Trump's DOJ Just Sued to Make Its Own Lawyers Untouchable

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelfanone.substack.comThe Justice Department of the United States is now suing the people whose job it is to hold lawyers accountable.Read that again. The agency that’s supposed to enforce the law is in court trying to stop other people from enforcing the law on its own employees.This happened yesterday. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the number three official at the DOJ, Stanley Woodward, filed a lawsuit against the D.C. Bar — the body that handles complaints when lawyers in Washington behave unethically. That’s its entire job. A lawyer does something shady, somebody files a complaint, the Bar investigates, and if the lawyer broke the rules they get disciplined. Sometimes suspended. Sometimes disbarred.That system has been around forever. Every state has one. It’s how the legal profession polices itself.And the Trump DOJ just decided they don’t want to be policed.Who They’re ProtectingLet me tell you who they’re protecting in this lawsuit, because the names matter.The first is Jeffrey Clark. Remember him? Clark is the lawyer from the first Trump administration who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. He was an environmental lawyer. That’s what he did at the Justice Department. He had nothing to do with elections. He had no business anywhere near elections. But he drafted a letter to send to the state of Georgia falsely claiming the DOJ had found evidence of voter fraud — when the DOJ had found no such thing. He wanted that letter to give Trump cover to throw out the actual votes of actual American citizens.That is what the D.C. Bar is trying to disbar him for. Not for a tweet. Not for a political opinion. For trying to help a sitting president stage a coup.The second is Ed Martin. Martin is the current DOJ official who’s been running point on Trump’s so-called weaponization investigations — the bogus revenge cases against Trump’s perceived enemies. Two months ago, the D.C. Bar charged Martin with misconduct over his attempt to punish Georgetown University’s law school for not teaching things the way he wanted them taught. That’s a Justice Department official trying to bully a private university over its curriculum.These are the people the DOJ is going to court to protect.The Argument Is the TellThe argument they’re making is wild. The Justice Department, in this lawsuit, is taking the position that lawyers at the DOJ and across the federal government are above scrutiny by legal ethics officials. Above scrutiny. That’s the actual position. Federal lawyers, they say, must be free to give candid advice without worrying that a bar association might come after them later.Translation: if you work for Trump, you should be allowed to break the rules of your own profession, and nobody outside the building gets to say a word about it.And here is the part that should make every single one of you sit up and pay attention. They’re invoking the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling — the one where the conservative majority decided a president has partial immunity for official acts. The DOJ lawsuit argues that if the president is immune, the lawyers working for him are also immune. They wrote, quote:“The president’s constitutionally required immunity would provide little protection if executive branch attorneys could be targeted for internal executive branch deliberations.”That is a brand new theory of presidential power, and it didn’t exist a year ago. It is the legal equivalent of laundering immunity. Trump gets it from the Supreme Court. Then Trump’s lawyers claim they get it from Trump. Then nobody who works for the executive branch ever has to answer for anything ever again.This is how authoritarian governments work. The boss is untouchable. The boss’s people are untouchable because they work for the boss. The circle keeps expanding until accountability ceases to exist.A Protection Racket With FootnotesNow I want to address the cynics who are going to say, well, every administration protects its own. Bar associations are political. This is just lawyers fighting other lawyers.No. It isn’t.The DOJ’s own lawsuit gives the game away. They point to the case of Kevin Clinesmith, the former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering an email during the Russia investigation. Clinesmith got his bar license suspended for a year. The DOJ’s own lawsuit calls that a slap on the wrist.Fine. Let’s go with that. If a one-year suspension is too soft for an FBI lawyer who altered a single email, then what is the appropriate punishment for a Justice Department lawyer who tried to overturn a presidential election? What is the right punishment for a DOJ official who tried to coerce a private university?If the standard is tougher, apply it. But you don’t get to argue that other people’s lawyers should be punished more, while your own lawyers should be punished not at all. That’s not a legal argument. That’s a protection racket with footnotes.🟧 Paid subscribers get 15% off your next merch order🟧 Founding Members get 20% off for lifeYou’ll get the link in your welcome email.GET DISCOUNTS BELOW! ENJOY!