Bizarre, Courts, Lawyering, Media, Society

Federal Judge Finds Justice Department Lawyers Knowingly Lied And Orders Team To Take Ethics Classes

US-DeptOfJustice-Seal_svgJudge_Andrew_S._HanenUnited States District Judge Andrew Hanen issued a remarkable opinion yesterday that found that Justice Department lawyers not only lied to him and opposing counsel but “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” What is even more remarkable however is that, after finding such calculated and unethical conduct, Hanen ordered the lawyers to simply take ethics classes rather than refer them to the bar for suspension or disbarment. Many attorneys object that government lawyers routinely escape serious punishment for false or misleading statements. In this case, the judge found that the Justice Department misled him and opposing counsel in a case by Texas and 25 other states that sought to block President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration programs. Hansen blocked the program. Notably, the Justice Department is even opposing ethical classes as a sanction.

The government misled the court on when the government would begin implementing one of the programs. The Justice Department team assured the court the government would not start implementing an expansion of a program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals until February 18, 2015. The court and opposing counsel relied on that date even though the government implemented a part of the program before February and granted over 100,000 applications. Hansen found that the “Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts.”

Apparently, lawyers, somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this Court, decided unilaterally that the conduct of the DHS in granting three-year DACA renewals . . . was immaterial and irrelevant to this lawsuit and that the DOJ could therefore just ignore it. Then, for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this Court chose not to tell the truth about this DHS activity. The first decision was certainly unsupportable, but the subsequent decision to hide it from the Court was unethical.

Miracle_on_34th_StreetIn an effort to convey how unethical the Justice Department acted in the case, Hanen even excerpted a portion of the film “Miracle on 34th Street” when a young Tommy Mara Jr. says “Gosh, everybody knows you shouldn’t tell a lie, especially in court.” Judge Hanen noted “There are certain attorneys in the Justice Department who apparently have not received that message.”

Here is the opinion: Immigration Decision.

75 thoughts on “Federal Judge Finds Justice Department Lawyers Knowingly Lied And Orders Team To Take Ethics Classes”

  1. Hearing from former US Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph diGenova I believe John P. Carlin is a political hack and needs to be scrutinized in the Clinton espionage scandal.

  3. Professor Turley presents a remarkably biased account.

    Here is the other side:

    The case centers around a Department of Homeland Security directive that called for three changes to American immigration policy that are relevant to this case. The first is that it created a new program, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), which, as the name suggests, primarily benefits undocumented parents of citizens and lawful permanent residents. The second is that the directive expanded an existing program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which primarily serves undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. Under this expansion, some immigrants who previously were ineligible for relief under DACA may now apply for the program.

    The legality of DAPA and this expansion of DACA (but not the underlying DACA program itself) are now before the Supreme Court.

    Hanen’s doxing order arises out of a third, less consequential policy change described in the DHS directive. Before the directive, DACA beneficiaries had to reapply every two years. Under the directive, they need to reapply every three years.

    At an early stage in the litigation, the plaintiffs’ attorneys and Judge Hanen asked Justice Department lawyers whether aspects of the directive would be implemented prior to a January hearing date, and the DOJ attorneys responded that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” The Justice Department made similar statements at later points in the case. At that time, DAPA and expanded DACA were not yet being implemented, but the shift from two years between DACA renewals to three years was already under way.

    Hanen claims that the Justice Department attorneys intentionally deceived him by not mentioning the fact that the amount of time afforded to DACA beneficiaries had changed. The Justice Department claims that, at most, they misunderstood what Hanen was asking for. They believed that Hanen was only asking about the dates when DAPA and expanded DACA would be implemented, and not about the shift from two to three years. This distinction matters because, while deliberately misleading a court is a very serious ethical breach, misunderstanding a question is not.
    DOJ’s Explanation

    In a brief filed in Hanen’s court, the Justice Department attorneys offer their version of events. For one thing, if the government was trying to hide the date when DACA beneficiaries started receiving extensions, they did a very poor job of it. The DHS directive explicitly states that the shift from two to three years “shall apply to all first-time applications as well as all applications for renewal effective November 24, 2014,” well before the January 2015 hearing date. Expanded DACA, by contrast, would be implemented “at an unspecified time ‘no later than [90] days,’” after the issuance of the directive, and DAPA would be implemented “no later than [180] days” after the directive.
    At the very least, DOJ’s brief offers a plausible narrative that does not require the reader to assume that the Obama administration chose to staff one of the most important cases of the Obama presidency with a team of idiots.

    Because the date of the shift from two to three years was stated explicitly in the document at the very heart of this case, while the date when DAPA and expanded DACA would be implemented was left ambiguous, DOJ claims that, when Hanen expressed uncertainty regarding implementation dates, they thought he was only expressing uncertainty regarding dates that were actually uncertain.

    Additionally, the Justice Department explains, “the crux” of the plaintiffs’ arguments “was on the effects of the expansion of the deferred action guidelines to include additional categories of aliens,” not on whether immigrants who were already eligible for deferred action would receive it for two or three years — a fact that DOJ suggests led it to believe that they were being asked about the issues that were at the heart of the case.

    Similarly, DOJ made the contested statements at a time when the plaintiffs were seeking a form of temporary relief that requires them to show “irreparable impact.” As DOJ argues, “the difference between a three-year versus a two-year deferral would not be felt until at least 2016, when a two-year deferral would otherwise end.” Accordingly, “the parties would have a period of nearly two years to litigate and resolve the merits of the case (even on a non-expedited schedule) before the third year of any three-year DACA deferral could have even an arguable irreparable impact on the Plaintiffs.”

    In any event, this case ultimately turns upon the specific state of mind held by certain individuals when they made certain statements, so it is difficult to verify what the Justice Department’s attorneys believed they were being asked to disclose to Judge Hanen. It’s possible that a team of federal litigators, some of whom are quite senior, collectively decided to risk their case, their careers, and their license to practice law by intentionally lying to a judge about a piece of information that was right at the judge’s fingertips.

    Yet, at the very least, DOJ’s brief offers a plausible narrative that does not require the reader to assume that the Obama administration chose to staff one of the most important cases of the Obama presidency with a team of idiots.
    *************************************************

    I know. I know. Such a lot of reading might hurt your brain. If concerned, just ignore and remain in your preferred state of ignorance.

  5. And the MSM is silent. People are fed up, and they aren’t gonna vote for the insider in 2016. Well, the lemmings will. I see a semi landslide, w/ Hillary eating crow.

  6. I bet the ethics classes these attorneys were required to attend didn’t even require an examination at the end to receive CLE (continuing legal education) credit. All they had to do was to show up, breath, and be present for most of lecture. At a minimum, they should have been required to take some REAL CLE with an examination at the end, requiring a minimum passing score of at least 75%.

    1. It’ll be interesting to see what each of their respective state bar ethics panels do with these allegations. Someone else mentioned that the “punishment” meted out may not be legal.

      I haven’t read the opinion, but it seems to me that if the basis was a criminal contempt, there was no due process in the form of a trial and the sentencing guidelines surely don’t include ethics courses. Civil contempt wouldn’t seem to allow such a remedy either, let alone ordering the entire staff over which the court has no jurisdiction, whether they were involved with the misrepresentation or not, to attend ethics class(es).

      Hard to believe. Maybe I should read it, but due process appears to be woefully lacking.

  8. Someone provide the blog readers with the names of the liars whose pants should be on fire.

  9. Is anyone really surprised? I’ve read about the lawsuits against the DOJ for lying about civil rights violations supposedly against black people. They’ve been caught lying before and sued and lost.

    It’s the department of injustice, unless of course you’re a member of the minority or LBGT communities, then it’s Justice. The liberals have proven time and again that they live by the lie and die by the lie, no matter what the costs others rights.

    I hope Donald Trump cleans the clocks of all of these biased unjust government agencies.

    1. Lisa – the DoJ lives by the lie, sadly they do not die by the lie.

  10. I agree that disbarment would be appropriate. However, from the decision:

    “The Court does not have the power to disbar the counsel in this case, but it does have the power to revoke the pro hac vice status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court. By a separate
    sealed order that it is simultaneously issuing, that is being done. ”

    Not sure what the Latin says but my guess is that the out-of-state (Washington DC?) lawyers are no longer welcome in this court.

  11. I am for suspending them all. Someone has to send a shot across the bow of the DoJ.

  12. PL:

    There are actually “pattern & practice” statutes for public corruption under color of law that might apply here.

    The important part of these statutes is that a “single” abuse of power, by itself, may not be a crime but if there were a longterm “pattern or culture” of non-criminal abuses it could be prosecuted as a federal crime.

    The weakness in the enforcement mechanism is that DOJ prosecutors enforce these statutes – so they are unlikely to prosecute their co-workers.

  14. As with the Wall Street ‘Too big to fail’ Lie the Department of Justice and the Mainstream Media are now attempting to whitewash the Clinton espionage of her non-secure servers. Clinton is a Wall Street prostitute.

  15. Professor,

    You may need to reread the order. Judge Hansen ordered every single lawyer employed by the DOJ in Washington to attend the ethics course if they are going to appear in any state or federal court that sits in the plaintiff states. Every single one. He notably excepted US Attorneys offices including his local ones.

    Even assuming the DOJ lawyers handling the case committed an ethical violation in this case, I don’t see how it’s within he Judge’s authority to order attorneys who have never appeared before him in divisions completely unrelated to case to undergo ethics training or any other sanction.

  16. Until and unless we, the people, demand that the law applies equally to government employees, then it won’t.

    As it stands, we just become jaded and unmoved. A million man march might wake them up. Otherwise, this great nation will just keep sliding into a banana republic.

    In a similar vein of I-can-do-what-I-want-and-you-won’t-do-anyting-about-it, here is this hilarious article by Mark Steyn:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349853/lois-lerner-defense-mark-steyn

    in which he notes that while the IRS targeted conservatives, who languished for years trying to get their non profits approved, Obama’s brother Malik got his non-profit approved from Kenya in less than a month, and Lois Lerner illegally backdated it almost 3 years. And while conservatives were illegally asked for their Facebook contacts and the contents of their sermons, Malik associated with war criminals in terrorist nations.

    “Let’s take it as read that, when U.S. taxpayers wind up giving tax breaks to an entity linked to the butchers of Darfur, it’s pure coincidence that the racket turns out to be run by the president’s brother. Let’s accept that Malik Obama just got lucky that his letter landed on the desk of Lois Lerner, and that, when she backdated his application for two-and-a-half years, she’d momentarily forgotten that it’s illegal for her to backdate it more than two-and-a-quarter years. Indeed, let’s take the president at his word that the existence of this shadowy IRS entity working deep within the even shadowier U.S. Treasury planted in deep cover within the shadowiest conspiracy of them all, this murky hitherto unknown organization called “the Executive Branch,” that all this was news to him. What that means then is not that this or that elected politician is corrupt but that the government of the United States is corrupt.”

  17. It would be a good idea to rename the DOJ as the “National Prosecutor’s Office” or the “Office of the Attorney General”. Regular Americans needing help are actually harmed by it’s current name “Justice Department”.

    Post 9/11 CoinTelPro crime victims, that never attended law school, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and had their livelihoods destroyed, by believing the U.S. Department of Justice would help them find justice.

    In reality the DOJ was driving the CoinTelPro criminality using DOJ officials – they were the perpetrators and their crime victims thought they were oath-sworn constitutional protectors.

    Correcting the name would save countless lives and livelihoods!

  18. Homer Simpson (Bar’s dad) speaking to his wife Margie: “Marg, it takes two to lie. One to lie, and another to listen.”

    “It’s not a lie if no one finds out.” Obombya to his stooges at the “justice” (hahahahaha) dept.

    If you want to know the depths of the bloodless coup accomplished by Obombya and his MSM minions, watch this 45 minute video: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-20/must-watch-video-veneer-justice-kingdom-crime

    It displays the text of Federal Law on one side of the screen, the other side of the screen the words coming from the mouths of the worst AG in US history Eric Holder, and his hench men and women at Justice like Lannie Brewer, who oversaw the charges against the banks for the banks’ multiple and grotesque felony crimes violating federal banking laws.

    After Brewer got busted by investigative reporters for point blank lying about the law (indisputable, not debatable, watch the video), conspiring with and giving the lie to Goldman Sachs so Goldman got away with multiple felonies deserving decades of hard prison time, Brewer and his female assistant who took his place (and Holder too IIRC) left the “justice” dept (hahahahahaha) to work at the USA’s largest criminal defense group for white collar felons like Goldman Sachs, etc, earning $3.5M/annual.

    Dostoevsky and all the world’s crime fiction authors could not imagine such a crime spree with no one being held accountable.

    If you are dumb or naive enough to think this is a nation of laws now, you won’t by the end of this video.

  19. “Torture Attorneys” were created due to this lawless culture among some (not all) DOJ attorneys and DOJ prosecutors.

    Many Americans view the nation’s best attorneys that attended the nation’s best law schools and took an oath to follow the U.S. Constitution as MORE culpable than most common crooks that are poor, uneducated and never attended college.

    To many Americans such a person, like an Ivy League Torture Attorney, deserve far stiffer penalties than the average citizen – not lighter penalties.

    The greater danger is that many, if not most, Americans have lost total faith in the integrity of government institutions including judges and justices.

  20. All must be equal (& equally accountable) under the eyes of the law or it is NOT LAW it is only OPINION. There can not be two standards.

Comments are closed.