DOJ Lawyer Quits Before Judicial Scolding for AI Brief Error (1)

An assistant US attorney in North Carolina said he’s resigning over AI-created fabricated quotes and erroneous citations in an AI-produced court brief.

Assistant US attorney Rudy Renfer said he’s made “a personal decision to separate from the office” of the US attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina during a Tuesday afternoon show-cause hearing. Magistrate Judge Robert Numbers chastised Renfer’s “disappointing” conduct, including for a lack of candor in accounting for the errors when it was discovered.

Renfer said after he accidentally overwrote and lost a prior version of the filing, he “felt panicked” and had AI rewrite it, then filed it thinking he’d reviewed it when he filed. He took full responsibility for the “unacceptable” filling, stating he’d been working on multiple filings and “put too much on myself at the same time.”

Numbers said the case was especially disappointing given the particular “power and responsibility” of the US attorney’s office. He also repeatedly suggested that Renfer’s explanations “strained credulity” including as to why his filed explanation didn’t mention AI.

US attorney W. Ellis Boyle said his office acted quickly upon learning of the problematic brief before the judge scheduled his show-cause hearing. It, sent office-wide commincations warning about use if AI, and the case had been referred to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Boyle also said the hearing was the first he’d heard confirmed that Renfer used AI, though he had suspicions.

When Boyle asked Numbers if he has additional questions near the end of the roughly hour-long hearing, the judge said “I certainly have more questions, but I don’t know that they’ll be answered to my satisfaction.”

The US attorney’s office is representing the Defense Department in the underlying lawsuit by a North Carolina pro se litigant Derence Fivehouse. The retired Air Force colonel, an attorney himself, is challenging a policy limiting availability of GLP-1 weight loss medications for TRICARE for Life participants.

The plaintiff asserted that a response brief to a motion to supplement the administrative redord signed by Renfer included fabricated quotes and misstated the holdings of several cases. In a reply, Renfer said he “inadvertently included incorrect citations to case law from this circuit” and attributed the errors to the “inadvertent filing of an unfinalized draft document.”

Numbers ordered Tuesday’s hearing because he still had “serious concerns about the accuracy” of certain quotes and representations in Renfer’s filings, as well as his explanation of them.

Renfer has worked at the US attorney’s office since 2009 after stints as a local prosecutor, assistant attorney general, and solo practitioner, according to his LinkedIn profile and the state bar member directory.

He told Numbers he “gained nothing” with fabricated citations to mundane, uncontroversial administrative law, noting the “only thing I do is run the risk of losing my job.” It also cost him his reputation with his colleagues along with the court, he said.

But Numbers said that Renfer took “shortcuts” on “basic work” made it “all the more outrageous.” He added that filings by Renfer he reviewed—beyond the AI brief and his explanation—added “grave concerns” over what was, at best, “sloppiness.”

“I don’t think it’s helpful. It’s hurful to your cause,” Numbers said. He also pushed back on Renfer’s characterization that his error wasn’t intentional, saying “it sounds like you intentionally used AI, and intentionally filed it to the court.”

“I did not intend to file an AI draft to the court,” Renfer said.

Numbers also said, as Renfer explained the mechanics of how the erroneous filing was made, that the “challenge” is that Renfer’s lack of candor “calls into question any other statements” he made to the court.

“I don’t know what to say,” Renfer said. “I can only tell you what I know.”

The case is Fivehouse v. U.S. Department of Defense, E.D.N.C., No. 2:25-cv-00041, Show-cause hearing 3/10/26.