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.

Rules of Professional Conduct: a common tool for political payback

The Campaign for Accountability filed the May 27 ethics complaint against Blanche with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of New York and the Committee on Grievances of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which are based in New York City, unlike Democracy Restored's Albany filing.

It relies on U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw's dismissal of illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia's indictment "as the unrebutted product of a presumptively vindictive prosecution instigated by" Blanche and his firing of a prosecutor for refusing to make "factually unsupported" arguments in the case.

Blanche violated at least four provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct, the complaint alleges, including conduct involving "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation" and "prejudicial to the administration of justice," and "potentially" directing other DOJ lawyers to make "material misrepresentations" and "to act despite a personal conflict of interest."

Democracy Restored's complaint against Patel also alleged several violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct, a useful tool for going after political enemies, from Eastman in California to Arizona state Rep. Alex Kolodin for challenging election irregularities and former DOJ special counsel Jack Smith in New York for his investigation of first-term President Trump.

The DOJ report shows "Biden DOJ senior leadership and Task Force members frequently sided with abortion clinics" and "displayed contemptable [sic] bias during criminal proceedings" in FACE Act trials, "while ignoring or downplaying vandalism and attacks against pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship," the complaint says.

"Prosecutors disparaged defendants’ religious beliefs, Catholic judges, and defense counsel" and aggressively arrested some defendants rather than let them "self-surrender," the DOJ report said, noting the Biden administration pursued sentences more than twice as long for pro-life as for pro-choice FACE Act defendants.

Tells defense no FACE Act 'historical data,' but gave it to abortion lobbyists

Patel committed criminal as well as ethical violations, according to Democracy Restored, though it doesn't always clearly distinguish between them. The DOJ report "documents numerous proverbial smoking guns, including emails from Patel to his colleagues detailing prohibited behavior and bias" against "pro-life Americans and Christians."

He was "brazen enough to put his playbook in handwriting," the complaint says, citing Patel's 2022 law review article "FACE Off with Anti-Abortion Extremism" in a DOJ journal. His conduct "represents not a momentary lapse but a persistent, deliberate campaign of uneven application of the law against Americans exercising their constitutional rights."

It alleges he violated professional conduct rules that prohibit "illegal conduct" and "unlawful discrimination," whether under federal, state or local law, or subjecting pro-lifers to "different punishments, pains, or penalties," and by withholding exonerating or mitigating evidence. Democracy Restored emphasizes Patel need not be convicted for discipline.

"One particularly egregious example" is Patel seeking authorization to bring FACE Act misdemeanor charges for a 2020 abortion clinic protest and blockade, which the U.S. attorney's office declined at the time, after the spring 2022 leak of the Dobbs opinion overturning federal abortion rights. Such "selective enforcement" is "illegal conduct," the complaint says.

Patel also talked a prosecutor out of providing the defense in one case "historical data on FACE Act prosecutions," claiming that would "open gates we will struggle to close later," then told the defense that DOJ didn't have such records while giving "substantially identical information" to the National Abortion Federation, the DOJ report said.

The complaint notes New York bar rules bind lawyers to follow the "ethical rules of whichever jurisdiction they are practicing in," meaning Patel may have violated other states' lawyer rules based on "the individual locations of each alleged violation."

"Patel bears responsibility for the actions of the attorneys and staff under his supervision" who committed violations, such as "aggressively" monitoring pro-life activists and "aggressively screen[ing] the jury pool with an impermissible anti-Christian bias" so defendants were less likely to get fair trials, the complaint says.

The complaint emphasizes his especially close communications with the National Abortion Federation, as documented in the DOJ report, to receive their intelligence on pro-life protests so that DOJ could investigate them and then report nonpublic information back to the abortion lobbyists.

Prosecutions "motivated by a desire to discourage protected speech or expression" are unconstitutional, "and any hint" of prosecution morphing into persecution "irreparably erodes trust in our state bars if action is not taken," Democracy Restored said. 

"It does not matter if the prosecution was ultimately successful; the effort itself violates the First Amendment in spirit and in law."