In the wake of her appointment, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive to Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys, emphasizing their duty to fervently advocate for the interests of the United States and its president.
This move was met with backlash from a coalition of left-leaning groups and law professors, who called on the Florida bar to probe her for potential misconduct.
This complaint against Bondi, lodged in June, is just one in a series of at least a dozen ethics complaints that left-wing factions have leveled against high-ranking lawyers, including Deputy United States Attorney General Todd Blanche, and DOJ attorneys tasked with defending the administration in court.
According to Conservative Daily News, Mike Fragoso, former chief counsel to ex-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, noted that many government lawyers are licensed in liberal jurisdictions, such as D.C., California, and New York, which are overseen by liberal bars and supreme courts.
Jeff Clark, a White House official who served in the DOJ during Trumps first administration, is currently facing the risk of losing his law license. This follows a finding by the D.C. Bar that he attempted to provide dishonest legal advice related to the 2020 election. Fragoso pointed out that the standards for assessing complaints differ by jurisdiction.
The bar complaint against Bondi scrutinizes her leadership, citing several internal incidents, including the dismissal of a lawyer on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and the termination of the prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams. These incidents are used to allege that Bondi has launched a concerted effort to override ethical obligations.
Despite the state bar rejecting two previous complaints against Bondi on the grounds that it does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office, the coalition of left-wing groups and law professors proceeded to file their complaint.
The Legal Accountability Center (LAC) is one of the groups responsible for a significant portion of recent complaints. In August, LAC lodged a complaint against three DOJ attorneys, alleging they made misleading statements in court about the administrations effort to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The same organization filed a complaint against Pardon Attorney Ed Martin in February.
Martin expressed his intention to investigate bar associations for targeting conservative attorneys, aiming to expose the weaponization of the bar associations against lawyers.
Michael Teter, who heads LAC, also led the 65 Project, a group that filed complaints against President Donald Trumps attorneys after the 2020 election, including Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman. A California court upheld a recommendation for Eastman to lose his law license in July. Teters group also pushed for Eastman to be removed from the Supreme Court Bar in 2022.
The 65 Project has also targeted Republican State Attorneys General like Lynn Fitch of Mississippi and Steve Marshall of Alabama.
However, only three of nearly 80 complaints filed by the 65 Project between 2022 and 2023 resulted in publicly disclosed disciplinary actions, according to an analysis by The Center Square. Teter stated in 2022 that his organizations complaints are creating a system of deterrence.
In response, America First Legal (AFL) filed a bar complaint against Teter in October for allegedly abusing the process to punish lawyers associated with Trump. AFL Executive Director Gene Hamilton stated that seeking the personal destruction and financial ruin of another lawyer due to the client they represented or the cause they took up is contrary to the law governing the activities of lawyers and the principles of a free society.
The Campaign for Accountability (CfA), founded by former leaders of the left-wing Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is another organization behind several complaints. CfA has received funding from the New Venture Fund and the Hopewell Fund, left-wing organizations that are part of Arabella Advisors nonprofit network.
CfA has lodged complaints against several high-profile figures, including Alina Habba for her actions against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, and Attorney General Matt Platkin. It also filed a complaint against Emil Bove, who served as the DOJs third-in-command at the beginning of Trumps term and is now a Third Circuit judge, suggesting he violated ethics rules in directing the dismissal of the Adams indictment.
Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff in March called on the New York State Bar to investigate Emil Bove. The New York Senate Judiciary Committee also filed a complaint against Bove. Most recently, CfA filed a complaint against Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brennan Carr, alleging he may have violated the Rules of Professional Conduct by suggesting ABC should suspend Jimmy Kimmels show.
A DOJ spokesperson defended the department's attorneys, stating, Every day, the Justice Departments attorneys are going into court and vigorously defending the Executive Branch with integrity. Any assertion that our attorneys have engaged in professional misconduct is baseless and unfounded.
Jeff Clark, who is battling to retain his law license based on a draft letter he wrote suggesting there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, recently received support in his appeal from three former attorney generals. They warned that disciplining federal attorneys for internal debates over policy and law enforcement functions would interfere with the Executive Branchs core constitutional ability to carry out its duties and could discourage lawyers from serving in the federal government due to fear of political retaliation by the Bar.
Fragoso suggested that the solution might be for conservative lawyers to get admitted in a state like Texas or Florida, and for their supreme courts to make it clear that lawfare bar discipline from liberal jurisdictions wont bear on fitness to practice. However, this would likely require red states to liberalize their admission requirements, which are often quite strict.
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