Trump’s DOJ wants to green-light ethics violations: legal scholar

U.S. President Donald Trump with Pam Bondi in the White House in Washington, U.S., February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

During his first presidency, Donald Trump bitterly clashed with two conservative U.S. attorneys general: first former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), then Bill Barr. But for his second presidency, Trump has made a concerted effort to put far-right MAGA loyalists in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI. And a record number of DOJ and FBI officials have resigned.

In an op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on Friday, March 13, Deborah Pearlstein — a law professor at Princeton University in New Jersey — describes the fear of ethics violations that federal DOJ prosecutors are facing during the second Trump Administration.

"Like all other lawyers licensed to practice in the United States, if they violate legal ethics rules, they can face sanctions in court or professional discipline, up to and including the permanent loss of their license to practice," Pearlstein explains. "Efforts to overturn the 2020 election foundered in court more than 60 times, before judges of both parties, in part because lawyers arguing President Trump's case often feared telling a court the same extravagant lies that the president was telling the American people. That was then. Now, under pressure to ignore a range of ethics rules, a large number of Department of Justice attorneys have quit, opting to lose their jobs but save their careers."

Pearlstein continues, "Between these departures and a purge of legal staff members seen as insufficiently loyal to the president's agenda, the department has lost thousands of lawyers. It shows: Briefs are riddled with errors. Attorneys come to court grossly unprepared. Worst, court orders stand violated — in some cases, it seems, because there weren't enough lawyers available to ensure they were carried out."

DOJ, the legal scholar notes, is making "an increasingly desperate effort to recruit new hires" because of all these departures — while the Trump Administration is proposing "a different solution: a proposed rule that aims to shield Department of Justice lawyers from independent ethics investigations."

"Such an arrangement would run afoul of a federal law known as the McDade Amendment, which says that government lawyers are subject to the ethics rules of the states in which they practice, 'to the same extent and in the same manner' as every other lawyer licensed in the state," Pearlstein warns. "The proposed rule would be challenged in court immediately if it were ever to take effect. It shouldn't get that far, however. It would do much more than potentially give (Justice) Department lawyers a free pass to lie on the president's behalf."

Pearlstein continues, "It would severely limit the courts' ability to offer any kind of independent check on the executive branch…. Under the proposed rule, the attorney general could ask any independent disciplinary authority to suspend ethics proceedings against a Justice Department lawyer, on threat of unspecified enforcement action, and send the matter to the department's own Office of Professional Responsibility. But an OPR review is not a serious substitute for a state bar investigation."

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