The Justice Department unloaded on the D.C. Bar this week after the organization's disciplinary counsel filed an ethics complaint against Ed Martin, a senior Trump administration official and former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The department called the move a "partisan" attack designed "to target and punish those serving President Trump."
The disciplinary charge, filed Friday and published Tuesday, was brought before the D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility. It centers on a letter Martin sent to Georgetown Law last February seeking information about the school's DEI practices and teachings.
The DOJ's response was blunt: this is political, and everyone involved knows it.
According to Fox News, the charge accuses Martin of violating the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution in connection with his actions toward Georgetown Law. At the time, Martin served as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. According to the complaint, after sending the initial letter, Martin announced he would be imposing sanctions on the school, instructing his staff not to hire any students, fellows, or interns affiliated with the university.
The complaint also alleges Martin conducted "unauthorized, ex parte communications" with the chief judge and senior judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and that he copied White House counsel onto the email.
When the D.C. Bar's disciplinary counsel opened an inquiry, Martin apparently declined to play along. The complaint quotes his response:
"In that letter, he stated that he would not be responding to Disciplinary Counsel's inquiry, complained about Disciplinary Counsel's 'uneven behavior,' and requested a 'face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.'"
That doesn't sound like a man who thinks the process is legitimate. It sounds like a man who recognizes a setup.
The complaint was signed by Hamilton Fox, the disciplinary counsel for the D.C. Bar. His role allows him to function similarly to a prosecutor for attorney misconduct cases. That's a significant amount of power vested in one person's judgment.
And that judgment comes with a paper trail. Fox previously donated thousands to Barack Obama's first presidential campaign in 2008, according to FEC records reviewed by Fox News Digital.
An Obama donor wielding prosecutorial authority over a Trump appointee's law license. The DOJ spokesperson framed it as "a clear indication of this partisan organization's agenda." It's hard to argue otherwise.
The department did not offer a tepid, lawyerly response. A DOJ spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the complaint exists "to target and punish those serving President Trump while refusing to investigate or act against actual ethical violations that were committed by Biden and Obama administration attorneys."
That's a direct accusation of selective enforcement, and it carries weight. The D.C. Bar operates in a city where the legal establishment leans overwhelmingly in one political direction. The question of who gets investigated, and who doesn't, is not abstract.
Todd Blanche, the Justice Department's second-highest-ranking official, didn't mince words either. He took to social media on Tuesday:
"The DC Bar is such a blatantly Democrat-run political organization."
He followed up on X with a line that landed:
"Thank God I'm not a member, and trust me, I never will be."
When the deputy attorney general of the United States publicly refuses to associate with a bar organization, that organization has a credibility problem.
The timing of this complaint is worth noting. It arrived just days after the DOJ filed a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register that would allow the department to suspend state bar investigations while the DOJ conducts its own review. The D.C. Bar moved fast, almost as if it wanted to get its shot in before the rules changed.
This is a pattern conservatives have watched for years. The legal profession's self-regulatory apparatus, concentrated in deep-blue jurisdictions, has become another weapon in the institutional arsenal aimed at Republican officials. Lawyers who serve conservative administrations face professional consequences that their progressive counterparts never do. The DOJ spokesperson said as much plainly: Biden and Obama administration attorneys committed "actual ethical violations" that went uninvestigated.
No one filed charges. No one convened a board. The disciplinary machinery sat idle.
Ed Martin's career in the Trump administration has been eventful. Before his current role, he helped represent individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump installed him last May as the Justice Department's pardon attorney and tapped him to head the DOJ's so-called "Weaponization Working Group." His path to confirmation stalled last year, and he was removed last month from heading the working group, though no reason for his removal was immediately provided.
The disciplinary process itself will likely take months, if not longer. But the damage the D.C. Bar intends isn't really about the outcome. It's about the process: the cloud, the headlines, the signal to every lawyer considering service in a Republican administration that the professional establishment will come for your license.
That's not oversight. That's deterrence dressed in procedural clothing.
And the DOJ, to its credit, called it exactly what it is.
