Every year, the New York City Bar Association holds a white-collar crime conference at which the lions of the legal profession hobnob with top federal prosecutors and other senior law enforcement officials.
This year, even with tension growing between the bar association and the Justice Department, the event was to feature two influential federal prosecutors: Amanda Houle, the chief of the criminal division at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, and Alixandra Smith, her counterpart in Brooklyn.
But on Wednesday, Ms. Houle and Ms. Smith abruptly withdrew from the event, according to people with knowledge of the matter. So did two other government officials: Samuel Waldron, the acting director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division, and David Miller, the director of enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
A spokesman for the Bar Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did representatives for the S.E.C., the trading commission or the Justice Department. Spokesmen for the U.S. attorneys’ offices declined to comment.
It was not immediately clear why the officials withdrew.
During President Trump’s second term, bar associations have been sharply critical of the White House and Justice Department, and the department, in turn, has taken an increasingly antagonistic approach toward lawyers’ groups throughout the country. The rancor marks a sharp break from the warmth that had previously characterized those relationships.
The animus has been present from early on, as the Trump administration’s legal battle with prominent law firms agitated the legal profession and set off criticism from many prominent lawyers. The American Bar Association, a national organization with more than 400,000 members, was one of a number of groups that were sharply critical of Mr. Trump’s executive orders targeting the firms.
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After those criticisms were lodged, Todd Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general, barred Justice Department lawyers from attending American Bar Association events, criticizing the organization as fundamentally partisan.
The bar association, he wrote in a memo then, was “free to litigate in support of activist causes,” but the department’s employees “must conduct themselves in a manner that does not undermine or appear to undermine the department’s core mission of administering justice in a fair, effective and evenhanded manner.”
More recently, the Justice Department has appeared concerned about the possibility that bar associations might discipline the department’s lawyers. In March, it proposed a new regulation that would give it priority in investigating allegations of wrongdoing by its lawyers, in a potential effort to hamstring state bar authorities that could otherwise investigate federal prosecutors or other Justice Department employees. (In New York, the bar association is not a disciplinary body, so concerns about potential investigations might be less of a factor.)
About a week later, one of President Trump’s defense attorneys, John Lauro, appeared at a bar association event in San Diego. He faced strong pushback from his fellow panelists after saying that the rule of law in America was in a “better place” than it had been under the Biden administration, when investigations into Mr. Trump were continuing. Mr. Lauro, who worked directly with Mr. Blanche when the acting attorney general was a personal defense lawyer to Mr. Trump, was then sharply questioned by members of the audience.
The New York City Bar association has been blunt in criticizing the Justice Department’s actions throughout Mr. Trump’s second term.
Last week, it issued a statement saying it was “deeply troubled” by the new indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, writing that the prosecution confirmed the appearance that Mr. Comey was being targeted for political reasons and “reinforces the perception that the machinery of federal criminal law is being deployed not in service of impartial justice, but as part of a broader campaign of retaliation.”
Nicole Hong contributed reporting.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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