America's Talking - Nonprofit Files Complaints Against Trump Attorneys but Almost No Public Discipline

Starting point is 00:00:01 Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Two non-profit legal groups with longtime connections to Democrats have filed dozens of ethics complaints against lawyers who represented officials or issues close to President Donald Trump in an attempt to get them disbarred or disciplined. But an investigation by the Center Square filed nearly all of the attorney's groups at the group's targets. at the groups targeted received no public discipline years after the complaints were filed. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square Managing Editor of Investigations, Arthur Kane. Art, you investigated these ethics complaints and reported on your findings at thecentersquare.com. Tell us more.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Yeah, so when I heard about this group and I noticed how many complaints they had on their website, I decided the best way to figure out if these are legitimate or not is what the various as small as various bar associations did with them. And so I went through all 80 or so complaints in the bar associations tried to find if anybody got disciplined. And it really ever happened. So I know you talked to critics of these firms or whatever. I mean, are they saying that they were just like nuisance complaints or just trying to be

Starting point is 00:01:20 a nuisance to President Trump and his allies? Yeah, I think they were just trying to discourage people from representing Trump. or any of his issues, which is not really how the way the American judicial system works, you're supposed to be able to get representation no matter what your issues are or what your beliefs are. They were claiming that they were lying and doing all these other things in their complaints, but apparently the bar associations didn't agree with them because most of these people had never been disciplined, and it's been years for some of these complaints. President Trump before winning his second election last year, he was charged with both state and federal crimes in four different jurisdictions.

Starting point is 00:02:03 He called that law fair, essentially using political influence to target your political enemies. Would this be considered something like lawfare? Yeah, I mean, I assume this is probably the definition that would fit under that because these groups tied to one guy. decided to just go through the, through the roles of all the attorneys who had anything to do with any kind of lawsuits about elections, had anything to do with January 6th. They went against 15 different attorneys general, all Republicans, and basically just wanted to get them disbarred. It just didn't work. The irony of it is that someone then filed a complaint against this guy who is running these organizations and to try to get him disbarred. barred. So I think it goes both ways. What's the status of that complaint against him?

Starting point is 00:02:57 It was in Utah. It was filed about a year ago, and nothing has happened, so that one probably won't go very far either. Most of the bar associations don't comment on complaints that are in public. I did to get some comment from the Nevada Bar Association who looked at this group's complaint and said there's very little chance of success, so we just basically booted it right away. So, you know, it's not easy to figure out what happens to these complaints. So sometimes they'll even do private discipline, like a letter reprimand. But generally, if they don't have anything on their website, the chances are they didn't really do anything with it. Now, the state bar associations are, as I understand it, are private organizations.

Starting point is 00:03:40 They're not subject to, like, typical government public records requests, FOIA laws or whatever. So I can see how it would be difficult to look into this. Did it take you a while to get to your findings? Yeah, because I basically had to figure out each website. Each one has a different format. Each one has a different way of looking for it. Some of them have just published PDFs per year. So you have to go through each year.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Some of these are complaints were filed in 2022 and 23. So you'd have to go through three or four years of PDFs and do a control find to try to find the last. name or something like that. Other places you just put in the name of the person and it shows their profile of when they were entered into the bar, what company they work for, that kind of stuff, and then there'll be a section that says whether there's any public discipline. So it really depends on how transparent the state is. And yeah, you're right. A lot of these are employee groups or not employee groups, but professional organizations. And so they don't have to respond to open

Starting point is 00:04:46 records requests like a government agency would. But a lot of them also are working on behalf of the Supreme Court or the court infrastructure there. So they do have a kind of a quasi-government thing where they should reveal what's going on with attorneys because if you've got a bad attorney on your hands, that can cause a lot of problems. Yeah, sort of like teachers who have across the country who have gotten disciplined at one school, let go, but nothing formally public.

Starting point is 00:05:16 said about it, and then they get hired by another school district, maybe in another city, maybe in another state, and they're just bad apples. So your story, Art, revealed this trend by these two firms. Is there, what's next to the story? Is anything going to come to this, or what do you think? I don't know. There's a lot of interesting things that I found in that, for example, most nonprofits, obviously Center Square, have to put out their tax returns every year to show people how much their top staff is making and what they're spending their money and how much they collect. These two firms seem to have gone under another bigger non-profits, nonprofit number, and don't have to reveal those things.

Starting point is 00:06:00 Some of the people I talked to said that's not appropriate. People should know how they're spending their money, where their money's coming from, and things like that. And the question is, do these bigger nonprofits know what they're doing? because they may not, what they're doing may fit under campaigning or electioneering, which may not work for the type of nonprofit status the umbrella nonprofit is. So I've reached out to the IRS. I haven't heard back. I've reached out to some attorneys general waiting to hear from them to find out

Starting point is 00:06:31 what should or can be done about this and if there is anything to do. But definitely I think the transparency issue is important because if you get a tax break, if people who contribute to you get a tax break, the public should know what you're doing with that money. And for these groups, I couldn't find anything on that kind of information. Thank you for joining us today. Art listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.

America's Talking - Nonprofit Files Complaints Against Trump Attorneys but Almost No Public Discipline

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