DOJ Wants to Review Ethics Complaints Against Its Own Lawyers Before Anyone Else Can
A new rule would require state bars to wait while DOJ reviews complaints against its own lawyers first.
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SUMMARY
The Department of Justice is publishing a proposed rule that would require DOJ to review state bar complaints against its attorneys first and request that state bar authorities suspend parallel investigative steps until DOJ completes its review. The proposal also says DOJ would direct Department personnel not to share non-public information with parallel state bar proceedings until DOJ completes its review. State bar discipline is one of the few checks and balances that follows an attorney personally across jobs, administrations, and headlines. The rule would apply to allegations tied to a DOJ attorney’s official federal duties.
What This Rule Does
State bar discipline is different from internal DOJ review, congressional oversight, or public criticism. It attaches to the license. You can leave a job, survive a news cycle, outlast an administration but a state bar complaint lives with your law license, and your license is what gives you permission to practice law at all.
State bars are one of the last remaining independent checks on attorneys who act in the name of the federal government. They don’t report to DOJ or answer to the White House. They operate outside the chain of command, and that independence is exactly what gives them power.
This applies to allegations tied to a DOJ attorney’s official federal duties, not unrelated private conduct.
DOJ claims this doesn’t strip state bars of authority.
The proposal says bars are not required to defer to DOJ’s findings of a violation and can still impose sanctions, including suspension or disbarment, after DOJ finishes its review.
What DOJ is proposing is a system that would let the Attorney General ask state bar authorities to suspend their investigative process, the part that requires the DOJ attorney to participate, while DOJ “reviews” the complaint internally first. And DOJ would direct its own personnel not to share non-public information with those bar proceedings until the internal review is done.
Should the entity being investigated get to control the tempo of the investigation?
Delay Is Not Neutral
We know what happens when oversight gets delayed… Investigations lose momentum, witnesses become harder to reach and evidence becomes neglected or ignored. All while public attention moves on. And the attorney in question stays active, protected, and stays insulated during the window that matters most.
Even if DOJ insists that state bars retain “final authority,” the damage happens long before any final decision is made. The power is in slowing it down long enough that the consequences never arrive.
A complaint that takes six months to investigate doesn’t have the same impact as one that takes three years. Delay routinely weakens accountability while momentum fades and while evidence gets harder to assemble and public attention moves on.
Move oversight inward.
Create a procedural choke point that sounds reasonable on paper.
Reframe independent accountability as interference.
Normalize delay by calling it “due process.”
And then let the consequences expire while the rest of the country is paying attention to something else.
When an administration treats independent oversight as an obstacle, you are watching the definition of accountability get rewritten.
That is the mindset shift that collapses rule-of-law systems from the inside… Through procedural adjustments that make consequences structurally impossible to deliver on time.
What You Can Do This Week
If you’ve never submitted a public comment on a proposed federal rule before, this is a good one to start with.
A clear, concise comment explaining why independent oversight of government attorneys matters, and why DOJ should not have the ability to stall state-run disciplinary processes, will help.
These comments become part of the public record.
Comments are submitted at Regulations.gov under Docket No. OAG199 and are due 30 days after publication of the rule.
You can also contact your elected officials and ask: Do you support giving DOJ the power to slow down state bar ethics investigations into its own lawyers? Oversight committees should have to answer that publicly.
And if you know someone who works in law, government, or civil rights, share this with them. Rule changes like this one become “normal” specifically because most people never hear about them until they’re already in effect.
What’s a rule change that flew under the radar and later turned out to matter more than people realized? Drop it in the comments.
A system that can pause oversight can eventually erase it. And a democracy that can’t enforce ethical boundaries on the people who enforce the law is not a democracy that will hold for long.
In America, we have No Kings.
We are showing up together again on March 28.
When our families are under attack and costs are pushing people to the brink, silence is not an option. We will defend ourselves and our communities against this administration’s unjust and cruel acts of violence. America does not belong to strongmen, greedy billionaires, or those who rule through fear. It belongs to us, the people.
The fox will be guarding the henhouse , all complains with be buried!
Stop Yakking. Start Acting
From Truth Matters
Americans CAN stop this anytime without being arrested or punished in any way for their actions. STOP SPENDING on all but essential items and shift as much of that essential spending to local businesses. No need to stop eating out, just eat in locally run family eateries (NOT corporate chains). It’s about strategic spending decisions. It’s all about common sense, but if you need more detail, click here for my broader thinking. Given the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs, you now have even more power.
There is no case to be made for saying ‘there’s nothing we can do’ It really is very simple, and I would urge you to encourage everyone you know to become part of a sustained act of strategic economic disengagement, because I guarantee just by this most simple of actions, you can unlock the gate on the road back to real American values. A sustained 3-4% drop in consumer spending will occur if Americans have the collective and sustained patriotic determination to say ‘enough is enough’.
From The Peaceful Solution
The Peaceful Solution-Part 1
How much do you want to stop His Royal Heinous and the fascist takeover of the country?
Enough that you’re willing to make a small sacrifice? Like altering your spending habits for a month or two or three? That could be all it would take to get the attention of the oligarchs (formerly known as The Robber Barons in the first Gilded Age, also The Fat Cats, The Greedy Bastards).
A brief demonstration of We, the People’s, power of the purse could persuade them to quit supporting HRH and the politicians who enable him.
We quit spending, except on essentials, businesses lose money, stock market goes down, Greedy Bastards pay attention to our demands.
Greedy Bastards own most of the politicians of both major parties. GBs start losing money, tell politicians to change course and do what We, the People want.
We are running out of peaceful options. The legislature and Supreme Court are controlled by HRH. He controls the executive branch, including the Military, Justice Department, FBI, ICE, the IRS. He controls all levers of power.
We, the people, still have the power of the purse. No one can control our spending, or lack of spending. When all else fails we can go on a spending strike until the business community stops supporting HRH and the politicians who enable him.
Economic warfare is the only thing the oligarchs, the business community will understand and act on. Call it a Surreptitious General Strike (Quiet Quitting). Go to work, do as little as possible. Stop spending money except on essentials. Quit feeding the corporate beast that supports the HRH.
Stop participating. Nearly 70% of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending. All of us. Hobble the economy and the stock market. Mahatma Gandhi drove the British from India by peaceful civil disobedience and economic disruption. We can stop the fascist takeover in the same way.
We can keep rehashing past and present atrocities until our access to the internet is taken away by the regime, or we can DO something!
Now is the time for this Peaceful Solution.