Attorney General Barr and the DC Bar

[L'Emmerdeur]

The District of Columbia Bar, the official mandatory bar association for Washington DC, has received a complaint accusing Attorney General Barr of ethical violations that are in breach of his attorney's oath of office and rules of professional conduct. There are four matters addressed in the complaint:

1. Unconstitutionally ordering, overseeing and supporting the forcible dispersal of constitutionally protected peaceful protests at Lafayette Square. In so doing, Mr. Barr unethically represented Mr. Trump’s personal interests in a “photo op” rather than carrying out his ethical duty to represent his client — the people of the United States — to protect their fundamental interest in their constitutional rights.

2. Misleading Congress and the public by asserting that the Mueller Report did not contain sufficient evidence to establish that President Trump committed the crime of “obstruction of justice.”

3. Deceiving the American people in his unprecedented December 2019 attack on a report from a Justice Department Inspector General. Mr. Barr misrepresented the IG’s determination that the FBI had a proper basis for launching its 2016 counterintelligence investigation — by leaving out crucial evidence on which the IG relied.

4. Issuing harmful and totally unnecessary public prejudgments of FBI personnel during a pending criminal investigation he was overseeing in which they were potential defendants – seriously interfering with the administration of justice.

[PDF of ethics complaint]

'Why 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed a Complaint with Bar Association Against Attorney General Barr'

It has been deeply disturbing to witness Attorney General William Barr persistently acting to undermine the rule of law over the past sixteen months. The administration of justice depends on lawyers honoring their ethical duties and playing by the rules, so the public can have confidence in the fairness and impartiality of our legal system.

...

[The] complaint asks the DC Bar’s discipline office to investigate Mr. Barr’s alleged ethical violations and determine what sanctions would be appropriate.

...

All of [the four] matters are part of Mr. Barr’s pattern of placing the president’s personal and political interests ahead of his ethical duty to represent the interests of the United States in dispensing evenhanded justice under the rule of law and upholding the Constitution.

Sober and highly experienced lawyers like those who signed the complaint wouldn’t take such an action except in extraordinary circumstances. It is only because Attorney General Barr’s abuses are so serious, so repetitive, and so well documented in the complaint that the signers felt compelled to hold Mr. Barr accountable — to protect the integrity of the legal profession and the American legal system.

Among the remarkable list of signers are four former DC Bar Presidents – former leaders of the organization they now call upon to investigate Mr. Barr – and a former DC Bar senior discipline lawyer, now ethics counsel to Georgetown University’s Law Center. Signers include former Watergate prosecutor Philip Lacovara (who argued and won U.S. v. Nixon in the U.S. Supreme Court) and former Justice Department prosecutor Paul Butler, now a law professor, who knows what is required for ethical behavior by Justice Department lawyers. Also among the signers are former law school deans, eminent legal ethics professors, and distinguished former government officials.

I don't know how Trump or his operatives might be able to hobble the DC Bar. Though it's an arm of the DC courts, it's controlled by an independent board of governors.

[JimC]

Trump supporters, of course, will frame this as the evil liberal legal establishment attacking a blameless Trumpian hero...

[L'Emmerdeur]

The same site that has the article about the DC Bar has another about how he lied in his justification of the Trump administration deploying federal bully boys domestically.

'Bill Barr’s Playbook: His False Claims About Prior Military Force on U.S. Soil'

In the 1989 case, President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act to quell domestic unrest in the Virgin Islands. In interviews with the Miller Center years ago, Barr explained that he played a lead role inside the Bush administration on the legal basis for the president’s deployment of the military. That’s all the more reason for him to be aware that the administration at the time strenuously made the case that the governor of the Virgin Islands requested the deployment of the US military. It served the Bush administration well to stake out that position. Barr now tries to say the opposite happened. It would serve the Trump administration well for him to do so.

Based on interviews we conducted with U.S. officials who served with Barr at the time and the historical materials from those days’ events, Barr is plainly misleading the country now in his portrayal of the episode. And he appears to be doing so to legitimize President Trump’s threatening or exercising such powers without governors’ consent.

[Svartalf]

Interesting, but what inflluence does the opinion of the DC bar have on the AG?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Theoretically, the DC Bar could recommend that the DC Court of Appeals disbar Barr. He'd no longer be allowed to practice law in the District of Columbia courts. There are other sanctions they could apply, short of disbarring him.

[Svartalf]

But I suppose all that would be unfelt by him until he has to step down from office, would it not?

[laklak]

There's no constitutional requirement that the AG be a lawyer.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Yes, disbarring or any other sanction that the DC Bar might apply would have little material effect on his work at the Department of Justice. He'd no longer be credited as the chief counsel in US government litigation, but that wouldn't prevent the cases from proceeding.