DOJ Lawyers Face Bar Complaints Over Conduct in CFPB Case (1)

Three US Justice Department lawyers were hit with bar complaints alleging they made misrepresentations to a federal judge in Washington in a union’s challenge to the Trump administration’s teardown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The three attorneys—Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton, Special Counsel Brad Rosenberg, and trial attorney Liam Holland—made “materially misleading” statements in an effort to assure the court that the administration had no plans to shutter the CFPB, lawyers for the Legal Accountability Center said in complaints filed Thursday with state disciplinary offices.

Internal emails written by CFPB acting Director Russell Vought amounted to a stop-work order for staff, contradicting the government’s filings in the case, according to the complaints from the center, which is helmed by legal advocate and attorney Michael Teter.

“Every day, the Justice Department’s attorneys are going into court and vigorously defending the Executive Branch with integrity,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “Any assertion that our attorneys have engaged in professional misconduct is baseless and unfounded.”

Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the US District Court for the District of Columbia halted the complete dissolution of the CFPB in March, citing many of the same discrepancies between the DOJ’s statements in court and the actions of top CFPB and Department of Government Efficiency personnel behind the scenes.

Teter previously lodged ethics complaints against Trump-linked lawyers through a separate advocacy group, the 65 Project, targeting the likes of Rudolph Giuliani and John Eastman.

“We are seeing a concerted effort to disregard, and quite frankly attack the rule of law,” he told Bloomberg Law. “Because of that, lawyers who care about the integrity of the profession, the integrity of the legal system, the rules of professional conduct, and the values that they serve need to be steadfast in holding those lawyers who violate the rules accountable.”

The case brought by the National Treasury Employees Union—which represents most CFPB employees—and its co-plaintiffs awaits a ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, likely to determine the fate of federal workers whose careers at the agency have been in jeopardy since Trump took office.

Lawyers for the Trump administration have argued Jackson’s injunction was an encroachment on agency efforts to downsize in accordance with presidential policy, saying the agency would maintain key functions mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Jackson’s preliminary injunction put the CFPB shutdown moves on hold until she had a chance to rule on the merits of the union’s case against the Trump administration. The DC Circuit briefly narrowed the scope of her injunction, then reinstated Jackson’s order after the CFPB went forward with a drastic reduction-in-force plan that intended to slash the majority of the agency’s headcount.

The DOJ lawyers’ alleged misconduct included filing briefs that miscast the steps taken by top CFPB officials as an attempt to streamline and tighten staff supervision, burying key facts in employees’ written declarations, and inducing colleagues to commit similar violations of Massachusetts, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, DC, bar standards.

Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP represents the Legal Accountability Center.

The case is NTEU v. Vought, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00381.