Top DHS lawyer turns tables on 128 ex-judges after Bar declines ‘Worst of the Worst’ complaint

128 former judges signed onto a bar complaint against one DHS lawyer, and it went nowhere. That's not a footnote, that's the whole story. When the Florida Bar looks at a filing with that much institutional weight behind it and still says no thanks, somebody miscalculated badly.

James Percival's comparison to the Hunter Biden laptop saga is sharper than it first sounds. In both cases you had a real controversy get waved off as conspiracy talk, only for the underlying facts to hold up while the people doing the waving off faced no consequences for being wrong. Calling this "Bar-fare" is blunt, but it names something real: using a licensing body as a political cudgel against a government lawyer doing his job isn't oversight, it's a workaround for people who lost the actual argument.

What's notable is who signed the complaint. Former judges aren't supposed to be a reliable bloc for anything, let alone a coordinated letter targeting one attorney's immigration enforcement work. That's 128 people lending their credentials to a complaint that a bar association, not exactly known for reflexive conservative sympathies, decided didn't meet the bar for even opening an investigation. Maybe that should prompt some self-reflection among the signatories rather than a search for the next venue to try.

None of this means DHS lawyers are above scrutiny. But scrutiny and a mass-produced complaint engineered to generate headlines are different animals. The Bar apparently saw the difference. Percival is right to say so out loud instead of just quietly accepting the black eye and moving on.