After careful consideration, we have filed a notice on behalf of our client, former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, to “remove” (transfer) his 2020 presidential election-related case currently pending before the DC Board of Professional Responsibility to the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Clark is in front of the DC Bar’s Board because the head of the DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel dislikes the advice he believes Mr. Clark gave to former President Trump when he headed two of DOJ’s seven litigating Divisions from late 2020 into early 2021. This is a flagrant misuse of the disciplinary function because no state bars, let alone the local D.C. Bar, have jurisdiction to supervise the advice rendered by presidential advisors or circulated purely inside the halls of the Justice Department.
More government lawyers are members of the DC Bar than are the members of any of the 50 state bars. If this power grab by the DC Bar is successful, it will transform the head of the DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel, a local government official, into the most powerful lawyer in the country, granting him a permanent supervisory role and veto over the highest counsels of the federal government. It could also encourage other state bars to get into the act, depending on the happenstance of where DOJ leaders are barred. Dangerous precedent.
Indeed, such a takeover of federal law enforcement functions would allow the D.C. local Disciplinary Counsel to second guess even the Attorney General or, worse yet, the actions of the President in following the advice of the Attorney General or, in situations where the President himself is an attorney, when the President follows his own legal counsel. The geographically confined reach of United States Attorneys and District Judges would pale by comparison.
It is Mr. Clark’s duty to submit to the federal courts this dramatic attempt by a local government to usurp a sphere of superior federal authority, so that it can be reviewed and overturned, as federal law allows him to do.