The Justice Department has opened an internal investigation stemming from conduct at the Alaska US attorney’s office after a federal judge resigned over his inappropriate relations with the office’s prosecutors, according to the state’s senior US senator.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) said she is “aware that there is an ongoing investigation at the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice related to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage that I hope moves forward quickly, and I look forward to seeing its results.”
Federal public defenders in Alaska previously asked DOJ’s inspector general to investigate alleged ethical breaches at the prosecutor’s office, which the IG then referred to OPR, Bloomberg Law reported Sept. 10.
Although the professional responsibility office, which reviews allegations of attorney misconduct, isn’t obligated to examine the complaint, law enforcement insiders told Bloomberg Law they expected the matter to prompt an inquiry of the prosecutors’ conduct, which would include how US Attorney Lane Tucker responded upon receiving an employee’s report of sexual abuse from then-District Court Judge Joshua Kindred.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the existence of an OPR investigation. A spokesperson for the Alaska US attorney’s office also didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Tucker’s office referred the complaint to the federal judiciary, which launched a probe that eventually confirmed Kindred engaged in sexual misconduct with his clerk, including after she was hired as an Anchorage-based assistant US attorney, and received nude photos from a more senior prosecutor at the office.
The federal prosecutor who was found to have sent the photos was later promoted by Tucker to a position that gave her oversight of more cases. That’s fueled an extensive review by public defenders and the Alaska US attorney’s office into possible cases in which Kindred failed to recuse due to conflicts of interest.
“We must send a message that there is zero tolerance for this reprehensible behavior in our judicial system or any workplace in this country,” Murkowski’s post added.
Possible Impeachment
Murkowski on Tuesday also said on X that she is “in complete agreement” with a referral by the federal judiciary for Kindred to be impeached. While he resigned from the bench in July, after a judicial council found he created a hostile work environment for his law clerks, a conviction in a Senate impeachment trial could bar him from holding federal office in the future.
But Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday that Kindred’s conviction is “all but impossible,” as he’s no longer a federal official. While he didn’t note Donald Trump by name, he said that 40 sitting senators “have already said that you can’t” convict a private citizen, after the Senate declined to convict the former president for inciting the riots at the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week confirmed that his office received a letter regarding a potential impeachment inquiry into Kindred.
The comments about Kindred’s potential impeachment were made the same day as the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body for federal courts, held its biannual meeting at the US Supreme Court.
Judicial Conference executive committee chair Judge Jeffrey Sutton said at a press briefing that Kindred’s potential impeachment wasn’t discussed at the meeting. He said Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, gave a report on efforts the judiciary has made on workplace conduct issues in recent years, and referenced the referral during that.
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Publish date : 2024-09-12 08:51:00
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