Democrats spent years using bar disciplinary proceedings to destroy every lawyer who worked for Trump.
Now the Trump DOJ has filed a lawsuit exposing the men who ran that operation.
And the prosecutor running the case had a secret he was keeping from his targets.
The DC Bar Disbarred Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark Was Next
After the 2020 election, the Left needed every future Republican president to be undefendable.
Bar disciplinary proceedings were the weapon they chose because they controlled state Bar associations.
Rudy Giuliani lost his New York law license for contesting the election. John Eastman lost his California law license for drafting legal memos. Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and lawyers who worked for Trump in Michigan were all sanctioned or charged.
Jeffrey Clark was next.
Clark served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil Division during Trump's first term.
After the 2020 election, believing there were significant irregularities in Georgia, he drafted an internal letter to state officials asking them to convene a special legislative session to review the matter.
The document was marked "Pre-Decisional & Deliberative/Attorney-Client or Legal Work Product" and "FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY" – Clark himself called it a "Proof of Concept."
He took it to his superiors – including Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen – for review.
They disagreed. The letter was never sent.
After Biden took office, four separate authorities tried to destroy Clark for that unsent, internal memo: the January 6 Committee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Fulton County district attorney, and the DC bar.
The first three struck out.
Clark himself recently called bar discipline Democrats' "weaponization tactic of last resort."
In July 2025, the DC Board on Professional Responsibility recommended disbarment – finding that Clark's internal legal analysis, because it conflicted with his superiors' views, constituted dishonesty.
The tribunal admitted there were "no factually comparable prior disciplinary cases."
They recommended disbarment anyway.
The DC Bar Prosecutor Running the Lawfare Operation Had a Problem
Jack Metzler was the Assistant Disciplinary Counsel who ran the case against Clark.
While Clark's proceedings were still active and documents were still being filed, Metzler was on social media posting about lawyers who claim to be "protecting the Constitution" while "in fact violating the Constitution."
A reasonable observer would recognize that as commentary on the man he was prosecuting.
He was also using that same page to recruit attorneys to join his office.
The DOJ lawsuit filed May 13 names Metzler as a defendant and documents "dozens" of these posts, calling them evidence of the office's "brazen partisan behavior" and "bias and poor judgment."
The Daily Signal published an exposé on Metzler's posts – and within days, he withdrew from the related disciplinary case against U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.
He didn't quit because the posts were innocent.
Kevin Clinesmith Committed a Federal Felony and Kept His License
FBI agent Kevin Clinesmith didn't write an unsent memo.
Clinesmith doctored an email to deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into authorizing surveillance of Carter Page – an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
A federal felony guilty plea got him a retroactive one-year suspension from the DC bar.
Clark wrote an internal document his superiors rejected, and the same bar recommended he lose his license permanently.
Acting AG Todd Blanchesaid in the filing: the DC bar is "a blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes."
The lawsuit also names Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton P. Fox III – the office head who brought what DOJ calls a "retaliatory" case against Ed Martin after Martin questioned Fox about the Clark prosecution.
The Constitutional Argument That Ends This for Good
The DOJ is not just asking for Clark's case to be dismissed.
The lawsuit makes three constitutional arguments that strip the DC bar’s authorities of the power to threaten any federal lawyer who gives candid advice that Democrats dislike.
The Supremacy Clause bars state and local disciplinary authorities from regulating the official work of federal attorneys.
Those same authorities are also discriminating by targeting federal lawyers with proceedings never brought against non-federal lawyers.
Punishing federal attorneys for official work unlawfully interferes with presidential power under Article II.
The Left's strategy was to leave every future Trump ally undefended – and the DOJ just filed a constitutional case naming the specific men who executed it.
The same week, Trump's DOJ announced the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund to repay victims of Biden's lawfare machine – the money pays back the people they targeted, and this lawsuit takes away the weapon they used to do it.
Sources:
- Ben Weingarten, "DOJ Takes On Leftist Attempt To Punish Any Lawyer Who Disagrees With Democrats," The Federalist, May 26, 2026.
- Jordan Boyd, "Trump DOJ Challenges Leftist 'Barfare' With Lawsuit Targeting Jeff Clark's DC Persecutors," The Federalist, May 14, 2026.
- Zack Smith, "DC Bar Ethics Enforcer Under Scrutiny for Inflammatory Social Media Posts," The Daily Signal, May 13, 2026.
- Zack Smith, "Justice Department Sues DC Bar for Bias Against Trump Lawyer," The Daily Signal, May 14, 2026.
- "DC Bar Lawyer Leaves Disciplinary Case After Online Posts Resurface," Washington Examiner, May 19, 2026.
- "DOJ Announces Anti-Weaponization Fund," U.S. Department of Justice, May 18, 2026.
