Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t be surprised.
Following the lead of the D.C. Court of Appeals, Maryland’s highest court whitewashed the criminal misconduct of three attorneys who destroyed more than 30,000 emails while representing Hillary Clinton. In an opinion issued this morning, Chief Justice Mary Ellen Barbera of the Maryland Court of Appeals wrote that a lower court lacked jurisdiction to compel the Attorney Grievance Commission to investigate David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson.
The court’s jurisdictional conclusion is a plausible one, but it cleverly sidesteps the real scandal, which is found near the beginning of the opinion: the court refused to hear my cross-petition. Allow me to translate. When Maryland bar prosecutors appealed to the Court of Appeals (“COA”), they argued that only the COA could compel them to investigate Mr. Kendall, Ms. Mills, and Ms. Samuelson. If that’s true, I responded, then the COA itself should order bar prosecutors to investigate. The COA’s response? It simply refused to hear my argument, and it did so without any explanation.
It’s hard to win an argument when the court refuses to hear it. Furthermore, as I noted in a post last year, the COA had serious conflicts of interest because it changed the rules after the fact in response to ex parte communications with bar counsel. When I asked the judges to recuse themselves, they likewise denied that request without an explanation.
Of course, if a peon lawyer like me had intentionally destroyed evidence that was covered by Congressional and court subpoenas, he or she would have been disbarred and sent to prison (although not necessarily in that order). But Mr. Kendall, Ms. Mills, and Ms. Samuelson are covered by the Clinton protection racket, ergo they need not worry about the rules and laws that apply to mere mortals. … Read more
