The legal establishment cheered when the California Supreme Court disbarred President Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman for concocting a scheme to present alternate, pro-Trump elector slates to then-Vice President Mike Pence in the 2020 election, deeming it an ethics violation, while Eastman portrayed the proceeding as a political prosecution.A progressive watchdog launched a similar effort last week against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, alleging systemic ethics violations in his prosecution of an alleged MS-13 gang member that should cost Blanche his New York law license.
Now a conservative group is seeking to flip the script, asking New York to disbar an architect of the Biden administration’s scheme to prosecute allegedly peaceful pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s elimination of federal abortion rights.
Democracy Restored shared its ethics complaint against former Civil Rights Division trial attorney Sanjay Patel exclusively with Just the News before filing it Monday with the Attorney Grievance Committee for the Third Judicial Department, claiming Patel “put his politics above his oath” in his relations with abortion rights groups.
The complaint is largely based on documents revealed in April by the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, which suggest Patel deputized abortion rights groups to surveil their collective enemies in the pro-life movement, shared internal information with abortion lobbyists and even helped them with grant applications.
It also cites the House Judiciary Committee’s March request to then-Attorney Pam Bondi, before Patel’s firing in April, to require Patel to testify about his prosecution of pro-life activist Mark Houck, who was arrested at gunpoint in front of his wife and children for a disputed encounter at an abortion clinic but acquitted by a Philadelphia jury.
As director of the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers under then-Attorney general Merrick Garland, the “hyper-partisan ideologue” Patel has a “documented track record of selectively targeting his ideological opponents,” the complaint says.
The Weaponization Working Group report exposed the prior administration’s “unequal application of justice” under the FACE Act, said Democracy Restored Director Houston Keene. The law also protects houses of worship from disruptions, such as the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasion of Minnesota’s Cities Church.
It shows “Patel was a key player in this malfeasance and calls into question his ability to hold a law license,” with his record of “targeted and unconstitutional attacks” on pro-life advocates, said Keene, a former Fox News journalist and Capitol Hill aide.
“We are dedicated to exposing federal employees who impede the work mandated by the American people in the name of their own personal or special interests,” Keene wrote in debuting the group in December 2024. It’s perhaps best known for targeting Hillary Clinton’s law license in Arkansas for her ties to the Obama administration’s Russiagate scandal.
Patel didn’t answer Just the News queries to his personal email address as listed in the New York State Unified Court System’s attorney directory.
