https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/the-dc-bar-is-refusing-to-investigate
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His wife took millions from law firms that argue before his Court, and he never stepped aside. The DC Bar won't look into it.
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In April, I filed an ethics complaint against Chief Justice John Roberts, over more than ten million dollars in commissions his wife received from law firms that argue cases in front of him. Attorneys and retired judges filed complaints of their own, and national outlets covered it. Two months later the DC Bar, the body that disciplines every lawyer licensed in DC, sent their answer: their claim was that they have no jurisdiction over Justice Roberts. Their own rules say otherwise, the law says otherwise, and I am going to show you, point by point, exactly how their answer is wrong.
You can find more detailed information in a follow-up piece linked in this text.
My complaint asked the DC Bar to do one thing: apply its own conduct rules to a member who is particularly powerful. Roberts has been a member of the DC Bar since 1981, and that membership puts him under the authority of the office that polices DC lawyers, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. The forms he signed are personal documents he files as a private individual, and the DC Bar’s own rules bind a member “at all times and in all conduct, both professional and personal,” reaching a violation “whether or not the act or omission occurred in the course of an attorney-client relationship.”
The Bar Association response came on June 24, 2026, in a letter signed by Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Dru Foster, closing the complaint and giving one reason for it. “In general, this Office does not have jurisdiction to review complaints against members of the judiciary, but this is especially true when it comes to members of the United States Supreme Court.” It cited a federal statute, 28 U.S.C. 351(d). Then it added a key admission. Because the office concluded it had no authority over Roberts, it “did not consider the other factors that may cause us to investigate further such as: (1) whether a complaint is not unfounded on its face or (2) contains allegations which, if true, would constitute a violation of the Attorney’s Oath of Office or the Rules of Professional Conduct.”
The whole refusal to investigate depends on one claim: that the DC Bar has no authority over Roberts because he is on the Supreme Court. If that claim is wrong, their refusal to investigate is wrong. Their refusal fails in three separate and distinct ways.
Their own rule gives them exactly two ways to close a complaint without asking the accused lawyer to respond. In its words, “except in matters requiring dismissal because the complaint is clearly unfounded on its face or falls outside the disciplinary jurisdiction of the Court,” the accused attorney must be “afforded an opportunity to respond.” Clearly unfounded, or outside the Court’s jurisdiction, and those are the only two.
In their letter, the D.C. Bar stated that their refusal was because John Roberts is outside their jurisdiction.
So let’s address this, because the answer is clear.
First, their own rules. The rule that sets their jurisdiction covers, in its words, “all members of the District of Columbia Bar,” with no carve-out for judges or Justices, and Roberts is one of them. Another rule binds every member “at all times and in all conduct, both professional and personal,” and makes a violation punishable “whether or not the act or omission occurred in the course of an attorney-client relationship.” The forms Roberts signed are personal conduct, and the rule covers personal conduct in plain language.
Second, the statute they cited. Their letter names 28 U.S.C. 351(d) as the reason they lack jurisdiction. That statute governs the federal judicial-conduct system, the process for disciplining a judge over the conduct of the office, and its own text limits it to circuit, district, bankruptcy, and magistrate judges. Judicial conduct means the acts a judge performs as a judge, deciding cases and running proceedings. A financial disclosure form is not one of those acts. Every federal filer submits the same form as a private individual under the Ethics in Government Act, and a judge signs it in that private capacity, not from the bench. So the conduct in my complaint is not judicial conduct, and the statute the office cited does not govern it. My complaint is a bar-license matter about a member who filed false sworn forms, and bar discipline is a separate system with its own authority over every member.
And there is a clear example of what that statute actually does. When 83 ethics complaints were filed against Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts himself referred them through the DC Circuit to the Tenth Circuit, which dismissed all 83 complaints against Kavanaugh in December 2018 because, in its words, “due to his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Kavanaugh is no longer a judge covered by the Act.” That is what this statute does. It removes Supreme Court Justices from the federal judicial-conduct process. It says nothing about the Bar’s separate authority over its own members.
The D.C. Bar cited the wrong law to justify the wrong decision. The statute they cited governs a different process, and all it actually establishes is that Roberts is outside the federal judicial-conduct system, which is a separate organization from the Bar Association.
The statute they cited is about one thing, the federal system for handling complaints against judges for conduct on the bench. The DC Bar rule is different. It covers private conduct too. The American Bar Association commentary on the model rule the DC rules follow states the rules apply to lawyers “even when they are acting in a nonprofessional capacity.”
The office states its own limit, and Roberts’s forms are outside it. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel tells the public it cannot consider complaints against judges acting in a judicial capacity. Acting in a judicial capacity means deciding cases, issuing rulings, running proceedings. Signing a personal financial disclosure form is none of that. It is a private filing every federal judge makes as an individual, under the same law that binds every other filer. Roberts signed his own forms, and the forms carried false descriptions of his household income. That conduct is personal, not the exercise of judicial office, so the office’s stated judicial-capacity limit does not apply to it.
No rule gives a Supreme Court Justice a private-conduct exemption that other members do not get. Federal judges answer to bar discipline for personal dishonesty. Justices hold the same bar memberships and take the same oath, bound by the same rules of professional conduct. A member who claims those rules do not reach him has to name the provision that exempts him. The office claimed Roberts was outside its authority and named no such provision, because there is none. The absence of an earlier case against a sitting Justice settles nothing. No rule bars the office from acting, and the office named nothing that does.
That citation is the D.C. Bar’s entire legal basis for refusing to examine his conduct and his disclosure forms. Without it, the jurisdiction claim has no basis, and their own rule required them to let Roberts respond.
A Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel signed his name to that reasoning. This is too convenient to be an error. Either it is the kind of error that means this person should not have a job anymore, or it is intentionally misleading, which is a betrayal of their responsibilities worthy of being fired.
Third, their own record. The office does not actually behave as though it believes the jurisdiction theory applied in this letter, and the same person who used it in this case was arguing the opposite two years ago.
The office that closed my complaint is led by Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton Fox.
In 2024, Fox was counsel of record when that office brought disciplinary charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former senior official in the Justice Department. Clark made the identical argument the office now makes for Roberts, that his federal role put him outside the Bar’s authority. Fox’s office rejected that argument and appealed to the DC Court of Appeals, which agreed and held there is “no exemption or immunity from bar discipline” under its Rules for DC Bar members who violate those Rules while serving as attorneys for the federal government. Fox argued to that court, and won, that holding high federal office does not exempt a member from Bar discipline.
The office also disciplined a federal administrative law judge in 2001, in a case called Slattery, for personal dishonesty unconnected to his work on the bench, and it did so with no criminal charge ever filed, acting on the documented record before it.
And if the fallback is that there was nothing here worth pursuing, the complaint itself refutes that. The office tells the public, on its own website, that a complaint is docketed and sent to the attorney for a response when it “alleges facts that, if true, would constitute a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct.” That is the office’s own stated test.
The complaint documents what the whistleblower brought forward. Kendal Price, a former managing director at the recruiting firm where Jane Roberts worked, filed a sworn affidavit with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the Justice Department, attaching the firm’s internal spreadsheets. Those spreadsheets show Jane Roberts was paid ten million dollars in commissions across seven years, income her husband reported as salary for sixteen years. A partner at the firm testified under oath that she was the highest-earning recruiter in the company by a wide margin, and Price testified that commissions that large going to someone with her limited recruiting experience were a stark anomaly in the industry. Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman’s written analysis concluded that calling the commissions salary is wrong as a matter of law, and Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, wrote that Roberts misdescribed his wife’s earnings. That is the kind of complaint the office’s own standard says gets docketed and sent to the member for a response. The office never applied that standard. It declined on jurisdiction instead.
I am not the first person to watch this office decline a complaint against someone powerful. In 2020, a group of twenty-seven lawyers that included four past presidents of the DC Bar filed a complaint against Attorney General William Barr, and the office declined it. As reported at the time, one of those past presidents, Andrea Ferster, criticized the office for not applying to the nation’s chief law enforcement officer the same standards it applies to other members. Another DC lawyer, Alan Roth, paid his bar dues under protest and pointed the office to Rule XI, Section 6, the same provision I am pointing to now.
When Fox was asked about the Barr closure, he defended the office by saying that declining to docket a complaint is not the same as declining to investigate, and that an undocketed matter against a public figure might still be under review. It also might not be under investigation.
The office closed my complaint but this isn’t over. The DC Court of Appeals holds the ultimate authority over this office. It created the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, it appoints the Board on Professional Responsibility that supervises the office, and it reviews the Board’s dispositions. I am now taking the matter to the Board, and I have asked it to order the office to process my complaint under its own rule, or to explain in writing why the Court’s authority over a Bar member does not reach Roberts. If the Board declines, I will ask the Court, which has the authority to direct its own disciplinary bodies to follow the rules it wrote.
Applying the rules to every member of the Bar, including the powerful ones, is the entire function of the office that closed the barrage of complaints against Roberts. Here are two things you can do in the next few minutes to nudge things towards justice.
The first is to contact the Board on Professional Responsibility, which supervises this office and can order it to process my complaint under its own rule.
The Board takes public correspondence at 430 E Street NW, Suite 138, Washington, DC 20001, and by phone at 202-638-4290.
The second is to call your own member of Congress and ask them to support the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, the bill Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson lead that would create a process to investigate ethics violations by the justices. Its cosponsors already include Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District and Jennifer McClellan of Virginia.
What can you do to change things beyond that? We have three full length books and a dozen booklets answering that question, all available for free with download links below. You can also check out our four pieces of model legislation that are shared directly with legislators and activists. You can join the Discord community of nearly 1,000 organizers (when we open back up invitations).
Thanks for being here.
Check out our books, booklets, and model legislation for more info.
Toppling Tyrants: A Field Guide to Dismantling American Fascism — physical copy / free download
Conservatism: America’s Personality Disorder — physical copy / free download
Intro to Soft Secession — physical copy / free download
Oppositional Federalism and You — physical copy / free download
Grab Them By The E.A.R.R.: How to Get Politicians to Do What You Want — physical copy / free download
More Free downloads:
Soft Secession: 100 Policies That Pass
Being Dangerous: Go From Activist to Operative
Soft Secession: 100 Policies That Pass
All Four Completed Model Legislation Bills
The Opposition Guide to Tax Warfare
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