The ABA is certainly having a revelatory month. We just witnessed this, and also in July the ABA demonstrated that it is part of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, legal division, by releasing as an alleged “Formal Ethics Opinion” what is nothing of the kind. Formal Ethics Opinion 524 is, in reality, the ABA’s version of the too-clever-by-half video issued by six Democrats calling for troops to defy “illegal orders.” Members of the military know that they have an officially sanctioned obligation to refuse to carry out illegal orders; the video posted last November by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan was a transparent effort to announce to the American public that the President was likely to issue such orders. There had been no impetus for the video, just the usual anti-Trump slander and libel that he was secretly plotting a military imposition of martial law or some other “authoritarian” maneuver.

To its permanent shame (if I have anything to do with it), the American Bar Association just did the same thing. It is a purely partisan, anti-Trump Administration act, one that exposes the ABA for the untrustworthy, power and influence-abusing organization it has become.

ABA Model Rule 1.13, which every state has adopted more or less as written, explains that lawyers representing organizations, including the government, have an ethical obligation “to report an officer, employee or other person associated with the organization is engaged in action,intends to act, or refuses to act in a matter related to the representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to the organization or a violation of law that reasonably might be imputed to the organization, and that is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization.” If substantial injury is likely to result, in the judgment of the lawyer, Rule 1.13 requires the lawyer initially to “refer the matter to higher authority in the organization,” and, if warranted, to the “highest authority that can act on behalf of the organization as determined by applicable law.” If the highest authority “insists upon or fails to address in a timely and appropriate manner an action or refusal to act that is clearly a violation of law,” and the organization’s lawyer “reasonably believes that the violation is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the organization,” the lawyer “may then reveal information relating to the representation whether or not Rule 1.6 [the confidentiality rule] permits such disclosure” to an authority outside the organizational client. That information may be revealed, however, only “to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to prevent substantial injury to the organization.”