by
Chip
Somodevilla/Getty
Images)
On
her
first
day
in
office,
Attorney
General
Pam
Bondi
delivered
a
warning
to
Justice
Department
lawyers:
Refusing
to
zealously
advocate
for
the
president’s
position
—
no
matter
how
unethical
or
contrary
to
law
—
was
a
firing
offense.
A
year
later,
morale
has
cratered
and
her
agency
is
a
hollowed
out
shell.
The
DOJ
has
been
reduced
to
recruiting
online,
urging
would-be
prosecutors
to
hit
up
US
Attorneys
via
DM.
Turns
out
lawyers
don’t
love
being
marched
into
court
with
a
gun
in
their
backs
and
forced
to
light
their
credibility
on
fire!
The
problem
reached
a
crisis
point
this
winter
thanks
to
the
Department
of
Homeland
Security’s
dogged
insistence
that
its
creative
reinterpretations
of
settled
law
allow
it
to
indefinitely
detain
any
immigrant
without
a
green
card.
Hundreds
of
judges
have
said
they
can’t,
and
yet
district
courts
are
still
buckling
under
the
weight
of
hundreds
of
identical
habeas
petitions.
DHS
routinely
ignores
court
orders
to
release
immigrants,
or,
when
it
does
comply,
dumps
people
on
the
street
a
thousand
miles
away
from
home
without
their
identity
documents.
Unsurprisingly,
judges
are
furious.
Just
this
past
week,
courts
in
New
Jersey,
West
Virginia,
and
Minnesota
warned
that
they’re
going
to
start
holding
DHS
and
prosecutors
in
contempt.
And
in
California,
Judge
Sunshine
Sykes
was
incensed
by
a
leaked
memo
from
Chief
Immigration
Judge
Teresa
Riley
instructing
immigration
courts
(which
are
part
of
DOJ)
to
disregard
district
court
rulings.
Knowing
that
risking
contempt
is
a
job
requirement
won’t
help
Bondi
recruit
and
retain
staff.
Nor
will
the
inevitable
bar
complaints
that
quote
judicial
orders
excoriating
AUSAs
for
bringing
frivolous
cases
and
failing
in
their
duty
of
candor
to
the
court.
So
Bondi
is
running
to
where
the
ball
is
about
to
be.
In
a
proposed
rule
change
flagged
by
Bloomberg
Law,
she
floats
a
plan
to
take
over
state
bar
complaints
against
DOJ
attorneys
and
“request
that
the
bar
disciplinary
authority
suspend
any
parallel
investigations
until
the
completion
of
the
Department’s
review.”
Bondi
adds
that,
“should
the
relevant
bar
disciplinary
authorities
refuse
the
Attorney
General’s
request,
the
Department
shall
take
appropriate
action
to
prevent
the
bar
disciplinary
authorities
from
interfering
with
the
Attorney
General’s
review
of
the
allegations.”
The
“appropriate
action”
would
be
nothing,
but
considering
the
number
of
garbage
lawsuits
her
agency
files,
she
probably
means
pointless
litigation.
Fittingly,
Bondi
relies
on
a
creative
statutory
reinterpretation
of
her
own
—
a
little
hair
of
the
dog,
if
you
will.
Since
it
was
passed
in
1998,
the
McDade
Amendment
(28
USC
§
530B)
has
subjected
government
attorneys
to
local
ethical
and
professional
standards
“to
the
same
extent
and
in
the
same
manner
as
other
attorneys
in
that
State.”
In
fact,
the
law
was
enacted
because
Attorneys
General
Janet
Reno
and
Dick
Thornburgh
kept
trying
to
exempt
DOJ
lawyers
from
local
rules.
Bondi’s
theory
is
that
the
McDade
Amendment
only
prescribes
standards
of
conduct
for
government
lawyers,
but
leaves
enforcement
to
the
Attorney
General
herself
by
instructing
her
to
“make
and
amend
rules
of
the
Department
of
Justice
to
assure
compliance
with
this
section.”
She
also
gestures
vaguely
in
the
direction
of
the
Supremacy
Clause,
claiming
that
fear
of
“weaponized”
bar
complaints
deters
her
staff
from
zealous
advocacy
and
thus
interferes
with
“the
broad
statutory
authority
of
the
Attorney
General
to
manage
and
supervise
Department
attorneys.”
The
problem
is
that
all
of
that
is
bullshit.
In
1979,
the
Supreme
Court
said
that
Larry
Flynt’s
lawyers
had
no
right
to
be
admitted
in
Ohio
pro
hac
vice
because,
“Since
the
founding
of
the
Republic,
the
licensing
and
regulation
of
lawyers
has
been
left
exclusively
to
the
States
and
the
District
of
Columbia
within
their
respective
jurisdictions.
The
States
prescribe
the
qualifications
for
admission
to
practice
and
the
standards
of
professional
conduct.
They
also
are
responsible
for
the
discipline
of
lawyers.”
Jeff
Clark,
the
MAGA
goon
serving
as
acting
head
of
the
Civil
Division
in
2020,
tried
to
escape
discipline
by
the
DC
Bar
on
the
exact
same
theory
that
Bondi
is
floating
now
(plus
several
other
even
nuttier
ones),
and
got
laughed
out
of
the
DC
Circuit.
Bondi’s
fakakta
claims
don’t
even
make
sense
on
their
own
terms,
since
the
AG
has
zero
power
to
impose
professional
discipline
after
an
investigation
—
or
“investigation,”
since
Bondi
gutted
the
Office
of
Professional
Responsibility
and
the
White
House
defunded
the
Inspectors
General.
She
can
fire
a
lawyer
for
misconduct,
or
maybe
go
after
his
pension,
but
she
can’t
suspend
him
from
the
practice
of
law.
As
for
her
whining
about
weaponized
attorney
grievance
proceedings,
that,
too,
is
nonsense.
State
bars
have
handled
Trumpland
lawyers
with
kid
gloves,
refusing
to
discipline
Alina
Habba
and
Lindsey
Halligan
after
they
falsely
held
themselves
out
as
US
Attorneys
for
months
after
courts
had
already
ruled
they
were
nothing
of
the
kind.
And
Bondi
herself,
as
well
as
her
Principal
Deputy
Todd
Blanche,
shrugged
off
bar
complaints
in
Florida
and
New
York.
The
proposed
rule
change
will
get
30
days
for
comment,
and
perhaps
the
negative
publicity
will
lead
the
DOJ
to
withdraw
it.
But
even
it
becomes
official
policy,
this
rule
is
effectively
a
nullity.
Supreme
Court
precedent,
settled
law,
and
the
Tenth
Amendment
will
protect
state
bars
when
they
tell
the
AG
that
they’ll
be
conducting
their
own
disciplinary
investigations,
TYVM.
But
there
is
something
Bondi
could
do
to
protect
DOJ
lawyers
from
professional
discipline.
If
she
cared
about
keeping
her
staff
out
of
trouble,
she
could
just
quit
asking
them
to
do
wildly
unethical
stuff.
It
would
be
a
twofer,
saving
them
from
contempt
sanctions
as
well
as
possible
disbarment.
Plus
it
would
probably
help
a
lot
with
retention
and
morale!
I’m
kidding
—
we
all
know
she’s
not
going
to
do
that.
Liz
Dye produces
the
Law
and
Chaos Substack and podcast. You
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