Rules should not prevent office holders such as Ashley Moody from being disbarred

In George Orwell’s classic novel “Animal Farm,” a parody on communism, a dictatorial pig named Napoleon corrupts the revolutionary slogan “all animals are equal” with the caveat “but some animals are more equal than others.”

That can happen in a democracy also. Establishing a policy with no basis in the statutes or the Constitution, the Justice Department has held since 1973 that a U.S. president can’t be charged with a federal crime while he remains in office. No citizen is ever supposed to be above the law, yet somehow there is always one who is, at least temporarily.

(That seems to be stretching into a rather long time for Donald J. Trump.)

In Florida, some animals are definitely more equal than others.

There’s a loophole for constitutional officers who must be members of the Bar. That’s all judges, state attorneys, public defenders and the attorney general.

Like every other lawyer, they’re supposedly bound by an elaborate code of ethics that, among other things, prohibits them from burdening the courts with frivolous litigation or false claims. A disobedient lawyer can be suspended or disbarred.

To the public’s puzzlement and alarm, the Bar is now proposing a rule to clarify publicly that those who hold certain public office can’t be disciplined for code violations before they leave office. A serious flaw in the proposal precludes even beginning an investigation before that point, which could be many years after witnesses’ memories have faded.

Although no official rule is in place, these elected officials have enjoyed similar protections since the 1970s, when the Florida Supreme Court secretly halted an ethics probe against a state attorney over alleged misconduct in a civil matter he had handled before his election. The court held that because the constitution requires state attorneys to be members of the Bar, the potential penalty of disbarment would effectively remove one from office, usurping the governor’s suspension power.

The court kept that opinion out of the public record but the St. Petersburg Times sniffed it out. There was a similar unpublished outcome in 1980, according to the Bar, which is governed by the Florida Supreme Court. The court undoubtedly will approve the new rule. But it shouldn’t. Unethical lawyers should be expelled from any offices that require them to be lawyers, and the court should find a way to make that happen.

Why now?

The Bar isn’t saying, but the timing seems more than coincidental. The Bar’s Board of Governors took action to develop the new rule not long after the Bar had fended off a petition calling on it to investigate Attorney General Ashley Moody over her attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s election. The petition was posted online by Pam Keith, a lawyer licensed in the District of Columbia who lives in Florida, and she said that it picked up 1,700 signatures.

Moody was one of the Republican attorneys general who joined Ken Paxton of Texas in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. They claimed, without evidence, that there had been fraud, echoing Trump’s unfounded claims that had already been rejected by judges in those states. The court tossed the suit on a 7-2 vote, holding that Moody and the others had no standing to file it.

Retired Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles T. Wells sent Moody a letter saying her role in that “patently meritless case” was a discredit to the state and “a grave mark against your service as attorney general.”

He was 110% right. The attorney general is supposed to represent the people of Florida rather than act as a partisan hack for the benefit of Donald Trump or any other politician. The Paxton lawsuit, for which Paxton’s own state’s Bar is attempting to discipline him, fed the Big Lie that Trump continues to spout like an overflowing sewer. It is subversive in every sense of that word; it is a relentless effort to undermine the public’s faith that our elections are honest and fair. Moody contributed her name and her office to that subversion. She should be ashamed.

In that tawdry partisanship, she followed the sorry example of her predecessor, Pam Bondi, who blew off consumer complaints about the fraudulent Trump University right after soliciting and getting a campaign contribution from him. Bondi is now running Trump’s super PAC, polishing her claim to a Supreme Court seat if Trump returns to the White House.

The attorney general’s office is by far the most important of the Cabinet positions. In a sense, it is more critical than even the governor’s. For the “people’s lawyer,” as Florida used to call its attorney general, to be on the same wrong side of history as Trump hacks Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell is as much of a betrayal as Bondi’s and Moody’s earlier attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act through which more than 2.1 million Floridians receive health insurance.

As for Moody and Florida’s version of “Animal Farm,” the pass that the Bar is giving her is put to shame by what has been happening to Daniel Uhlfelder, a lawyer who doesn’t have the transitory immunity of being a constitutional officer.

A three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal, which is becoming almost indistinguishable from the governor’s office, called on the Bar to discipline and possibly disbar Uhlfelder for appealing a trial judge’s decision to dismiss his suit that attempted to force the governor to close North Florida beaches during the coronavirus pandemic. The trial judge had encouraged Uhlfelder to appeal. The court also ordered a state attorney to pursue sanctions against Uhlfelder for remarks he made criticizing the court.

Those cases have yet to play out. He could cut them short by winning election as a judge.

Or as attorney general.

Now there’s a thought.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.