Four former D.C. Bar Association presidents are calling for an investigation into whether Attorney General William Barr violated its rules for lawyers practicing in the city.
The four former presidents were among a group of more than two dozen D.C. bar members who sent a letter dated Wednesday to Hamilton P. Fox, who serves as disciplinary counsel, according to Politico. The letter urged his office to look into whether Barr’s behavior warrants punishment by the association.
“Mr. Barr’s client is the United States, and not the president,” the letter reads. “Yet, Mr. Barr has consistently made decisions and taken action to serve the personal and political self-interests of President Donald Trump, rather than the interest of the United States.”
The letter laid out four instances where they allege that the attorney general violated the bar’s rules.
The first is Barr’s characterization of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on 2016 election interference and whether any member of the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with Russia to help win the election. Bar members called his presentation of Mueller’s conclusions, and his determination that the president had not obstructed the investigation, “dishonest and deceitful.”
They also referenced Barr’s response to the findings of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s inquiry into the Russia investigation, which found that the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into Trump campaign associates was not motivated by political bias. The bar members claim that Barr’s disagreement with the findings fits “the president’s narrative that the FBI’s investigation into his campaign was illegitimate,” and they called it a “mischaracterization and deceptive concealment of facts.”
The lawyers also took exception with a television interview the attorney general did in which he was critical of FBI officials and Barr’s role in clearing out protesters from Lafayette Park, after which Trump walked from the White House to a nearby church that had been briefly set on fire.
Andrea Ferster, Philip Allen Lacovara, Marna S. Tucker, and Melvin White (all former presidents of the D.C. bar) signed the letter.
