Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the "sloppy and dishonest" Justice Department has proposed a new rule that would effectively block state bars from investigating federal prosecutors they license to practice in their state — but there's already a massive flaw in the plan that will make it nearly impossible to enforce, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate on Friday.
"Under this rule ... Bondi could freeze state bars’ probes until the department has undertaken its own independent review of any allegations — a black-box process that could stretch on extensively," said the report. "Wielding this new power, Bondi could essentially quash any state investigations into ethics violations by DOJ lawyers, including accusations that these front-line attorneys lied in court, by allowing 'reviews' that might last indefinitely."
Where this runs into problems, Stern said on a podcast with fellow legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick, is they won't be able to get courts to actually pause state bar investigations in accordance with this rule.
"The proposal itself is extremely ambiguous as to how, exactly, the DOJ would actually suspend state bar investigations," said Stern. "It just says that the department shall 'take appropriate action to prevent the bar disciplinary authorities from interfering with the Attorney General’s review of the allegations.' That almost certainly means going to federal court to get an injunction against the state bar’s investigation."
But the Supreme Court has already prohibited lower courts from doing this, he continued: "In a case called Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Association, the court unanimously ruled that federal courts must avoid interfering with legitimate and ongoing state bar disciplinary proceedings, because states have 'an extremely important interest in maintaining and assuring the professional conduct of the attorneys it licenses.'"
This comes as a huge litany of federal prosecutors working for the DOJ have been accused of serious professional misconduct, and as federal judges have accused them of outright lying to them in court.
It also comes as Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor who unsuccessfully tried to indict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James before being disqualified from office, was reportedly the subject of a complaint to the Florida State Bar, although they have since clarified previous reports they opened an investigation into Halligan were incorrect.