OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:45 PM – Thursday, May 14, 2026
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing Washington, D.C.’s legal disciplinary authorities, aiming to strip the local bar of its power to sanction federal government attorneys.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names D.C. Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton P. Fox III, the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, and the D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility as defendants.
The DOJ alleges that the local bar has engaged in a pattern of partisan, discriminatory enforcement that unconstitutionally encroaches upon executive branch independence and interferes with federal operations.
The core of the lawsuit seeks to halt ongoing disciplinary proceedings against Jeffrey Clark, a senior DOJ official during the first Trump administration. Clark faced a disbarment recommendation from a local disciplinary panel following his efforts to draft and advocate for internal memos challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The DOJ’s complaint argues that local bar authorities violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by attempting to punish a federal official over internal, pre-decisional deliberations.
To bolster its claims of political bias, the DOJ noted that the D.C. Bar treated Clark far more harshly than former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who received a retroactive one-year suspension despite pleading guilty to a felony for doctoring an email during the 2016 Trump-Russia probe.
The federal lawsuit also fiercely defends Ed Martin, who previously served as the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and currently operates as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.
The D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed ethics charges against Martin, accusing him of professional misconduct for a letter he sent to the dean of the Georgetown University Law Center. In that letter, Martin warned that his office would withhold employment and internship opportunities from Georgetown students unless the university eliminated its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
“The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military. This was a concerted effort stemming from President Biden’s first day in office, when he issued Executive Order 13985, ‘Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,’” stated the White House last year, explaining its opposition to DEI.
The local bar charged Martin with using coercion to suppress a disfavored viewpoint, but the Justice Department shot back, arguing that a local entity has absolutely no jurisdiction to decide whether a federal prosecutor is upholding his oath of office.
Senior officials, including Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have publicly blasted the D.C. Bar as a partisan arm of leftist causes.
They maintain that weaponizing state bar discipline against government attorneys creates a chilling effect, stripping federal lawyers of the ability to provide candid, confidential legal advice to the president and the attorney general without fear of professional ruin.
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