{"id":151195,"date":"2026-05-14T15:15:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/05\/14\/doj-sues-d-c-bar-for-holding-trump-lawyers-to-ethical-rules\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T15:15:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:15:40","slug":"doj-sues-d-c-bar-for-holding-trump-lawyers-to-ethical-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/05\/14\/doj-sues-d-c-bar-for-holding-trump-lawyers-to-ethical-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

Law licensing authorities provide the only avenue of accountability left for Trump administration lawyers lying to courts<\/a>, disregarding court orders<\/a>, or actively plotting coups<\/a>. Trump will pardon his legal enablers for any crimes involved in, say, packing up innocent people and shipping them to El Salvador. His Federalist Society-approved appellate courts stand by to rob district courts of the inherent authority to police contempt<\/a>. Trump v. United States<\/em> may even eliminate whatever liability remains by allowing Trump lawyers to claim their ethical lapses constitute \u201cofficial acts.\u201d If you can use SEAL Team 6 to kill political opponents, you can definitely write a memo suggesting government lawyers tell federal judges to fuck themselves. All that remains is the individual lawyer\u2019s license. It\u2019s the privilege to practice, bestowed by jurisdictions with the caveat that lawyers must abide by the ethical rules of the profession.<\/p>\n

Nothing can make Trump\u2019s lawyers respect the law, but the local bar can keep an ethical reprobate from practicing law going forward and continuing to hold themselves out to the public as an ethically compliant counselor. They must be professionally sanctioned, if not disbarred<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Local authorities have mostly abdicated this responsibility so far<\/a>, preferring not to get involved. But the mere threat that Trump lawyers may face professional consequences for their actions prompted the Department of Justice to concoct a new rule<\/a> to strip local bars of their statutory authority to regulate the ethics of government lawyers. Now, the DOJ has brought a lawsuit against the D.C. Bar to intimidate and chill any licensing authority that might consider holding government lawyers to the same standard as the rest of us.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday<\/a> against the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, the D.C. Court of Appeals, and the whole District itself \u2014 essentially any entity in the capital that might be in a position to take a lawyer\u2019s license away \u2014 on the theory that the bar disciplinary process violates the Supremacy Clause and Article II when applied to former DOJ attorneys. The nominal hook is the ongoing disciplinary proceeding against Jeff Clark, the former Assistant Attorney General whose \u201cGeorgia Proof of Concept\u201d letter remains one of the more lurid artifacts of the post-2020 effort to nullify an election.<\/p>\n

But the lawsuit is really forward looking \u2014 a direct threat to any professional regulator that they should look the other way when they come across misconduct by government attorneys, if they know what\u2019s good for them<\/em>. <\/p>\n

The complaint\u2019s central legal theory is that disciplining a former federal official for misconduct committed during federal service \u201cregulates\u201d the Executive Branch in violation of the Supremacy Clause. As the DOJ puts it:<\/p>\n

\n

Weaponizing state bar discipline against Executive Branch attorneys in this way chills them from giving candid legal advice to others in the Executive Branch, including the President and Attorney General. To permit these proceedings is to allow state bar authorities to control the Executive Branch. That is not the law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is, in fact, the law. The McDade-Murtha Amendment explicitly guarantees local bar authorities have jurisdiction over government lawyers committing misconduct in their borders. Beyond that, a license is not a right and a lawyer\u2019s privilege to practice is always subject to staying within the rules of the profession. <\/p>\n

Advice that violates ethical obligations is not legal advice. Just as \u201cwith all due respect\u201d doesn\u2019t bless you unloading whatever insults you have in mind, slapping the word \u201ccandid\u201d doesn\u2019t turn illegality into legal advice. The DOJ leans heavily on the framing that Clark\u2019s Georgia letter was \u201cpre-decisional and deliberative\u201d \u2014 which is true in the sense that the letter was never sent because Clark\u2019s bosses refused to go along with it. But the Board on Professional Responsibility didn\u2019t recommend disbarment because Clark was spitballing. It recommended disbarment because, as the Board put it, the letter contained statements that Clark knew or should have known were false, made in service of an effort to use the Justice Department to manufacture a pretext for state legislatures to override election results and disenfranchise voters.<\/p>\n

Summer associates can pitch their bosses on bad legal theories because they don\u2019t know better. When DOJ officials roll in with \u201cok, hear me out, what if we tried\u2026 crime?\u201d it\u2019s not deliberative. D.C.\u2019s authorities found Clark\u2019s actions closer to the latter, and if any current DOJ leaders actually told their staff to violate court orders and lie to judges about it, they\u2019ll end up on that side of the ledger too.<\/p>\n

Where the violation itself involves lying to courts \u2014 as it will for scores of government attorneys before this is all over \u2014 it\u2019s actually the antithesis of legal advice. If the Executive Branch wants lawyers to provide illegal advice, that\u2019s on them. But the profession doesn\u2019t have to let that lawyer go back to private practice as though nothing happened.<\/p>\n

Indeed, after a lawyer has left government service it\u2019s metaphysically impossible for a disciplinary counsel to \u201ccontrol\u201d anything. Absent a time machine, local authorities can\u2019t stop someone like Clark from drafting a letter proposing that the DOJ lie about fraud that didn\u2019t exist in order to effectuate a coup. But if someone were to write that letter \u2014 purporting that it is legal advice<\/em> \u2014 the bar is obligated to protect the public from that kind of lawyer practicing again. The only influence licensing authorities have is in indirectly incentivizing lawyers to give real legal advice. That the DOJ views requiring ethical legal advice as an undue burden on how the administration operates is not the flex they think it is.<\/p>\n

You know a brief rests on dubious footing when it roars out of the gate citing cases from the 1800s. As the DOJ sees it, the state of Maryland wasn\u2019t allowed to use state taxes to run the Bank of the United States out of business\u2026 ERGO government service is the Ross telling Rachel \u201cwe were on a break\u201d of ethical obligations. If government lawyers aren\u2019t bound by professional ethics, then they don\u2019t really need to be lawyers. Just hire a business grad from Sales if you\u2019re looking for a someone to sign off on illegal activity.<\/p>\n

The complaint attempts to stretch the Trump v. United States<\/em> rubber band past its breaking point to hang its \u201cabsolute immunity\u201d over presidential crimes to the professional licensing decisions of a state bar. The Supreme Court\u2019s love letter to Donald Trump grants presidents free rein to commit crime, and it may even allow government lawyers to avoid criminal repercussions for aiding and abetting presidents in those crimes. But it\u2019s silent on how local jurisdictions hand out licenses. Character & Fitness doesn\u2019t have to limit itself to what the criminal courts decide when considering admitting candidates, it doesn\u2019t have to do it when deciding to keep them in practice. <\/p>\n

The complaint also makes much of social-media posts by Jack Metzler, an Assistant Disciplinary Counsel who has, in his off-hours, posted accurate things about Sam Alito \u2014 which is to say deeply insulting. Fine. Metzler probably should be on the prosecution team, if only to avoid the appearance of impropriety. It might be grounds for Clark to personally push back on these charges. It is not, however, a justification for the DOJ to seek a perpetual invincibility star on every administration lawyer\u2019s license. <\/p>\n

If you have a law license, you have to follow the rules.<\/p>\n

But again, this isn\u2019t really about hauling Jeff Clark\u2019s ass out of the fire. The DOJ wants every other jurisdiction receiving referrals from federal judges about DOJ lawyers lying to court to fear getting involved. Like the executive orders against Biglaw firms, the administration wants to make a example out of a few that nudges everyone else into obeying in advance. They don\u2019t even need to succeed in this suit to scare off an underfunded regulator out there. It\u2019s just a threat letter dressed up with case citations half-remembered from first-year Con Law. <\/p>\n

The proper response to this threat is for disciplinary authorities to redouble their efforts. Especially if the referrals are being initiated by judges themselves. It\u2019s the nature of government to be partisan, but that can\u2019t become an excuse to close our eyes to misconduct out of fear that someone calls it \u201cpoliticization.\u201d Bar authorities exist to protect the public and preserve the honor of the profession, and that obligation doesn\u2019t take a holiday because the lawyer involved collected a government paycheck. Surrendering self-regulatory authority forfeits the profession\u2019s dignity.<\/p>\n

That is what the DOJ is counting on.<\/p>\n

(Check out the complaint on the next page\u2026)<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Disbar Them All: The Only Accountability Left For Trump\u2019s Lawyers<\/a>
Pam Bondi Declares Herself God-Empress Of Ethics<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Law licensing authorities provide the only avenue of accountability left for Trump administration lawyers lying to courts<\/a>, disregarding court orders<\/a>, or actively plotting coups<\/a>. Trump will pardon his legal enablers for any crimes involved in, say, packing up innocent people and shipping them to El Salvador. His Federalist Society-approved appellate courts stand by to rob district courts of the inherent authority to police contempt<\/a>. Trump v. United States<\/em> may even eliminate whatever liability remains by allowing Trump lawyers to claim their ethical lapses constitute \u201cofficial acts.\u201d If you can use SEAL Team 6 to kill political opponents, you can definitely write a memo suggesting government lawyers tell federal judges to fuck themselves. All that remains is the individual lawyer\u2019s license. It\u2019s the privilege to practice, bestowed by jurisdictions with the caveat that lawyers must abide by the ethical rules of the profession.<\/p>\n

Nothing can make Trump\u2019s lawyers respect the law, but the local bar can keep an ethical reprobate from practicing law going forward and continuing to hold themselves out to the public as an ethically compliant counselor. They must be professionally sanctioned, if not disbarred<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Local authorities have mostly abdicated this responsibility so far<\/a>, preferring not to get involved. But the mere threat that Trump lawyers may face professional consequences for their actions prompted the Department of Justice to concoct a new rule<\/a> to strip local bars of their statutory authority to regulate the ethics of government lawyers. Now, the DOJ has brought a lawsuit against the D.C. Bar to intimidate and chill any licensing authority that might consider holding government lawyers to the same standard as the rest of us.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday<\/a> against the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, the D.C. Court of Appeals, and the whole District itself \u2014 essentially any entity in the capital that might be in a position to take a lawyer\u2019s license away \u2014 on the theory that the bar disciplinary process violates the Supremacy Clause and Article II when applied to former DOJ attorneys. The nominal hook is the ongoing disciplinary proceeding against Jeff Clark, the former Assistant Attorney General whose \u201cGeorgia Proof of Concept\u201d letter remains one of the more lurid artifacts of the post-2020 effort to nullify an election.<\/p>\n

But the lawsuit is really forward looking \u2014 a direct threat to any professional regulator that they should look the other way when they come across misconduct by government attorneys, if they know what\u2019s good for them<\/em>. <\/p>\n

The complaint\u2019s central legal theory is that disciplining a former federal official for misconduct committed during federal service \u201cregulates\u201d the Executive Branch in violation of the Supremacy Clause. As the DOJ puts it:<\/p>\n

\n

Weaponizing state bar discipline against Executive Branch attorneys in this way chills them from giving candid legal advice to others in the Executive Branch, including the President and Attorney General. To permit these proceedings is to allow state bar authorities to control the Executive Branch. That is not the law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is, in fact, the law. The McDade-Murtha Amendment explicitly guarantees local bar authorities have jurisdiction over government lawyers committing misconduct in their borders. Beyond that, a license is not a right and a lawyer\u2019s privilege to practice is always subject to staying within the rules of the profession. <\/p>\n

Advice that violates ethical obligations is not legal advice. Just as \u201cwith all due respect\u201d doesn\u2019t bless you unloading whatever insults you have in mind, slapping the word \u201ccandid\u201d doesn\u2019t turn illegality into legal advice. The DOJ leans heavily on the framing that Clark\u2019s Georgia letter was \u201cpre-decisional and deliberative\u201d \u2014 which is true in the sense that the letter was never sent because Clark\u2019s bosses refused to go along with it. But the Board on Professional Responsibility didn\u2019t recommend disbarment because Clark was spitballing. It recommended disbarment because, as the Board put it, the letter contained statements that Clark knew or should have known were false, made in service of an effort to use the Justice Department to manufacture a pretext for state legislatures to override election results and disenfranchise voters.<\/p>\n

Summer associates can pitch their bosses on bad legal theories because they don\u2019t know better. When DOJ officials roll in with \u201cok, hear me out, what if we tried\u2026 crime?\u201d it\u2019s not deliberative. D.C.\u2019s authorities found Clark\u2019s actions closer to the latter, and if any current DOJ leaders actually told their staff to violate court orders and lie to judges about it, they\u2019ll end up on that side of the ledger too.<\/p>\n

Where the violation itself involves lying to courts \u2014 as it will for scores of government attorneys before this is all over \u2014 it\u2019s actually the antithesis of legal advice. If the Executive Branch wants lawyers to provide illegal advice, that\u2019s on them. But the profession doesn\u2019t have to let that lawyer go back to private practice as though nothing happened.<\/p>\n

Indeed, after a lawyer has left government service it\u2019s metaphysically impossible for a disciplinary counsel to \u201ccontrol\u201d anything. Absent a time machine, local authorities can\u2019t stop someone like Clark from drafting a letter proposing that the DOJ lie about fraud that didn\u2019t exist in order to effectuate a coup. But if someone were to write that letter \u2014 purporting that it is legal advice<\/em> \u2014 the bar is obligated to protect the public from that kind of lawyer practicing again. The only influence licensing authorities have is in indirectly incentivizing lawyers to give real legal advice. That the DOJ views requiring ethical legal advice as an undue burden on how the administration operates is not the flex they think it is.<\/p>\n

You know a brief rests on dubious footing when it roars out of the gate citing cases from the 1800s. As the DOJ sees it, the state of Maryland wasn\u2019t allowed to use state taxes to run the Bank of the United States out of business\u2026 ERGO government service is the Ross telling Rachel \u201cwe were on a break\u201d of ethical obligations. If government lawyers aren\u2019t bound by professional ethics, then they don\u2019t really need to be lawyers. Just hire a business grad from Sales if you\u2019re looking for a someone to sign off on illegal activity.<\/p>\n

The complaint attempts to stretch the Trump v. United States<\/em> rubber band past its breaking point to hang its \u201cabsolute immunity\u201d over presidential crimes to the professional licensing decisions of a state bar. The Supreme Court\u2019s love letter to Donald Trump grants presidents free rein to commit crime, and it may even allow government lawyers to avoid criminal repercussions for aiding and abetting presidents in those crimes. But it\u2019s silent on how local jurisdictions hand out licenses. Character & Fitness doesn\u2019t have to limit itself to what the criminal courts decide when considering admitting candidates, it doesn\u2019t have to do it when deciding to keep them in practice. <\/p>\n

The complaint also makes much of social-media posts by Jack Metzler, an Assistant Disciplinary Counsel who has, in his off-hours, posted accurate things about Sam Alito \u2014 which is to say deeply insulting. Fine. Metzler probably should be on the prosecution team, if only to avoid the appearance of impropriety. It might be grounds for Clark to personally push back on these charges. It is not, however, a justification for the DOJ to seek a perpetual invincibility star on every administration lawyer\u2019s license. <\/p>\n

If you have a law license, you have to follow the rules.<\/p>\n

But again, this isn\u2019t really about hauling Jeff Clark\u2019s ass out of the fire. The DOJ wants every other jurisdiction receiving referrals from federal judges about DOJ lawyers lying to court to fear getting involved. Like the executive orders against Biglaw firms, the administration wants to make a example out of a few that nudges everyone else into obeying in advance. They don\u2019t even need to succeed in this suit to scare off an underfunded regulator out there. It\u2019s just a threat letter dressed up with case citations half-remembered from first-year Con Law. <\/p>\n

The proper response to this threat is for disciplinary authorities to redouble their efforts. Especially if the referrals are being initiated by judges themselves. It\u2019s the nature of government to be partisan, but that can\u2019t become an excuse to close our eyes to misconduct out of fear that someone calls it \u201cpoliticization.\u201d Bar authorities exist to protect the public and preserve the honor of the profession, and that obligation doesn\u2019t take a holiday because the lawyer involved collected a government paycheck. Surrendering self-regulatory authority forfeits the profession\u2019s dignity.<\/p>\n

That is what the DOJ is counting on.<\/p>\n

(Check out the complaint on the next page\u2026)<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Disbar Them All: The Only Accountability Left For Trump\u2019s Lawyers<\/a>
Pam Bondi Declares Herself God-Empress Of Ethics<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Law licensing authorities provide the only avenue of accountability left for Trump administration lawyers lying to courts, disregarding court orders, or actively plotting coups. Trump will pardon his legal enablers for any crimes involved in, say, packing up innocent people and shipping them to El Salvador. His Federalist Society-approved appellate courts stand by to rob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}