FEDERAL JUDGE SAYS OBAMA'S DOJ IS CORRUPT TO THE CORE
This is a must watch clip. Fox News legal correspondent breaks down the story.
This order by a sitting Federal Judge is absolutely unprecedented: the DOJ lawyers are BANNED from ever practicing law in Texas again (for the rest of their lives), and they must take annual ethics classes or they will not be able to practice law in 26 other states.
Federal Judge Orders 'Deceptive' DOJ Lawyers to Take Ethics Classes
A federal judge has ordered annual ethics classes for Justice Department attorneys as a punishment for being "intentionally deceptive" during litigation over President Obama's executive immigration orders on amnesty for illegals. "Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice,'" U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in a withering order released Thursday.
Hanen also seemed genuinely disappointed that he could not disbar the DOJ attorneys who lied to him, but he did ban them from practicing law in Texas:
The court does not have the power to disbar the counsel in this case, but it does have the power to revoke the pro hac vice status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court. By a separate sealed order that it is simultaneously issuing, that is being done.
The facts of the deception are not in doubt, Hanen emphasized. "DOJ has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts," he said in the May 19 opinion, first noted by the National Law Journal. "It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements ... This court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed."
As punishment, Justice Department attorneys who wish to appear in any state or federal court within the 26 states that brought the lawsuit have to undergo annual ethics training. "At a minimum, this course (or courses) shall total at least three hours of ethics training per year," he wrote.
In another case, such "egregious conduct" would lead him to strike the government's pleadings, but Hanen decided not to take that step because the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in April.
"The national importance of the outcome of this litigation outweighs the benefits to be gained by implementing the ultimate sanction," Hanen wrote. "Striking the government's pleadings would not only be unfair to the litigants, but also unfair, and perhaps even disrespectful, to the Supreme Court as it would deprive that Court of the ability to thrash out the legal issues in this case."