Legal group urges state Supreme Court to order Florida Bar to investigate BondiSnubbed by The Florida Bar last month, about 70 liberal-leaning scholars, attorneys and former judges have asked the state Supreme Court to order the Bar to investigate their complaint claiming U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi violated Florida’s ethics rules as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
The coalition’s legal argument in a petition filed on Tuesday may be compelling, but it’s a long shot given the fact that the seven justices on Florida’s high court were all appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist.
In June, the group filed an ethics complaint against Bondi with The Florida Bar, but the Bar rejected it on jurisdictional grounds, saying in a formal response that it “does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.”
READ MORE: Group accuses Bondi of ‘misconduct’ as Attorney General; Florida Bar rejects complaint
However, in their petition to the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition challenged that assertion, noting that in 1998 Congress passed the McDade Amendment, which explicitly rejected The Florida Bar’s argument that investigating federal officials would encroach on federal authority. The McDade Amendment states: “Attorneys for the [U.S.] Government shall be subject to State laws and rules ... to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.”
In their petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court, the coalition preemptively confronts the likely criticism that their legal bid to have The Florida Bar investigate Bondi — who has aggressively carried out the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, elite universities and law firms — amounts to political grandstanding.
“Some have criticized ethics complaints against public officials as being ‘politics,’ or a vehicle for adjudicating policy disputes,” said the petition, which was filed by seasoned South Florida criminal defense attorney Jon May.
“As a review of the complaint will make clear, however, its aim is to assure that lawyers who occupy positions of public trust continue to abide by the Rules of Professional Conduct that they are obliged to follow,” said May, who represented Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in his drug-trafficking case in Miami. “The long list of signatories to the complaint, many of whom are distinguished professors of legal ethics, vindicates that intent.”
On Tuesday, The Florida Bar did not respond to a Miami Herald request for comment.............
https://www.yahoo.com/news/legal-group-urges-state-supreme-200737367.html
