The People Hit With Ethics Complaints Wrote the Ethics Complaint Rules

By Rachel Hurley March 6th, 2026 Updated September 27th, 2026

Let me tell you what Todd Blanche actually said out loud, at a microphone, in front of an audience, at a Federalist Society conference in November: “We’re going to do everything we can to take these activist bars out of the picture.” That’s the Deputy Attorney General of the United States announcing, in advance, that he planned to gut the system that can pull his law license. And then four months later, they put it in a proposed rule.

Yesterday, a proposed rule Pam Bondi signed landed in the Federal Register - it says before any state bar can investigate a DOJ attorney for ethics violations, the Attorney General gets to review the complaint first and can ask the state to pause its investigation indefinitely. No timeline. No deadline. Just: wait until we’re done, and we’ll let you know when that is. If the state bar says no thanks, the rule says DOJ will take “appropriate action.” Appropriate action is not defined.

Here’s the part that should make your eye twitch: Bondi herself faced an ethics complaint, backed by over 70 lawyers and former judges, including two retired Florida Supreme Court justices, who say she pushed DOJ attorneys to violate their professional obligations while defending Trump’s agenda. The Florida Bar declined to investigate her - she’s a sitting constitutional officer, so they won’t touch her while she’s in office. But she wrote the rule anyway. She gave herself the first look at a complaint process that already wasn’t touching her, just in case anyone else got any ideas.

Blanche is in a similar situation. The Legal Accountability Center filed a complaint against him with the New York Attorney Grievance Committee for multiple alleged ethics violations. Blanche, who before this job was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney - yes, the same guy who sat at Trump’s defense table during the hush money trial - is now the number two at the Justice Department and apparently also in the business of regulating who gets to investigate him professionally.

The rule justifies itself by claiming bar complaints have been “weaponized” by political activists to harass brave DOJ lawyers for doing their jobs. This is the same DOJ that fired the head of its own internal ethics office last year and then gutted the office. So: internal ethics oversight, gutted. Now external ethics oversight, on the chopping block. The only thing left at this point is the honor system, and I think we’ve established where that’s at.

What state bars actually police is pretty basic stuff. Lying to courts. Hiding evidence. Conflicts of interest. That’s the existential threat Blanche declared war on. The fact that eliminating accountability for those things is the priority tells you something about what they’re planning to do that requires that kind of cover.

Former U.S. attorney Barb McQuade said the rule would give DOJ lawyers “carte blanche” - and yes, Blanche really is the deputy AG’s last name - to violate ethics rules. Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance pointed out that the DOJ doesn’t actually have the legal authority to suspend state bar proceedings, which is the kind of detail you’d think would come up before publishing something in the Federal Register, but here we are.

The rule is proposed, not final. There’s a public comment period through April 6th. Legal experts expect it to get challenged immediately if finalized. But whether it survives court or not almost doesn’t matter. Bar investigations are already slow. Throw in an indefinite federal hold with no required timeline and you’ve buried most complaints long enough for everyone involved to run out the clock, which is - per the lawyers’ groups fighting this - exactly the strategy.

Lawyers Defending American Democracy said it plainly: the rule “offers no timelines under which a state could follow up,” and this is an administration that is very good at running out the clock.

The public comment period is open until April 6th at regulations.gov - docket number OAG199. Anyone can submit a comment, and they go into the official federal record.

Sources

Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay’s headline first said the people who wrote the rule were under investigation - they had been hit with ethics complaints. It said Bondi had an active ethics complaint against her - the Florida Bar dismissed it in 2025, the Florida Supreme Court refused to revive it, and the two justices who backed it are retired. It said Bondi signed the rule the day before this ran - she signed it February 26th, and it was published the day before. It said the rule gives her veto power - it gives the Attorney General the first look and the right to ask a bar to pause. It said the DOJ fired its ethics chief earlier this year - that was last year. And it said Blanche is Barb McQuade’s last name - it’s the deputy attorney general’s.

Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now say the rule is only proposed and can’t end a bar’s investigation, and which groups call it a run-out-the-clock strategy.