In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, the Justice Department challenged the authority of the District of Columbia Bar to police the conduct of attorneys who served in the first and second Trump administrations, arguing that the disciplinary process has become politicized and that it improperly interferes with executive-branch decision-making. The filing targets the bar’s role in attorney discipline and seeks to bring an end to ongoing proceedings connected to ethics cases involving Trump-allied lawyers.
The department’s complaint says the D.C. Bar and related ethics entities have no power to decide whether federal attorneys are upholding their oath of office or whether their official acts align with the Constitution, according to the Justice Department’s court filing description in the AP report. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who serves as a top Justice Department official, said in a statement that the department believes the bar has sought to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations and to target executive branch officials with whom it disagrees politically.
Woodward said the lawsuit would ensure that federal attorneys are “once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues,” language the Justice Department provided in its statement. An email seeking comment to the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility, one of the defendants named in the complaint, did not receive an immediate response.
Central to the Justice Department’s challenge is the ethics matter involving Jeffrey Clark, described in the AP report as a senior Justice Department lawyer from the first Trump administration who was deeply involved in legal efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election results that President Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The disciplinary panel has recommended that Clark be stripped of his law license, the report said, and the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeks to halt those proceedings and label them unlawful and tainted by politicization.
In its effort to argue bias in the disciplinary process, the Justice Department asserted that the bar authorities treated Clark more harshly than a former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email during the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the AP report. The department’s complaint uses that comparison as support for its allegation that the disciplinary system is being applied unevenly.
The Justice Department’s filing also backs Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who now serves as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel accused Martin in March of professional misconduct for a threatening letter he sent to Georgetown Law School’s dean last year, when Martin was the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the AP report said. The report also described Martin’s role when he warned the Georgetown dean that the school’s students would not be hired by his office if the dean did not eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The lawsuit, the AP report said, argues that D.C. disciplinary authorities cannot decide whether federal government attorneys—including an interim U.S. attorney—are upholding their constitutional role. The Justice Department last week filed what’s known as a statement of interest in support of Martin after Martin previously complained about “uneven behavior” by the disciplinary counsel that filed the ethics charges against him.
Clark, who the AP report said has denied any wrongdoing, responded to the lawsuit on X, applauding the move as “an important step to vindicate the separation of powers,” according to the report.