Good morning. The DOJ has teed up an ethics fight in D.C. federal court over whether Donald Trump ally Sidney Powell is paying the legal bills for some indicted Oath Keeper members. Meanwhile, Powell lost her bid to dismiss the Texas bar’s ethics case over her role in 2020 election lawsuits, and a host of former Trump-era DOJ lawyers are expected to appear at today’s Jan. 6 congressional committee hearing. We’re on the week’s downslope — hang in there!
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The U.S. Justice Department teed up a potential ethics clash in Washington, D.C., federal court by pushing for an inquiry into who's footing the legal bills for some indicted members of the right-wing Oath Keepers group, Sarah N. Lynch writes.
Federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to look into whether defense lawyers for prominent members of the Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes, are improperly allowing attorney Sidney Powell, closely allied with Donald Trump, to help pay their legal fees. Rhodes, who has pleaded not guilty, and the Oath Keepers are due to go to trial in September over charges of seditious conspiracy for their alleged roles in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Professional responsibility rules in D.C. say defense lawyers must only accept payments from their own clients, unless certain conditions are met. Among them: A third-party fee arrangement cannot cause "interference with the lawyer’s independence of professional judgment or with the client-lawyer relationship." Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more about the DOJ's questions. |
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Sixth Circuit nominee Rachel Bloomekatz, an Ohio public interest lawyer, faced questions from Republicans at her confirmation hearing over her past advocacy on behalf of a gun safety group. Bloomekatz told U.S. Senate judiciary members she would follow the U.S. Supreme Court's "very clear" precedents supporting gun rights. (Reuters)
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Venable partner Brian Schwalb prevailed over two rivals, including former Perkins Coie partner Bruce Spiva, in the Democratic primary race for Washington, D.C., attorney general. If elected, Schwalb would succeed Karl Racine, a former Venable partner, as the District’s top law enforcement official. (Reuters)
- U.S. Justice Department lawyer Anjali Chaturvedi was named as the Biden administration nominee for general counsel to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Chaturvedi joined the DOJ’s criminal division in February from Northrop Grumman, where she was an assistant general counsel. If confirmed by the Senate, Chaturvedi will succeed Richard Sauber, the former Robbins Russell partner who has jumped to the Biden White House as a special counsel. (White House)
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That’s the percentage of judges who think Supreme Court justices should be bound by an ethics code, according to a survey run by The National Judicial College, which provides training to judges nationally. The survey, which included responses from 859 judges, came after the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to require the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code. While lower court judges are subject to a code, the justices are not. Read more about the survey.
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A federal judge ruled last week that attorneys for New York City violated the law when they tried to interfere with a campaign by a group of law professors to shed light on systemic prosecutorial misconduct. The professors met immediate resistance when they published online a batch of 21 grievances against Queens prosecutors, including threats of legal action from the city’s then-top lawyer. But the court held that the city should have known that its use of the grievance confidentiality provisions to block the professors’ advocacy was improper. Hassan Kanu writes that the ruling is an important vindication of First Amendment rights.
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Congress is considering legislation to help states create and administer laws that allow courts to remove guns from individuals considered dangerous, While experts agree they might be appropriate to curb gun violence, how much could they encroach on privacy? Watch the video. |
"The law is a good way of teaching the reasoning and reading skills that make someone a good professional, period."
–Kyle McEntee, founder of the advocacy group Law School Transparency, who lauded law schools that offer undergraduate degrees to give students a leg up in the legal profession. Read more to see which law schools are opening up to undergrads. |
Welcome back to the Penalty Box, where The Daily Docket highlights new and notable attorney and judicial discipline orders, hearings, articles and more. -
A Texas state judge on Wednesday rebuffed Donald Trump ally Sidney Powell’s bid to dismiss an ethics complaint the state bar had lodged against her alleging professional misconduct, a bar official told Reuters. The state bar's disciplinary arm in March sued Powell for what it said were "frivolous" lawsuits challenging President Joe Biden's 2020 election win against Trump. Powell's attorneys in May asked a judge to throw out the case. They argued Powell “had the absolute right to rely on information provided to her by her clients and others and to file suits for those clients based on that information.” The bar argued in a recent filing that “an attorney's speech rights within the confines of litigation are not absolute."
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Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers sought and received an extension to respond to the District of Columbia bar’s ethics charges over the former Manhattan U.S. attorney’s baseless claims in federal court alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. The bar’s disciplinary wing, led by Hamilton Fox III, accused Giuliani, a former lawyer to Trump, of violating a professional responsibility rule that bars attorneys from filing frivolous proceedings. Giuliani’s attorneys, Barry Kamins and John Leventhal, both of Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, now face a July 15 deadline to file any challenge to the bar’s allegations.
- The Georgia Supreme Court ordered a public reprimand of Judge Eric W. Norris of the Superior Court for the Western Judicial Circuit over his berating of a bondsman whose Facebook post about how Norris handled a case attracted attention in the state. Norris, the justices said, accepted an ethics panel’s findings that his conduct ran afoul of judicial conduct rules. The Supreme Court diverged from the panel’s recommended sanction of a compelled public apology. “It is not surprising that no Georgia disciplinary case has required a public apology as a sanction because a compelled apology is not listed as a potential sanction” in the rules of the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the court said.
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The U.S. congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters will resume its public hearings. Three officials from Trump's Justice Department will testify: former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue and former Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel. Donoghue, who previously has described Trump’s false evidence of election fraud as “pure insanity,” joined the New York office of Pillsbury Winthrop last year. Engel ran the DOJ’s office of legal counsel and has since returned to Dechert. Rosen, a former Kirkland partner, blocked a drive to enlist the Justice Department in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
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A non-jury trial is scheduled to begin before Senior Judge Charles Lettow of the Washington D.C.-based U.S. Court of Federal Claims in a contract lawsuit that Gilead filed in 2020 against the U.S. government over HIV drug development. Gilead’s lawyers at WilmerHale, including Ronald Machen, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, accuse the CDC of breaching contracts with the drugmaker by obtaining and asserting patents related to its HIV preventive drug Truvada. Lettow in December 2020 denied the government’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit. Walter Brown of the DOJ’s commercial litigation branch is representing the government. The trial is scheduled to run to July 1.
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U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity in Manhattan will review a request from LATAM Airlines, the largest air transport group in Latin America, to approve $2.75 billion in new loans to fund the company's exit from Chapter 11. LATAM, represented by Cleary Gottlieb, just won approval of its overall restructuring plan. LATAM needs to secure its exit loans before emerging from bankruptcy and continuing to raise funds through a post-bankruptcy $800 million equity offering, according to court documents.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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Lawyers for film director Quentin Tarantino told a Los Angeles federal judge that Miramax cannot block his auction of "Pulp Fiction" non-fungible tokens because the NFTs are based on his screenplay, which he said the studio has no rights to. The case is one of the first intellectual-property disputes over the popular NFT digital assets. (Reuters)
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The U.S. Justice Department urged a federal judge in Maine to spurn a bid to dismiss novel criminal antitrust charges alleging four business managers conspired to fix hourly rates for home healthcare support specialists in Maine and agreed not to hire each other's workers. (Reuters)
- The full 8th Circuit upheld Arkansas’ law restricting state contractors from boycotting Israel, holding that the rule doesn’t violate the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The ACLU, which represented an Arkansas newspaper that challenged the law, has said it will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP)
- During an en banc rehearing, some judges on the 9th Circuit seemed skeptical of arguments urging the court to uphold California’s ban on privately-run immigrant detention centers. California and a coalition of advocacy groups are up against the Biden administration and private prison operator GEO Group, which argue that the law improperly restricts the federal government’s ability to enter into contracts. (Reuters)
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McGuireWoods added former Jones Day partner Eric Snyder in the firm’s New York office, where he will focus on government investigations and white-collar litigation. Snyder helped to advise former U.S. Attorney General William Barr for his appearance before the Jan. 6 congressional committee. (Reuters)
- Akin Gump hired private equity partners Michelle Chan and Daniel Tavakoli in the firm’s New York office. They arrive at the firm from Covington. (Akin Gump)
- Crowell brought on Jed Wulfekotte as a litigation and healthcare partner based in Washington, D.C. Wulfekotte earlier practiced at Stein Mitchell Cipollone Beato & Missner. (Crowell)
- Fox Rothschild added John Willding to the Dallas office as a corporate department partner. He earlier practiced at Barnes & Thornburg. (Fox Rothschild)
- Perkins Coie brought on Dan Austin as an emerging companies and venture capital partner in the firm’s Austin, Texas, office. Austin formerly practiced at Dickinson Wright. (Perkins Coie)
- Dentons said Jonathan Braunstein joined the firm’s Oakland office as a commercial litigation partner. Braunstein previously practiced at Seyfarth Shaw. (Dentons)
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the U.S. to expand its sanctions regime against the country, which can put businesses that deal with Russia at risk of penalties from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Eric Stern of Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck explains how insurance coverage can mitigate those penalties. Read more.
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