Cincinnati-based talk radio host Pete Santilli has filed an ethics complaint against activist attorney Larry Klayman over alleged violations of agreements he made to represent him and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
The ethics complaint against Klayman, who made a reputation for himself with frequent lawsuits against the Clinton administration in the 1990s as founder of Judicial Watch, comes as one of his clients, former Infowars correspondent and author Dr. Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., has indicated he is willing to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller in a case against a former friend and colleague Roger Stone.
The longtime associate of President Trump was arrested last weekend in dramatic fashion by the FBI at his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home after being indicted by Mueller on seven counts including lying to Congress and obstruction.
In his complaint, which Santilli filed with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel’s Board on Professional Responsibility with the D.C. Court of Appeals, he alleges that Klayman, whom Bundy appointed as his lawyer in 2016, misrepresented himself and the Nevada rancher after promising to “get relief for our unlawful detention without due process,” the document states.
The complaint was years in the making.
It stems from a case filed by the U.S. government against Bundy, his sons, Santilli, and others in 2014, accusing them with a criminal conspiracy over a confrontation with Bureau of Land Management agents on Bundy’s property. Heavily-armed BLM agents descended upon Bundy’s ranch and confiscated or killed many of his cattle after his failure to pay back grazing fees to the government; Bundy insisted that the land he worked has been in his family for generations and that neither the federal government nor the Nevada state government had any claim to it.
Eventually, Bundy and his two sons, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were indicted over the standoff. But lawyers for the family proved that federal prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence in their case which led to a mistrial. So, in January 2018, U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed all charges against him and his sons, citing gross prosecutorial misconduct. Using words like “flagrant” and reckless,” she chided the prosecution for withholding evidence, noting “that the universal sense of justice has been violated.” (Related: Judge dismisses ALL charges against rancher Cliven Bundy, three others, citing ‘FLAGRANT MISCONDUCT’ by federal prosecution.)
Klayman betrayal?
Before the case was tossed out, however, Bundy filed suit in federal court against Navarro, then-U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, President Barack Obama and others in May 2016 for placing him in solitary confinement and others, including Santilli, in jail on charges stemming from the 2014 standoff, naming Klayman as lead counsel.
According to Santilli’s complaint, Klayman began accepting payment from donations made to support him, Bundy, and others who felt they had been wrongly charged and incarcerated. The complaint said that Klayman, who Santilli said filed the suit under another attorney’s state bar license “without our permission,” nevertheless “failed to follow up on the case.” He said Klayman performed no legal work and “persuaded” the attorney whose bar license he used, Joel F. Hansen, to ultimately file a “motion to dismiss” the suit to avoid having to pay any legal fees for losing the case.
At one point, Santilli notes in the complaint, defendants provided Klayman with “confidential and privileged legal strategy and discovery material” with the intent of having him schedule a face-to-face meeting with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to plead their case.
While still collecting donations as fees in anticipation of traveling to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Sessions and Rosenstein, Klayman “kept promising” that one was in the offing.
But “after months of failing to follow through with the work he promised, as well as securing an appointment with AG Sessions,” the complaint states, Santilli and his team discovered that Klayman had turned over — without his permission — “our privileged [attorney-client] information to the prosecution team.”
Continuing, the complaint noted, “At no point did we ever give Mr. Klayman permission to let our presentation package be used for anything but an in person [sic] presentation with the Attorney General,” adding that Klayman continued accepting donations as legal fees for well over a year.
‘The case should have never been brought’
Santilli also said that within a few weeks of his trial, Klayman was neither familiar with materials he provided him for the defense nor prepared in any way for court. “This lack of preparation for trial is ultimately one of the primary reasons why I was forced to plead out my case, as it was too risky for me to go to trial and face life in prison” on conspiracy charges. He noted that just weeks later, Bundy, his sons, and another defendant went to trial and had their case tossed out by Navarro “for what our team knew all along — that the prosecutors withheld evidence, falsely testified to the Grand Jury, and ultimately indicted all defendants based on fraud upon the court.”
“Here’s the thing,” Santilli told NewsTarget, “that entire case should have never been brought. [Prosecutors] lied to the grand jury.” Ultimately, Santilli spent 619 days in jail, and his effort, through Klayman, to get Sessions to intervene backfired.
Klayman has since threatened Santilli with legal action.
“Mr. Klayman has threatened me to withdraw my complaint because he claims it is false & I will be held liable criminally,” Santilli said. “I will not withdraw my complaint and will double down with my request to the DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel for a full investigation — if Mr. Klayman believes I have submitted a false complaint, then he should have no worries about going forward with the investigation.”
Klayman has also threatened a lawsuit against Stone and Infowars founder Alex Jones, “essentially crossing the line to work with Robert Muller, either directly or indirectly to take out one of the biggest alternative media sites” in the world, Santilli said in a recent broadcast of his radio show.
Also, as reported by The Hill, Klayman said Corsi may also pursue a lawsuit against Stone and Jones if “they defame us again.”
Read more about the corruption surrounding Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe at RobertMueller.news.
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