Trump DOJ Makes Urgent Move Before Losing All Licenses

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2:01Michael Popok:Well, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, head of the Department of Justice, obviously watching with rapt attention what just happened to her friend, Kristi Noem, who was fired as the head of Homeland Security. And Pam Bondi is up at night worrying about two major things. One, that she's going to be fired, which is likely and obvious. And secondly, that she is going to lose her bar license to practice law when she leaves federal service. And we've got two responses by a very upset administration about all of the state bar regulators who are looking at and investigating Department of Justice attorneys and others that work for the Trump administration and deciding whether they should lose their bar licenses to practice, whether they should be disciplined, whether they should be censured.

2:49Michael Popok:And we've got two examples in the last 48 hours. One, Lindsey Halligan, the former federal prosecutor, Eastern District of Virginia for about two months, who had a resign in disgrace, who multiple federal judges observed that she had violated the ethics rules. She is now the subject and the target of a Florida bar investigation. We'll talk about what that means. The Florida Bar took the position that while federal attorneys are still in the government, they can't be disciplined by the state bar. I don't think that was right. But now that Lindsay Halligan is out of government, it's open season.

3:32Michael Popok:Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, has always been worried about the law licenses of Donald Trump's lawyers. The Department of Justice is nothing more than his private law firm. Most of the lawyers in the Department of Justice senior leadership are his former private lawyers. And look what happened to the first round of private lawyers that worked for Donald Trump. Many of them censured, sanctioned, disciplined, had their bar licenses taken away, indicted and or convicted, you know, or fined by federal judges. I'm talking about Ken Chesborough, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, right? I'm talking about John Eastman and Alina Haba in her own way.

4:17Michael Popok:And of course, the people that are in the government now that are being forced to take unethical positions to be defiant of federal judges to violate ethical rules are worried that by following the orders of Pambandi, they themselves will be subject to discipline and maybe lose their bar licenses. And they should be. I'm a member of a bar in two states. I'm a member of multiple federal bars. I'm a member of the Florida Bar the way that Pam Bondi is. And then you've got the lawyers who are worried about bar licenses that they have that will be subject to disciplinary proceedings as soon as they step out of the administration.

4:54Michael Popok:And so Pam Bondi did a second thing in the last 48 hours. She has published in the Federal Register a proposed new rule. New rules, everybody. The Department of Justice and its Office of Ethics will regulate itself, will investigate itself, will stop state bars from doing their own investigation as to the lawyers that they regulate. And those bars will have to sit on the sidelines until the Department of Justice is done investigating and or regulating and or disciplining its own lawyers. Who's going to discipline Pam Bondi? Who's going to investigate her? The Department of Justice? Talk about an ethical conflict.

5:41Michael Popok:The creation of the rule is an ethical conflict. By the way, you're on the Midas Touch Network. I'm back. I was on holiday with my family, but I am back. I'm Michael Popak. Thanks for being here. Hit the free subscribe button over on Legal AF YouTube as well. This is unheard of in the history of the Department of Justice and federal administration to try to usurp the power, the authority, the right of bar associations, state court, courts of appeal, and or Supreme Courts to regulate their lawyers. Let me give you a quick tutorial, teach out about bar licenses, having had a couple for the last 35 years.

6:24Michael Popok:Every state has its own regulator. You need to be a member of at least one bar of one state in order to get admitted separately into the federal bar to be able to practice in federal court. When you pass the bar and you're admitted into the bar, two different things. You pass the bar by taking a test. You're admitted into the bar by having background check and being found to have the right character and fitness to practice law. You get references. They do full background check, proctologist style, if you know what I mean. And then they admit you. You get sworn in. you take an oath. Now, that ticket allows you to practice in that state, not in the federal courts of that state, in the state court.

7:12Michael Popok:You then have to take a separate test or a different admission procedure to become a federal bar practitioner, okay? And you can't skip it. You can't say, well, I don't want to be a member of any state bar. I'll just go into the federal bar. No, you have to have at least a state bar regulation, meaning 99.99 % of the time, come out of an accredited law school after a three-year program or such. You take the bar exam, which consists of a multi-state bar, sort of general law throughout the country, usually multiple choice, essays, and some state-specific law section. The bar regulator, whoever that is for each state, sets the pass rate, sets the pass score.

7:55Michael Popok:If you get that score above, boom, you're in. You also have to take an ethics section. Your credit score, it may have taken a big hit over the holidays, and you may not even know it. Sure, a late payment hurts, but so does opening a store credit card just to get a discount. And transferring a balance from one card to another, that can drop your score fast. So if you're thinking about refinancing, buying a new car, renting an apartment, anything that requires credit, you need your best possible score. You need it fast. you need Smart Credit, the new science in credit scoring. Smart Credit's data experts understand how the credit bureaus operate.

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9:19Michael Popok:Results not guaranteed, cancel anytime. time. That's smartcredit.com slash legal AF, smartcredit.com. Now, every state has a different, most states have a different bar regulator. Falls into a few categories. There's either a state bar, integrated bar, like Florida. Florida's regulator is the Florida bar, okay? Sits in Tallahassee, handles discipline, education, rules, promotion of the bar's interest, lawyers, the attorney-client relationship, that kind of thing. That's in Florida. In New York, you are regulated by the appellate division under the highest court of New York that you were admitted into.

10:08Michael Popok:So I'm a member of the first appellate division. It sits on Madison Avenue in New York. That's where I was admitted. That's who regulates me for the life of my license. Other states do it differently. Some states, the highest court, the Supreme Court regulates. So it falls into an integrated bar, an appellate division, a state Supreme Court. This new rule, which I'm going to read to you from, wants to turn that upside down. And anytime a federal, in-government Department of Justice lawyer or former lawyer is investigated for things that they did that were unethical while they were working for Pam Bondi, including Pam Bondi.

10:50Michael Popok:Pam Bondi gets to investigate first. It says that on page one, the Department of Justice proposes to establish a process for reviewing bar complaints and allegations against its attorneys under the proposed rule before a current or former department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the Bar Disciplinary Authority of a state in response to allegations that a current or former department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in the attorney's federal duties, the department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the Bar Authority suspend any parallel investigation until the completion of the department's review.

11:30Michael Popok:Sometimes these reviews take up to a year. they're going to be blocked under this rule if it passes for the duration of the investigation and then you know what's going to happen they're going to the federal disciplinary investigators are going to clear the lawyer oh you didn't do anything wrong and the states are going to be left with that record and then they're going to come up with their own record and then the department of justice is going to jump back in and try to argue you know something happened wrong in the state. States regulate for a reason. They're the closest to the lawyer holding the bar license.

12:09Michael Popok:So what they're worried about is just what's happened and what's been announced about Lindsay Halligan. Lindsay Halligan, remember, had been the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney, completely unqualified, never been a prosecutor before, had only been a lawyer for about eight years, certainly not a prosecutor leading the top five U.S. attorney's office in the United States, home of the Rocket Docket, and she got chastised. And I don't want to say censured, but pretty close by a series of judges in the Eastern District of Virginia. After she was terminated for being illegally appointed by a judge in that district or for that district, she continued to practice and hold herself out as the U.S.

12:53Michael Popok:attorney. And so there were a number of judges, including Judge Novak and Judge Fitzgerald, who said, why are you holding yourself out as a U.S. attorney when you've been fired from that job? They actually said impersonating it, and they had a list of ethical rules that she could have violated by doing so. She eventually resigned in disgrace and left the government. That opened the door for the Florida Bar. They had already had complaints against her, but they had taken the position a year ago in Pam Bondi's case that while Pam, while any lawyer was still in the federal service, they were not going to do their investigation, sort of open the door for this rule.

13:34Michael Popok:Well, she's out of government now. So now, of course, Pam Bondi stepped forward and said, oh, I got a new rule, new rules, everybody. Nothing like having the wolf investigate the chicken house. So we're going to continue to follow it. But this shows how desperate Pam Bondi is. I mean, there's a lot of weird stories coming out about the Department of Justice. You know, Donald Trump's got a close friend that he went to military academy with for high school, Peter Tickerton, who represents a lot of Jan Sixers and election deniers and all that. And he went on a podcast recently and attacked violent, you know, just viciously.

14:12Michael Popok:Todd Blanche, the number two in the Department of Justice, says he can't be trusted, that he's undermining Pam Bondi. It's like he was sent out to promote Pam Bondi and tear down Todd Blanche, which is weird because if Bondi loses her job and she, of course, she's been called before the House and the Senate again about her handling of the Epstein files, if she ends up getting canned the way that Kristi Noem got canned, you know, you'd think Todd Blanche would have been the number two. Maybe Donald Trump has another number two in mind. He just brought in a, you know, a senator in outside of government so far to be the head of Homeland Security, could do it again.

14:50Michael Popok:Donald Trump does have a habit of keeping his administration on its toes by being erratic, if you know what I mean. So I'm Michael Popok. I'm glad you're here. We're going to cover all this because public pressure and public outrage, and as we channel it and focus it through Midas Touch and Legal AF works against the Trump administration. That's why he folds frequently, maybe not on every matter, maybe not as frequently as we'd like or as quickly as we'd like, but it does work. Kristi Noem found out that she could be incompetent. People, dozens and dozens of people could die, and many of them Americans, because of her malfeasance.

15:26Michael Popok:But the thing that will tick off Donald Trump faster than anything else is if you waste money or look like you're lining your own pocket instead of the Trump family pocket with money. Kristi Noem came down because of an ad campaign that she authorized for a couple hundred million dollars, some part of the money of which went into the pocket of somebody close to her. And Trump was like, well, that's it, she's gone. All the other things, the dead Americans, Trump had no interest in. But steal money from Trump or make it look like you're stealing money from Trump? You know, you're doing a scheme that he's not in on, you're out.

16:04Michael Popok:That's the only thing probably Pam Bondi is keeping her in her chair. is that she's stupid, but she's not stealing money directly from Donald Trump while she's in office. She's done it in the past. So I'm glad you're here. Hit the free subscribe button. I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

16:37Michael Popok:What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.