The lawyer of former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier who announced earlier this month he was planning to sue members of the Obama administration has been suspended from practicing law for a year, prompting the sailor to claim the suspension was an attempt to “silence us.”
Saucier, who spent a year in a federal prison for photos he took in a submarine, claims that the suspension from the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court of his lawyer Ronald Daigle’s law license was an attempt to thwart his effort to sue.
“Out of the blue the court decided to come after Ron for his license for a year, the window I have for my lawsuit, and they announced it after we announced my case,” Saucier said, per Fox News. “It’s a liberal court system … trying to dismember my legal defense. It’s a shame, it’s retribution. They’ve backed us into a corner so that I won’t be able to file the lawsuit.”
“They’re trying to silence us,” he added. “Ron doesn’t deserve this. I won’t be silenced. If I have to go to court and represent myself, act as my own lawyer, I will. I’m not going to be strong-armed.”
Saucier pleaded guilty for taking pictures inside the USS Alexandria, although he claimed he only took them to show family members. Federal prosecutors claimed the move jeopardized national security and obstructed justice by demolishing the electronic devices where the photos were stored.
But Saucier, who was pardoned by Trump in March, claims that the officials who managed his case also didn’t crack down on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server and how she managed classified information.
Saucier and Daigle recently said they were planning to sue former President Barack Obama, former FBI Director James Comey, the Justice Department, and others for inflicting “unequal protection of the law” to Saucier.
“We’ll highlight the differences in the way Hillary Clinton was prosecuted and how my client was prosecuted,” Daigle told Fox News in June.
“We’re seeking to cast a light on this to show that there’s a two-tier justice system and we want it to be corrected,” he added.
The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court announced last week that Daigle’s law license was being suspended after concluding Daigle took $23,000 from an estate of a deceased person, even though he did not have a retainer or authorization to the funds. He eventually returned $15,000 to the family.
