Bar Complaint Against Carr Unlikely to Go Far

The letter -- sent by the Freedom of the Press Foundation to the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) -- calls for Carr to be disbarred, arguing that he has violated the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct in his handling of the Skydance/Paramount deal and actions against numerous FCC licensees. “Carr’s willingness to abuse his authority as FCC chair to further Trump’s scheme to launder illegal bribes through the court system warrants disbarment on its own,” the letter said.

Bar associations tend to stay out of political battles and focus on misconduct involving actual law practice, several law professors told us. “There's a strong possibility this will go absolutely nowhere,” said Michael Frisch, a professor and ethics counsel at the Georgetown University Law Center. Carr’s office and the FCC didn’t comment.

The FPF letter said Carr violated D.C. Bar professional conduct standards by overstating the FCC’s authority, using the legal system to facilitate bribery, abusing regulatory authority, and improperly coordinating with outside political actors. Its principal focus is the Skydance deal and President Donald Trump’s settlement with Paramount. Carr “slow-walked” the merger review while Trump -- whom the letter identified as “Carr’s close ally whose golden bust he wears as a lapel pin” -- used a frivolous lawsuit “to extract a $16 million settlement.” Carr “waited until his boss had the cash in hand,” the letter said. “It is hard to imagine attorney conduct more brazenly unethical than helping a politician turn both the courts and the government agency they chair into conduits for bribery.”

The letter also pointed to threatening letters that Carr has sent to Comcast, PBS, NPR, Audacy, Verizon and others as examples of misconduct. His “repeated misrepresentations of the FCC’s authority and intimidation of purported investigatory targets to advance political aims violate his ethical obligations,” FPF said. “We respectfully urge the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to investigate these actions and take appropriate disciplinary measures, up to and including disbarring Carr.”

While bar complaints against lawyers are common, most aren’t pursued, Loyola University legal ethics professor Dane Ciolino said in an interview Tuesday. It could be weeks or months before the bar association decides on whether to docket the complaint and move forward, he and Frisch told us. Both said ODC is unlikely to do that. Legal disciplinary organizations tend to stick to matters involving lawyers representing clients and avoid political policy disagreements, they said. “I would be very surprised" to see "a disciplinary agency wade into that morass and be involved with an investigation or an ultimate prosecution of a licensed lawyer for conduct unrelated to the practice of law,” said Ciolino.

“The farther you get from litigation and the closer you get to policy choices, no matter how horrific, the less likelihood you're going to have a prosecution,” Frisch said.

FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern, who authored the letter, told us he believes the matter concerns litigation because of the intersection between Carr’s conduct and the Trump suit against CBS. Carr is “not only sort of testing the waters of partisanship, but expressly working as an agent of a president who has already gotten any number of attorneys he's worked with disciplined for carrying out his antics,” said Stern.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other attorneys connected with Trump have faced disciplinary proceedings over conduct related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Stern said he hopes ODC “will rise to the moment and recognize that perhaps some of those hands-off norms that may have been justified in the past are no longer justified.” But, Frisch noted, similar complaints against former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway “went nowhere.”

If ODC were to consider the complaint, it would likely take years to litigate and have little effect on Carr’s job as FCC chairman, Stern conceded. However, the goal is to limit Carr’s options for future employment, he said.

The FPF letter said Carr is “selling out his agency, the constitution, and all of those consumers to curry favor with the president to whom he’s decided to hitch his wagon.” As such, “these cynical career moves shouldn’t pay off -- Carr should not be able to one day cash in on his political connections to obtain a lucrative legal job.”