KRAKEN: COULD PRO-TRUMP "GRIEVANCE' ATTORNEYS ESCAPE PUNISHMENT?

On appeal, sure they could. It all depends on a panel of judges on the 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Last week, this site commented on the sanctions levied by federal Judge Linda Parker in King, et al v Whitmer, et al, the most prominent challenge in Michigan to the 2020 presidential election. These sanctions involved substantial financial penalties and possible disbarment against three Michigan lawyers — Scott Hagerstrom of Lansing, Stefanie Lynn Junttila of Detroit, and Gregory Rohl of Novi — who supported former President Donald Trump’s complaints that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

This trio of Michigan attorneys were on a “hit list” that is part of a national effort called Project 65, masterminded by attack dog journalist David Brock. According to Axios magazine, Project 65 is “A dark money group with ties to Democratic Party heavyweights (who) will spend millions this year to try to disbar more than 100 lawyers who worked on Donald Trump’s post-election lawsuits . . .” Importantly, David Brock is advising and perhaps directing this Group, which derives its name, “65 Project,” from the number of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results. Brock apparently told Axios in an interview that the idea is “not only to bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but to shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”

And who is David Brock? Brock is a serial smear artist, first for the left, then for the right, and now for the left again. The Nation has described Brock as a “conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder.” The National Review described him as a “right-wing assassin turned left-wing assassin.” Politico called him a “former right-wing journalist turned pro-Clinton crusader.” In other words, Brock started as a fairly conventional liberal, then veered hard right into the conservative orbit, then turned sharply left as he became an apologist for Hillary Clinton.

Like many a miscreant, Brock started his career in high school in Texas, where he became the editor of his school newspaper, which he says he “fashioned into a crusading liberal weekly in the middle of the Reaganite Sunbelt.” [See Brock, Blinded by the Light]. He then attended the University of California where he worked as a reporter and editor for the school newspaper. . . and experienced his first conversion. Brock says he arrived at Berkeley as a liberal Democrat but he was “repelled by the culture of doctrinaire leftism” and turned to the right. [See Goldberg, Michelle, “How David Brock Built an Empire to Put Hillary in the White House, The Nation, December 15, 2014].

Brock’s epiphany turned out very well for him. At Berkeley, he contributed to an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal dealing with “Campus Marxists” that drew the attention of conservative maven John Podhoretz. Podhoretz in 1986 arranged a job for Brock at Insight on the News, a publication associated with the conservative Washington Times; Brock also later worked for the Heritage Foundation.

But it was not until 1992 that Brock actually made his hit man bones. He first wrote an article for The American Spectator on Anita Hill. He then converted this article into a full-scale book about — and a full-scale attack on —Anita Hill. In that book, The Real Anita Hill, he described Hill as “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.” [See Brock, Blinded by the Right]. Capitalizing on his success, Brock later wrote a story in The Spectator that first tied Paula Jones to Bill Clinton. (Although Brock later repudiated much of the “Trooper-Gate” story, it actually won an award from the Western Journalism Center; See Steve Rendall, “The Real David Brock, a Right-Wing Hatchet Man,” Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, March 1, 1995).

Suddenly, however, Brock turned left again, back to his roots. He published The Seduction of Hilary Rodham, which was quite sympathetic to Ms. Clinton. He followed up with Blinded by the Right in 2002, in which he claimed that he had “reached a turning point,” that he had thoroughly examined the charges against the Clintons, and that he could not find any evidence of wrongdoing and did not want to make any more misleading claims. [See David Brock, Wikipedia]. And it 2004, he published The Republican Noise Machine and then came up with his master stroke: the founding of Media Matters for America, a “progressive watchdog group” that advertises itself as being “being dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” [See Edward Helmore, “Once the scourge of Democrats, former Republican plays tough for Hillary Clinton,” The Guardian, November 29, 2014].

There are several things that stand out about Brock’s career following his creation of Media Matters (MM):

* First, MM operates a nationwide echo chamber as Brock pumps out material on a daily basis that is often picked up, sometimes verbatim, by the mainstream media and Democratic politicians. The often-hilarious segments on Fox News (which was Brock’s earliest and most consistent target) in which the various program hosts splice together montages of liberal broadcasters and Democratic politicians — like trained seals — saying the exact same thing at about the same time illustrate the reach that the MM noise machine enjoys.

* Second, Brock — in partnership with fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner — has also become a potent political fundraiser. The Nation has reported insider comments to the effect that Brock and Bonner are “probably the most effective major individual-donor fundraising team ever assembled in the independent-expenditure progressive world.” [See Goldberg, supra, The Nation, December 15, 2014].

* Third, Brock has diversified his efforts through a dizzying array of entities, ranging from various non-profits to a number of Super-Pacs. These include inspired names like American Bridge, 21^st Century, Correct the Record, Priorities USA Action, the American Democracy Legal Fund, the American Independent Institute, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, among others. [See David Brock, Wikipedia].

* Fourth, starting with the Clinton campaign in 2016 — in which he specialized in attacks on Bernie Sanders — Brock has morphed into one of the most powerful, and most active, figures on the left. Apparently, smearing people for a living is good business, and he has had a world of experience at it.

But even without Brock or Project 65, there are those who believe that what the three Michigan attorneys did merited Judge Parker’s sanctions against them.

First and foremost, there is Rule 3.3 (a) in the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct: Rule 3.3 (a) “A lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or Law to a tribunal.” Furthermore, Rule 4.1 states that “In the course of representing a client, a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or Law to a third person.”

That’s unlikely to deter attorneys representing “The Michigan Three.” They argue that sanctions should punish violators of the Michigan Rules (which may or may not be appropriate in the King case) only for past conduct, while disbarment (urged for The Three by Michigan’s top three state elected officials, all attorneys themselves) is prospective in effect. The disbarment campaign launched by Brock and supported by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is clearly designed to discourage lawyers generally from taking on clients like Donald Trump. The idea is to shame them and curtail their ability to make a living. Brock is making an overtly political and highly partisan case dressed up as a legal procedure, they claim. Equally important, disbarment deprives any prospective client — whether that client is a solitary individual on a fixed income or a publicly traded corporation with billions in assets — from being able to select the lawyer of that individual’s or that entity’s choice. It is a double whammy and therefore doubly reprehensible, they contend.

Still, those outraged by the Michigan pro-Trump attorneys contend that, for decades, lawyers who are unethical have been subject to prospective discipline, including suspension and disbarment on the grounds that it is a way of imposing accountability for past conduct. Representing unpopular clients, whether left or right, whether Clarence Darrow or Donald Trump, is one thing, but presenting cases to a judge supported only by evidence you know or should know is false, is an entirely different matter and can justify sanctions, they argue. Of course, the key word here is “should” — who decides what a lawyer should know or doesn’t know, and how he or she uses it?

At bottom, whether any of “The Michigan Three” are actually disbarred depends on the individual case before the 6th Circuit. The standard for disbarment for what an attorney presents to a judge is high, so Parker’s edict may be unlikely to survive on appeal.

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Comments

David Richards says

March 21, 2022 at 10:35 am

This version of the issue in the possible sanctioning or disciplining of Trump’s attorneys in Michigan at least acknowledges the difference between who an attorney represents and their conduct in the course of representing them, but it is still off the mark in many respects. There is a significant difference between monetary sanctions, which have to do with wasting the time and effort of the court and the responding party in an individual case, and disbarment, affecting the ability of the attorneys to continue practicing law. The writer does not seem to understand the difference, or the procedure involved. Contrary to the article, Judge Parker imposed sanctions, but she did not issue any “edict” to disbar anyone. She only sent a copy of her order to the bar for review. The article spends extensive time talking about what a creep David Brock is, which may be true. But that doesn’t speak to whether these lawyers should be sanctioned or disbarred, neither of which are going to be determined by Mr. Brock. The state bar grievance commission does not even require a response merely because a complaint is made. They first review the complaint, and only if it appears to make a credible and viable claim of misconduct regarding the attorney is a response required. So whatever the merits or demerits of Mr. Brock are, he and his group have little influence on what is going to happen with respect to these attorneys, and using his background to defend these lawyers is a deflection and a red herring.

Barbara Green says

March 21, 2022 at 1:33 pm

You spent most of your column fulminating against David Brock ( it’s called shoot the messenger). How about telling your readers what the miscreant lawyers did in pursuit of the Big Lie? Or do you believe Trump won? Time for you to come clean on that. Barbara Green, Washington, DC

- Whuffagowie says
  
  March 21, 2022 at 2:43 pm
  
  Ms. Green, there is an address in Atlanta, specifically, at 201 Washington SW, Atlanta GA 30303 that has thousands of registered voters “residing” there. Do you suppose this homeless shelter and thousands of others like it have the same situation? The answer is yes. Presumably, having an address makes you eligible to register to vote, have a driver license, get food stamps or Medicaid, or to scam the government or others. So, I imagine these shelters are very busy places in the months before an election, with piles of absentee ballots being delivered. It’s all ho-hum to the domestic enemies and the press. Speaking of which, is the press the Fourth Estate, or the Fifth Column? It’s looking more and more the latter.
  
Whuffagowie says

March 21, 2022 at 2:28 pm

Classic Marxist tactic. Destroy your enemies with all available tools at hand. Legally, of course.

dan murphy says

March 22, 2022 at 11:47 am

Has Mr. Brock become a branch of the George Soros “Dark Money Empire”, with the ultimate goal of destabilizing U.S. politics and culture ?

CHUCK MOSS says

March 29, 2022 at 10:27 am

So lawyers are to be punished for representing causes that certain factions or political parties don’t like. AG Nessel decides who does and does not deserve legal representation by threatening to sanction and disbar attorneys who take causes she opposes.
The Michigan Lawyer’s Oath requires attorneys to represent causes and defendants that may be unpopular, as a cornerstone of our legal system. I’m disappointed the Michigan Bar Association hasn’t weighed in on this–but not surprised. They may have been intimidated themselves.

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