Republican state lawmakers are again going after the State Bar of Arizona, even though they seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the organization works.
Their prime examples for why the State Bar should be stripped of its role in policing attorneys were a California man who was disbarred in the Grand Canyon State for soliciting nude photos from a potential client and an attorney whose law license was suspended for making unfounded claims about superior court judges.
The State Bar of Arizona, which is responsible for licensing attorneys in the state and is overseen by the Arizona Supreme Court, has for decades been a target for Republican legislators. In recent years, GOP criticism of the organization has centered on discipline doled out to lawyers who defended election-challenge lawsuits in 2020 and 2022 that the courts found to be frivolous and brought in bad faith.
Republican Sens. Wendy Rogers and Mark Finchem invited the lawyers with grievances against the State Bar to testify in front of the Arizona Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee during a hearing on Wednesday. Finchem has a particular grudge against the State Bar after the attorney who represented him when he challenged his loss in the 2022 race for secretary of state was sanctioned and forced to retire for a year for bringing a case with “no legal merit.”
During the committee hearing, Rogers, a Republican from Flagstaff who chairs the committee, read portions of an affidavit submitted by Jeffrey Moffatt, who was disbarred by the Arizona Supreme Court in 2016 after he repeatedly asked a potential client for nude photos in exchange for legal services. Moffatt claimed he was denied due process in the proceedings.
Rogers and Finchem, who hails from Prescott, traveled to California in October to attempt to testify on Moffatt’s behalf in a federal criminal case stemming from his disbarment. Moffatt was indicted by a California grand jury in 2021 for failing to disclose to the Social Security Administration or his clients that he had been disbarred in Arizona while he continued to represent elderly and disabled clients in Social Security benefits cases in California and other states.
Finchem claimed that Moffatt was found guilty of only one of five counts against him for “checking a box” on a Social Security Administration code of conduct form, but by checking that box Moffatt falsely claimed that he had not been disbarred.
When Sen. Analise Ortiz, a Phoenix Democrat, asked Rogers if Moffatt was the same man who was disbarred for soliciting the nude photo, Rogers said she didn’t know. She then accused Ortiz of sullying Moffatt’s character.
“This is about not whatever that is, it’s not germane. What’s germane is why he was disbarred,” Rogers said.
Continue reading: https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/attorney-disbarred-seeking-nude-pics-client-proves-state-bar-corruption-gop-senators