Nation's Criminal Defense Bar Warns Proposed Rule Would Let Bondi Suspend Ethics Investigations Into Her Own Team, Gut State Bar Authority, and Silence Complaints Against Federal Prosecutors
Washington, DC (March 10, 2026) – The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) condemned a proposed Department of Justice rule that would grant Attorney General Pam Bondi the authority to suspend state bar ethics investigations into current and former DOJ attorneys — including investigations into Bondi and members of her own leadership team, who are currently facing or have recently faced state bar complaints over their conduct in running the Department.
The proposal, published in the Federal Register on March 5, would give the Attorney General the right to review any bar complaint against a DOJ attorney before the relevant state bar may take a single investigative step. During that review, the Department may direct state bar disciplinary authorities to suspend parallel investigations. If a state bar refuses, the rule empowers the Department to take "appropriate action to prevent the bar disciplinary authorities from interfering with the Attorney General's review." Outside attorneys have called the proposal an illegal intervention into state-run disciplinary processes.
The Department frames the rule as a defense against the "weaponization" of the bar complaint process. NACDL calls that framing a pretext — and the rule itself the greater threat.
"This proposed rule is a constitutional sleight of hand dressed up as housekeeping," said NACDL President Andrew Birrell of the Birrell Law Firm in Minneapolis. "By inserting the Attorney General as the first and controlling reviewer of complaints against her own attorneys — complaints that include allegations against the Attorney General herself — the Department has declared that DOJ lawyers answer to no one but the Department itself. The Bill of Rights was not written so that the government's lawyers could operate in an ethics-free zone of their own making."
Impunity With Paperwork
No credible disciplinary system permits an accused attorney's employer to suspend an independent investigation while conducting its own internal review — and then decide whether to share the results. The conflict of interest is structural: DOJ attorneys answer to the Attorney General, and under this rule, it is the Attorney General who decides whether ethics complaints against those attorneys — and against herself — ever reach independent scrutiny.
"The Department invokes 'weaponization' to justify a rule that is itself the most dangerous weaponization of all: turning the ethics oversight system into a shield for government attorneys rather than a check on their conduct," said NACDL Executive Director Lisa Wayne. "The fact that this rule — which violates the Tenth Amendment and the principle of federalism — arrives precisely as the Attorney General and her senior leadership are facing or have recently faced ethics complaints makes its purpose unmistakable. This rule does not end what the DOJ claims is weaponization. It completes it."
Birrell was equally direct: "The Department frames this as efficiency. Call it what it is: impunity with paperwork."
A Chilling Effect on the Profession
The rule will also deter legitimate ethics complaints. When a bar complaint lands first on the desk of the alleged violator's employer — with authority to suspend outside review — attorneys, litigants, and members of the public will think twice before coming forward.
"Defense lawyers, civil rights attorneys, and anyone who has challenged federal prosecutors in court should read this rule carefully," said Wayne. "File a bar complaint against a DOJ attorney, and the first call goes to Main Justice. The bar will wait — deliberately, by design, at the discretion of the very institution you are accusing of misconduct. That is not a regulatory process. That is a deterrent."
An Assault on State Bar Authority
State bar associations derive their authority from state supreme courts, not the federal executive branch. The McDade Amendment (28 U.S.C. 530B), on which the Department relies, requires DOJ attorneys to comply with state ethics rules — it does not grant the Attorney General authority to displace the state bars that enforce them.
"State bar associations are not administrative subunits of the federal executive branch," said Wayne. "Congress gave the Department authority to assure its attorneys comply with ethics rules. It did not give the Department authority to become the sole gatekeeper of whether those rules are ever enforced at all."
"If the government can exempt its own lawyers from the independent oversight that applies to every other attorney in America," said Birrell, "then no defendant, no whistleblower, no civil rights plaintiff can trust that the prosecutors across the aisle are playing by the rules. If they can do this to the discipline system, they can do it to anyone."
NACDL's Call to Action
NACDL calls on the Department to withdraw the proposed rule. NACDL urges state bar associations, state supreme courts, and members of the legal profession to submit comments in opposition before the close of the public comment period.
Comments may be submitted at https://www.regulations.gov, Docket No. OAG199. The comment period closes on April 6, 30 days after the rule's publication on March 5, 2026.
Contacts
Jonathan Hutson, NACDL Senior Director of Public Affairs and Communications, 202-480-5343 or jhutson@nacdl.org
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's many thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal legal system.
