After three months of high level of legal annoyance on Monday, the State Supreme Court dismissed a criminal defense lawyer’s request to investigate a complaint to the Florida Bar, stating that the Attorney General Pam Bondi violated Florida’s ethics rules as the highest law enforcement officer in the country.
Five court judges, when deciding on a single paragraph, argued that South Florida’s lawyer John May “did not show a clear legal right to support” and denied his petition on behalf of approximately 70 liberals, lawyers and former judges. The judges also rejected his request for an oral argument in Talahasis court.
May The coalition proposal presented was always distant, as seven judges in Florida High Court all appointed Republican Governor Ron Desanto and the former GOP government Charlie Crist. Two of them did not participate in the decision.
The May proposal was satisfied not only from the Florida Bar, but also with the briefs submitted by the Florida Attorney General and the US Department of Justice.
June The Coalition filed a complaint by the Florida lawyer to the Florida Bar, but the Bar rejected it for the grounds of jurisdiction, saying in the official reply that it was “non -investigating or prosecuted by officers appointed under the US Constitution.”
In his petition, May told the Supreme Court that he “had a clear legal right under the rules governing the Florida lawyer, to report this alleged professional misconduct.”
After the defeat, May stated in a statement that “he never expected to win in Florida, though I really expected us to do it.” He said the aim of the coalition is now “informing the government’s lawyers about the legal support they need” and “representing them pro Bono if they were revealed” by the Bondi -headed Department of Justice.
The Florida Bar refused to comment on his victory, stating the Miami Herald reporter to his reply to the Supreme Court case.
After determining the scene, the Florida Bar attorney said “may” not have a clear legal right to force the Bar to investigate and prosecute another member of the Bar.
“Like any other person, Mr May can file a sworn complaint against the Bar member,” they said. “However, the Florida’s Bar has no legal obligation to the petition to the submission of a lawyer. This court ruled that the disciplinary proceedings were not intended to justify the rights of private parties.”
In his petition, the Supreme Court challenged the state’s Bar Association that it “did not investigate and ordered the presidential presidential officers such as Bondi before they are still in office.
The coalition noted that in 1998 Congress accepted the McDade amendment, which clearly rejected the Bar’s argument that the investigation of federal officials was attacking the federal authority. The McDade Amendment states: “Lawyers [U.S.] The government is subject to state laws and rules … to the same extent and in the same way as other lawyers of that state. ‘
The coalition, which belongs to the retired Supreme Court judges Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince, took the goal of Bondi’s complaint to the Florida Bar at the beginning of June. Democratic Governor Lawton Chils 1997 He appointed a parcel to the court, while Chils and Republican Jeb Bush, the then -elected governor, was appointed Quince.
The coalition’s complaint was accused of violating the Florida Bar Bondi in violation of her as the US Attorney General, saying that she had committed a “serious professional misconduct that threatens the law of law and the administration of justice.”
The complaint states that Bondi “sought to force the lawyers of the Department of Justice to violate his ethical obligations, taking into account the” rocks defending “, which she led in the February memorandum to all agencies.
The complaint also states that Bondi threatened the disciplines or termination of agencies’ lawyers if they failed to “zealously pursue President Donald Trump’s political goals”, claiming that her behavior violated the Florida Bar Rules and long -term standards of the Department of Justice.
The coalition complaint has accused the Bondi-59-year-old Florida Attorney General and the state lawyer in the Tama district of the fact that he plays a key role in the inappropriate resignation of many government lawyers within a four-month Department of Justice. The 23 -page complaint quoted three examples:
▪ In mid -April, Bondi and Deputy Prosecutor General Todd Blanche dismissed an experienced immigration lawyer, who Trump’s administration accused his legal case for misporting Maryland’s husband to his native Salvador.
▪ In mid -February, the longtime Federal prosecutor resigned, not executed what she described as the orders of the officers appointed to execute enforcement actions that are not supported by a copy of her resignation letter.
▪ Earlier in February Several senior federal prosecutors resigned in New York and Washington after they refused to execute the Order of the Department of Justice to refuse the accusations of corruption to New York Mayor Eric Adams.