Lawyers in the nation’s capital handed a stunning loss to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother in a heated election to lead the Washington, D.C., Bar.
Ninety percent of more than 38,000 members of the lawyers’ association voted to elect employment law attorney Diane Seltzer as their president, the organization announced Monday.
The Seltzer Law Firm principal beat Brad Bondi, a litigation partner at the firm Paul Hastings, who garnered a measly 3,490 votes.
D.C. Bar CEO Bob Spagnoletti told reporters that the “extraordinary” 43-percent turnout was more than five times the norm in a typical election.
Bondi’s landslide loss appeared to be a resounding rebuke of the Trump administration’s war on the legal profession, which has divided the industry.
“Right now we are in a time of governmental chaos, and our members don’t feel safe to practice law,” Seltzer said in a virtual showdown against Bondi last month, adding that she planned to “make sure that we maintain and uphold the rule of law, and that people feel they can practice law safely without worrying about executive orders, or without being targeted in any possible way by the government.”
President Donald Trump waged a retribution campaign against several prominent law firms in March by issuing a flurry of executive orders that revoked the security clearances and canceled government contracts with firms he perceived as political enemies. A month later, voting began at the D.C. Bar and ended June 4th.
Trump’s moves drove a wedge between top firms, with some caving in to the Trump administration by agreeing to do pro bono work and others filing lawsuits challenging the executive orders against them.
“I had hoped this race would be a contest of ideas to enhance services for our widely varied members,” Bondi said in a Monday LinkedIn post. “Instead, I am disgusted by how rabid partisans lurched this election into the political gutter, turning a professional campaign into baseless attacks, identity politics, and partisan recrimination.”
Bondi accused his opponent of “smearing” him over his ties to the Attorney General and “peddling conspiracies” about his intentions.
In April, conservative lawyer and anti-MAGA activist George Conway weighed in on the D.C. Bar election and accused Pam Bondi of helping Trump punish law firms in an “extraordinarily perilous moment” for the legal system.
“I’m not admitted in D.C. but I have a request of those of you who are… Vote against Brad Bondi,” he said in an Instagram post. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t hold the views or conduct of someone’s relative against them… But these are not ordinary times. The Department of Justice under Pam Bondi has engaged in a full-scale assault on our Constitution and on the rule of law.”
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