Todd Blanche has spent the last few months trying to make sure state bar regulators can’t investigate ethical breaches by government lawyers. Before Blanche rose to the Acting Attorney General role, the DOJ dropped a new rule proposal that would overturn federal statute and strip local disciplinary officials of the authority to police government and former government lawyers for ethics violations committed in their jurisdictions, or even to after-the-fact regulate the law licenses of practitioners caught acting unethically. Then he brought a suit against the D.C. Bar for having the audacity to investigate Jeff Clark for allegedly proposing that the DOJ lie about voting irregularities that didn’t exist in order to suppress the will of the electorate.
Trump’s lawyers know that professional discipline is the only accountability they might ever face, and they mean to head it off at the pass.
Despite Blanche’s zeal for scaring disciplinary authorities away from doing their jobs, the Campaign for Accountability continues to ask the profession to remain vigilant about protecting the public. This week, the Campaign asked the Attorney Grievance Committee of New York’s First Judicial Department — and the Committee on Grievances for the Southern District of New York — to investigate Blanche and his role in the prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The group also shipped a copy to Tennessee’s Board of Professional Responsibility, since that’s where the bogus indictment actually landed.
It’s built on the findings of a federal judge who already did the hard part. Now they’re just asking the institutions we rely upon to safeguard the profession to follow through.
On May 22, Chief U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. dismissed the indictment against Abrego Garcia as the unrebutted product of a presumptively vindictive prosecution. Judge Crenshaw did not leave the responsibility floating around in the passive voice the way these opinions usually do. He named a name:
Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego. He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.
The administration deported Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran slave prison in what the government eventually conceded was an “administrative error.” The DOJ lost in the district court, lost at the Fourth Circuit, lost at the Supreme Court, and then — having been ordered to facilitate his return and subjected to the indignity of daily status reports documenting its noncompliance — started lying about what the Supreme Court said. As in, the DOJ filed a brief that included a direct quote from the Supreme Court that Trump’s lawyers… totally made up!
And when all else failed and the administration had to bring Abrego Garcia back, it went looking for a new way to save face. It settled on bringing new criminal charges against Abrego Garcia to retroactively justify the extraordinary rendition. The judge did not go for it.
The ethics complaint carefully walks through the chain of events. A previously closed 2022 traffic-stop investigation was reopened within a week of the judge’s noncompliance finding. Then a DHS press release rebranded that stop as a “suspected human trafficking incident.” Aakash Singh — who reports directly to Blanche — personally delivering the government’s cooperating witness to the Middle District of Tennessee U.S. Attorney’s office before that office had even opened its own investigation. And an instruction, memorialized in the record, to “keep close hold until we get clearance.”
Blanche couldn’t even keep his actions under wraps, with Judge Crenshaw finding that Trump’s former personal lawyer admitted that the criminal case only existed because Abrego Garcia succeeded in challenging his deportation.
Blanche stated that the Executive Branch began “investigating” Abrego after a judge in Maryland “questioned” the Executive Branch’s decision to deport him. The Court previously found that Blanche’s “remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights,” and that Blanche “directly tie[d] HSI’s investigation to Abrego’s Maryland suit.” Blanche’s words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego’s return from El Salvador. (emphasis added) (internal citations omitted).
The man went on TV to say this stuff! This is becoming a genre. Blanche keeps going on TV and narrating the elements of the offense, then seems surprised when courts write them down. He did the same thing with the Comey case, going on Meet the Press to explain that nobody comparable gets charged for the conduct Comey allegedly committed — which is roughly the definition of selective prosecution.
I’d say Blanche’s antics are more in line with a PR strategy than an ethical prosecution, but they’re a pretty shitty PR strategy too.
But, like jazz, sometimes the best support for a pattern of ethical violation is in the notes you don’t play. Which is to say, the record of attorneys who saw the exact same actions and honored their professional oaths by refusing to participate. Erez Reuveni told the Maryland court the truth — that the removal was a mistake — and refused to file a brief asserting, without evidence, that Abrego Garcia was a terrorist. Blanche signed the letter putting Reuveni on administrative leave, and he was fired days later. In Tennessee, Criminal Division Chief Ben Schrader circulated a written memo recommending against the charges and flagging vindictive prosecution. He resigned the day the indictment came down, effective immediately, after 15 years. Lawyers who follow ethical rules leave, and the prosecutors willing to hammer the accelerator on a prosecution that a federal judge would later identify as an abuse of power get rewarded.
Which is the entire point of the complaint. Campaign for Accountability lays out potential violations of Rules 8.4(c), (d), and (h) — dishonesty, conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, conduct reflecting on fitness — plus 3.4(e) (criminal charges to gain advantage in a civil matter), 5.1(d) (a supervising lawyer responsible for inducing subordinates’ violations), and 3.3(a)(1) (candor to the tribunal).
The wrinkle CfA addresses head-on is the obvious dodge. In the Emil Bove matter, the same committee punted, referring the complaints to DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. But this time, there’s no one at OPR to sheepishly hand it to. The head of OPR, Joseph Tirrell, is gone, having been forced out of his job. Tirrell has publicly warned about the DOJ’s ever-lowering ethical guardrails and sued challenging the DOJ position that it can fire people at will based solely on the president’s Article II authority. Whatever attorneys remain at OPR are fully on notice that their ongoing employment is at the pleasure of Todd Blanche. Referring a complaint about Blanche to an office Blanche can fire is less an act of accountability and more of a suggestion box with a shredder underneath.
Abdicating responsibility under these circumstances amounts to New York forfeiting its control over its own bar. The McDade Amendment established that the states have jurisdiction over federal lawyers practicing in their borders. New York has authority over Todd Blanche who is licensed here and practiced at Cadwalader.
The question that this complaint places in front of the First Department is whether New York has the wherewithal to actually govern its lawyers. Or is it just willing to pick low-hanging fruit and duck and cover if the offending lawyer is too powerful? If a federal court finding that a specific lawyer orchestrated a presumptively vindictive prosecution is not enough to pursue an investigation, then there’s not much credibility left to salvage.
There’s recent reason for cautious optimism. Earlier this month, New York’s Third Department found prosecutorial misconduct by another DOJ official, John Sarcone III, on a CfA complaint filed back in August. The machinery, it turns out, still works when somebody tends to the crank.
Whether the First Department turns it is the open question.
(Complaint available on the next page…)
Earlier: Pam Bondi Declares Herself God-Empress Of Ethics
DOJ Sues D.C. Bar For Holding Trump Lawyers To Ethical Rules
The Justice Department Is Lowering Its Ethical Guardrails
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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