Who Gets Protected
The Justice Department is challenging efforts to sanction attorneys from the first and second Trump administrations, filing a lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Washington that attacks the District of Columbia Bar’s authority to police lawyers tied to the highest levels of federal power. The complaint says the bar is unfairly playing politics with the legal disciplinary process, even as several high-profile investigations of Trump-allied lawyers are underway.
The case is a direct challenge to the office that enforces ethics standards for attorneys in Washington, and it lands squarely in the middle of a fight over who gets to discipline the people who serve the executive branch. The lawsuit seeks to stop proceedings against Jeffrey Clark and backs Ed Martin, both figures tied to Trump’s legal machinery.
The Lawyers at the Center
The complaint chiefly concerns the ethics case against Jeffrey Clark, a senior lawyer in the first Trump administration Justice Department who was deeply engaged in legal efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election that President Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. A disciplinary panel has recommended that Clark be stripped of his law license, and the lawsuit seeks to end those proceedings, calling them “unlawful” and tainted by politicization.
Clark, who has denied any wrongdoing, applauded the lawsuit on X on Wednesday evening, saying, “This is an important step to vindicate the separation of powers.” The Justice Department’s filing places that claim against the backdrop of a disciplinary process that has already moved against him.
To bolster its claims of bias, the Justice Department said bar authorities treated Clark more harshly than former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email during the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. The department is using that comparison to argue that the disciplinary system is not even-handed, but selective in how it applies its rules.
Power, Discipline, and the State’s Own People
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement, “The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations and target executive branch officials with whom they happen to politically disagree, and federal attorneys will once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues.” The statement makes clear what is at stake: the ability of federal attorneys to operate inside executive branch secrecy while outside disciplinary bodies try to hold them to account.
The lawsuit also backs Ed Martin, whom it described as an ardent Trump loyalist and the Justice Department’s pardon attorney. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel accused Martin in March of professional misconduct for a threatening letter he sent to Georgetown Law School’s dean last year, when Martin was the top federal prosecutor for Washington. Martin was the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia when he warned the Georgetown dean that his office would not hire the private school’s students if it did not eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
That warning shows the leverage of federal office over a private school and its students: hiring power used as pressure, with institutional punishment hanging over a demand to erase diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The disciplinary case against Martin is part of the same struggle over whether officials at the top can use state authority without outside scrutiny.
The lawsuit states, “The Office of Disciplinary Counsel and the Board on Professional Responsibility, as D.C. institutions, have no authority to decide whether a federal government attorney — no less the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — is upholding his oath of office or whether his official acts comport with the Constitution.” That line draws the conflict in stark terms: local disciplinary institutions versus federal power, each claiming the right to define legitimacy.
The Justice Department last week filed a statement of interest in support of Martin, who had earlier complained about “uneven behavior” by the disciplinary counsel that filed the ethics charges against him. An email seeking comment to the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility, one of the defendants named in the complaint, did not receive an immediate response.
What remains on the table is not just the fate of Clark or Martin, but whether the disciplinary apparatus in Washington can reach attorneys embedded in the federal executive branch at all. The lawsuit is a direct attempt to narrow that reach.