani, a former judge, New York mayor
and personal attorney to Trump. 

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered Giuliani’s disbarment
in September 2024 after disciplinary authorities concluded he made false
statements in litigation to challenge the 2020 presidential election
that gave the victory to Joe Biden. 

The D.C. Office of the Disciplinary Counsel has not yet commented on the
lawsuit or filed a response. 

https://www.thewellnews.com/law/justice-dept-sues-dc-bar-over-disciplinar
y-action-against-trump-attorneys/ 

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