The Justice Department is seeking to intervene in state bar associations’ disciplinary proceedings against its lawyers, reflecting a growing fear among administration officials that attorneys who do their bidding could be punished by legal ethics organizations and lose their ability to practice law.
A notice posted online in the Federal Register seeks to give the Justice Department priority in investigating any allegations of wrongdoing by its own lawyers.
But the department has no control over state bar disciplinary authorities, and the proposal envisions merely requesting that a state bar association “suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the department’s review.”
The move comes as career lawyers in the department have repeatedly balked at carrying out orders they view as unethical or which could cause them to lose their licenses, according to multiple people familiar with those discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal ethics disputes.
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Register notice was reported earlier by Bloomberg.
The Justice Department’s push to try to delay disciplinary actions against its lawyers also comes as the department is seeking disbarment of one of its former senior antitrust lawyers, Roger Alford.
Mr. Alford was forced out of the department last year in a battle over a merger settlement. He gave a speech decrying what he called corruption by other senior Justice Department officials, and the department is now seeking to have him disbarred, according to court filings.
A federal judge has begun an inquiry into the circumstances of the merger settlement that led to Mr. Alford’s ouster. His boss, Gail Slater, left the department last month.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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