Three civil service lawyers in the Department of Justice have been hit with misconduct complaints for representing the Trump administration in court. A nonprofit funded mainly by Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, the Orwellian-named “Legal Accountability Center” has filed ethics complaints with the “grievance committees” of cities where the three lawyers have either lived or practiced.

Internal emails written by CFPB acting Director Russell Vought amounted to a stop-work order for staff, contradicting the government’s filings in the case, according to the complaints from the center, which is helmed by legal advocate and attorney Michael Teter.

It was that email that provoked the TDS-afflicted Judge Amy Berman Jackson to bleat, “The court is left with little confidence that the defense can be trusted to tell the truth about anything.” 

The fact that employees were given a stop-work order does not contradict President Trump’s orders to reduce CFPB functions to the bare minimum required by law and to lay off redundant employees. Given that the Supreme Court has acknowledged the authority of a president to shape the Executive Branch, the CFPB’s fate is sealed. 

This case has nothing to do with the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What you are witnessing is an application of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: 

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. 

By targeting the reputation and livelihood of lawyers defending the administration, this group is firing a warning shot over the bow of every lawyer in the federal government. The warning is that if you do your job too well, your career may be destroyed.

This is not the first time around for the man leading the effort to destroy President Trump’s ability to receive legal advice. The executive director of the “Legal Accountability Center” is Michael Teter, who also led the charge to punish and Rudolph W. Giuliani for aiding President Trump in contesting the very questionable 2020 election results.

What must happen is that the Department of Justice must take these attempts to intimidate staff lawyers seriously. Just like Attorney General Pam Bondi is using the misconduct process to hammer the equally TDS-infected Judge James Boasberg, it should also go after Teter for filing frivolous misconduct claims. 

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Staff lawyers need to know that if they represent the government, the government has their back. And legal-process terrorists need to know that harassing government lawyers, even with some billionaire’s money, is not fun and games anymore.

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