Twice failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got some very bad legal news late Wednesday — and she may formally be stripped of her legal license.
A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint this week with the Arkansas state bar the former Secretary of State, seeking to strip her law license over her alleged role in promoting false information about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Democracy Restored filed the complaint citing the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct involving “Dishonesty” and “Prejudice to the Administration of Justice.”
The group is seeking a “formal review of the conduct of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Esq., a licensed attorney in the State of Arkansas, in connection with her actions during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
The Arkansas Supreme Court Office of Professional Conduct confirmed that the grievance was received Wednesday morning and “will be processed as all complaints are.”
The complaint centers on Clinton’s campaign’s promotion of the Steele dossier, a largely discredited report that fueled the government’s Russia-Trump investigation. The organization pointed to recently declassified federal documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee that it says prove Clinton authorized a plan to tie Trump to Russia.
“Within this release, there is an annex, which suggests that Clinton approved a plan created by one of her advisers to release false information with the purpose ‘to smear’ her political opponent during a presidential campaign and distract from the news surrounding her own legal accusations,” the complaint states.
Democracy Restored Director Houston Keene said Clinton’s use of the “bunk” Steele dossier to “harm a political opponent is a clear violation of ethical norms and, potentially, the Arkansas bar’s rules of conduct.”
“The Arkansas bar must take a hard look at former Secretary Clinton’s involvement in this scandal and take action where needed, including testimony under oath to the bar about her actions if necessary,” Keene said in a statement.
The complaint alleges that Clinton’s campaign elevated “unverified” and “unvetted” information to “injure her political opponent” and cites recently released records to allege that she “personally signed off on an effort to amplify this bad intelligence to the media and federal law enforcement.”
“The Clinton campaign fed this information to the FBI, media, and others in Washington, D.C.,” the Democracy Restored complaint says. “These unverified and false allegations became so synonymous with Hillary Clinton that Special Counsel John Durham called the intelligence the ‘Clinton Plan intelligence.'”
“If there is one political scandal synonymous with the 2016 election, it is Operation Crossfire Hurricane,” a Democracy Restored director said. “Former Secretary Clinton’s utilization of a bunk dossier by a foreign ex-spy to harm a political opponent violates basic ethical norms as well as the Arkansas bar’s own rules of conduct for attorneys. The Arkansas bar needs to take a serious look at former Secretary Clinton’s involvement in this scandal and take appropriate action.”
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee financed research into Trump-Russia allegations through the debunked Steele dossier. A Federal Election Commission investigation accused Clinton of misrepresenting financial funding as legal services to obscure the spending.
The Clinton campaign denied claims it misrepresented how it financially backed the Steele dossier, although the campaign and the DNC agreed in 2022 to settle the case by paying $113,000 to the FEC.
The Steele dossier sparked various federal investigations into Trump during the 2016 campaign, including investigations from former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.
The complaint notes that no criminal charges have been filed against Clinton, acknowledging this is a threshold needed to violate American Bar Association rules relating to lawyers who “commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects.”
“Recently released records have again increased the prospect of a federal investigation into her conduct,” the complaint states. “Regardless, the legal profession holds its members to higher standards.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has expressed concern that Clinton benefited from the Russia-Trump investigation. Gabbard declassified documents in July that she said provided evidence that the Obama administration’s intelligence officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork” for a federal investigation into Russian ties to Trump’s campaign.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s principal interests relating to the 2016 election were to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process, not show any preference of a certain candidate,” Gabbard told reporters. “In fact, this report shows Putin held back leaking — held back from leaking compromising material on Hillary Clinton prior to the election, instead planning to release it after the election to weaken what Moscow viewed as an inevitable Clinton presidency.”
The ethics complaint comes after months of the Trump administration pledging to fully investigate the Russia collusion narrative and one day after Gabbard stripped security clearances from 37 current and former intelligence officials, accusing them of politicizing and manipulating intelligence.
A DNI memo sent out Monday included the names of officials who worked at the CIA, NSA, State Department and National Security Council, including former Obama DNI James Clapper, who Gabbard claimed told officials to “compromise” normal procedures to rush a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment related to Russia’s influence in the 2016 election.
“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Gabbard wrote on X. “Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”
The complaint follows claims by Gabbard and others that evidence shows the Russia-Trump investigation was severely compromised by partisan bias favoring Clinton. Clinton’s name has resurfaced in recent weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee released previously classified documents related to the “Russiagate” scandal.