CORRUPTION SUB CURIA

A Brief History of the Still-Sealed Attorney Disqualification Matters in the Thomas L. Bromwell Political Corruption Prosecution. By: William C. Bond Date: March 15, 2013 Introduction: Sub Curia is a Latin term which means under law. Sometimes a court may hold a matter under consideration, awaiting something to happen, like waiting for parties filing of some documents or to write an opinion. But, there is another legal slang version of the term when a judge holds a matter undecided, seemingly forever, because the judge does not like a party or a partys position. This technique is particularly insulting in this case because the hidden documents at issue would surely cause one or more highly-connected lawyers to be disbarred and for several federal judges to be judicially reprimanded or worse. Back story: The prosecution of former Maryland State Senator Thomas L. Bromwell, Sr., in 2007 by the Maryland U.S. Attorneys Office concerned a highly-publicized Maryland political corruption case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Nine people were ultimately prosecuted and convicted by the Government. During the case, presiding U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ordered a large amount of the filings sealed. Motz also disqualified the five attorneys serving as primary counsel to the three primary defendants on the eve of the trial on March 14, 2007, at the urging of the U.S. Attorneys Office. The trial was then postponed. Mr. Bromwell and his wife subsequently pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison. Leading up to that non trial, The Baltimore Sun Company intervened in the case by hiring a top Washington, D.C. law firm to move to unseal the record. On March 9, 2007, the district court held a hearing on The Baltimore Suns action. After the hearing, the soon-to-be-disqualified attorneys and Judge Motz assembled in his chambers for further discussions in camera in private. Surprisingly, the counsel for The Baltimore Sun Company declined an invitation to attend this chambers conference, of which there is no record of on the docket. Finally, on March 16, 2007, the court unsealed and/or unsealed in redacted form some of the documents at issue. The documents unsealed then became the fodder for several articles in The Sun which focused on Mr. Bromwells uncouth conduct, but otherwise lacked much real substance.

Importantly, in his order, Judge Motz declined to release the attorney disqualification and prosecutorial misconduct documents which detailed the dispute continuelle between the U.S. Attorneys Office and the now disqualified attorneys, stating that the matter was now before a federal grand jury. Later in 2007, the grand jury failed to deliver an indictment against any of the disqualified attorneys. Nevertheless, the attorney disqualification papers remained sealed. Disputing that two years later, on March 9, 2009, this writer intervened in this case as a private citizen moving without benefit of counsel to unseal the attorney disqualification and prosecutorial misconduct documents, as well as any documents related to those matters. My reasoning was simply to obtain information about one of the disqualified attorneys with whom I had been in a long-running legal dispute in another case. The Government filed papers not opposing this request which was unprecedented in the history of DOJ criminal prosecutions. The media coverage was national in scope via the Associated Press heady indeed. Judge Motz, now not having the federal grand jury as an excuse to not release the subject documents, wrote a new order stating [T]his court will not permit itself to be a medium through which unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing made by a convicted felon would be publicized, causing irreparable damage to the reputations of third parties who are the subject of the allegations, and declined to release the requested documents [u]nless otherwise ordered to do so [by the Fourth Circuit] even though there is no body of case law precedent which sanctions sealing attorney disqualification papers. Presumably, Motz was referring in his order to a Government witness, a convicted felon, who had supplied the Government with the information they used to attempt to prosecute the disqualified attorneys. This writer then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit where the Government again filed papers not opposing the release of the primary documents sought. Nevertheless, the Fourth Circuit, by unpublished opinion, declined to see any reversible error by Judge Motz. Later, in the Summer of 2010, after the Fourth Circuit appeal of this case was concluded, this writer then had two meetings with the Fourth Circuit Judge, Paul V. Niemeyer, who had issued the unpublished opinion totaling six hours in length in which he was told many things which were very surprising. The law on sealing court records: The U.S. Supreme Court beginning in 1980 in Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0448_0555_ZS.html, began to issue a string of cases which form the precedent regarding the sealing of court records in the United States. While lawyers like to make the law into some unknowable magic force, any lay person reading this opinion would see that the Supreme Court carefully reconstructed the history of openness in court proceedings from the time of early England to the present day, and explained why the concept is the cornerstone of our justice system. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which controls the precedent followed by our Maryland District Court, then

issued an opinion in 1984 In re Knight Publishing Co., http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/743/231/364616/, wherein they instructed district judges, such as Judge Motz, on how to handle sealing court records, including a non discretionary, mandatory check list they must follow. Facts: Central to this case is the fact that there is a FBI 302 document submitted as evidence under seal which describes the alleged criminal misconduct of at least one of the disqualified attorneys in relation to actions taken with a felonious witness. This FBI 302 document was the genesis for the Government to file their attorney disqualification paper(s) with the court, for the soon-tobe-disqualified attorneys to accuse the Government of prosecutorial misconduct, for the Government to take the disqualified attorney(s) before a federal grand jury investigating the alleged criminal misconduct, and for Judge Motz to disqualify the attorneys on the eve of the trial in 2007. Evidence in this case has been hard to come by, but a prime piece of evidence was provided by The Baltimore Suns prior intervention, although none of their reporters picked up on the key information contained therein. This evidence was a transcription of a private teleconference between Judge Motz, the Government, and the soon-to-be-disqualified attorneys dated March 6, 2007. This 2007 in camera teleconference, which was presented to the Fourth Circuit in the previous appeal of this matter, when coupled with Judge Motzs July 16, 2009, order denying my previous motion to intervene and unseal the record shows clear partiality for the disqualified attorneys reputations which have a clear economic value as to their professions and law firms partiality which is unlawful. (The docket in this case does not indicate that this March 6, 2007, in camera teleconference even exists.) In fact, Judge Motz clearly admits to old relationships with the soon-to-be-disqualified attorneys. To wit, in small part: I have been trying to humor defense counsel [a]long. Ive tried to, sort of feeling that things were far overheated, drawing upon old relationships, tried to say, come on, just, you know, take it easy a little bit . . . Judge Motz has never followed the non discretionary Fourth Circuit directives for the sealing of the court records in this case. Judge Motz has also refused on multiple times to explain his relationships with the disqualified attorneys whom he is still protecting from having their misdeeds made public. This would give a reasonable person cause for concern that unacceptable partiality has flavored these proceedings, including not putting certain documents and events onto the docket which would cause more public curiosity. For example, what happened in the non docketed in camera chambers hearing held on March 14, 2007, after which the attorneys were disqualified and the trial postponed?

In fact, Federal law is clear: Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned. U.S. Circuit Judge Paul V. Niemeyer: I am probably the only living person in the U.S. who has ever had an in-person review of his cases and matters with an appellate judge who decided same. Gaining such meetings are extremely difficult. But Judge Niemeyer views himself as a born-again Christian, and thus was the spirit his audience was granted, which this writer found so hypocritical it was laughable had the corruption revealed not been so dangerous and insulting. To put it mildly, Judge Motz and Judge Niemeyer have an extremely close friendship which spans decades, and includes playing tennis, as doubles partners, every Monday for 27-odd years, or more, dining and traveling together, etc. So when Judge Motz made the declaration, Unless otherwise ordered to do so in his July 16, 2009, order in this case, that was as clear a message as could be sent to his old friend and tennis partner that Hey, you better not correct this ruling of mine because I and other people are going to look like fools. This is especially noteworthy considering I had previously asked both Judge Motz and all Maryland Fourth Circuit judges to recuse themselves from ruling in this case, as well as made an ethical challenge to Judge Motz in my 2009 intervention that the mandatory federal attorney misconduct reporting rules were not being followed in this case. In simplest terms, had the previous rulings in this case been overturned on appeal, Judge Motz himself could have faced judicial discipline. In that light, Judge Niemeyer should not have heard the 2009 appeal in this matter because of his too close friendship with Judge Motz and the fact that he would never judicially reprimand his too close friend in ways that would cause public embarrassment, nor subject him to judicial discipline. And, this is exactly what Judge Niemeyer told me in person in 2010. The 2012 Second Motion to Intervene and Unseal the Record: I filed a Second Post Judgment Motion to Intervene in this case on August 22, 2012. This motion presented the Court with (1) new evidence, listed above, which was not known in 2009, that would give a reasonable person cause to believe that the 2009 order in this case should be vacated and the Court recused from any further considerations in this matter. The 2012 Motion also presented the Court with several continuing facts which are related to the recusal issues: (2) that the Fourth Circuits non discretionary proscriptions for sealing court records in this case have never been followed, (3) that the docket is not whole nor accurate a fact admitted to by the Government in their 2009 Fourth Circuit filings (citizens are not even allowed to see the 2007, 2009, & 2012 intervention filings on PACER), and (4) that the federal taxpayers are owed restitution by the disqualified attorneys in this case because the Federal Public Defenders Office had to come in and clean up their mess at huge expense.

Nevertheless, this second action to unseal the record was denied by Judge Motz twice with zero explanation or answer as to the above allegations as to his ethical conflicts, the last order coming on December 5, 2012. Judge Motz was free to do this because, this time around, the Maryland U.S. Attorneys Office watched the battle from the sidelines without taking any action. Rather than waste more time and money on appeals which Judge Niemeyer admitted in person were fixed, this writer decided instead to make a criminal/ judicial complaint to the following people who had authority to rectify the alleged misconduct: The Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit, U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, U.S. Attorney Rod. J. Rosenstein, and Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States David Margolis (who is the no. 4 person, de facto most powerful, and the highest ranking non political appointee at U.S. DOJ). Well, heres a small slice of what happened: the Chief Judge returned the complaint in a plain brown envelope, as if an old-fashioned order of prophylactics. The U.S. Attorney never responded. The DOJ had its Criminal Division write that I should contact the local FBI (who was under direction of the non responding U.S. Attorney). Mikulskis office contacted me to ask permission to forward my complaint to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, permission which was granted and which they confirmed in writing as having so done. But, some two months later, Mikulskis office, after several very testy emails, then sent me a letter with no postmark retracting that they had in fact referred the matter to AG Holder. Finally, the Deputy Associate AG told me on more than one occasion to go jump in the lake, albeit politely. While some people think it is an accomplishment and amazing that I can get all these people on the phone or communicate directly by email I say it means nothing. But, what was most startling to me was that, even at the highest levels, none of these supposed good people wants to do the right thing no matter how hard. Nor do they really care about their oaths, especially if it means they have to admit and rectify a mistake. They only appear to care about their next career move. Most troubling, when hearing the above nonsense, I contacted a former neighbor, whose daughter used to babysit for my stepchildren and who had somehow despite her benign intelligence become a federal bench mate to Judge Motz, about what was going on down at our federal courthouse. The result, a semi-form letter . . . I kid thee not . . . I guess it didnt help that she used to work for him. Status quo: I have done a lot of investigation of Judge Motz who is this man? Well, hes the kind of guy who was born to wealth and still goes to country clubs whose records of inclusion are spotty. He went to Wesleyan College, then law school at U.Va. He has only worked for one prestigious Maryland law firm or for the Government his entire career. Judge Motz is married to one of our three allotted Maryland Fourth Circuit Judges, and, as stated above, he is a very close friend of another of our Fourth Circuit Judges. Importantly, he was a prior U.S. Attorney for Maryland from 1981-1985. I have found there is strong anecdotal evidence that he has placed many, many persons in DOJ jobs, including participating in

selecting and firing U.S. Attorneys for Maryland. There is also ample evidence that he has been directly involved in stacking the Maryland federal bench with hand-picked judges who do his bidding a highly disallowed judicial ethical violation which would demand resignation in and of itself if it was ever formally investigated and proved. Judge Motz was described to me by a former employee as a very nice man. An opinion which is shared, at least superficially, by many people. While that may well be, he was also described to me as a man who has an explosive temper both on the tennis court and in the court room. Most important, he is described as an Episcopalian version of the Godfather he goes after and gets what he wants. And what he appears to want is to be the decider, as George W. Bush used to say, for Baltimore and Maryland. The disqualified attorneys all were and/or are associates or cronies of Judge Motz at one time or another. Further, they all belong to one of the most restricted club memberships in the world, that of former Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) something which has special meaning to Motz. Judge Motz and I have a history as well which he should have taken more seriously, including that he sat on the board of a hospital I once sued and made statements about that matter to third-parties, with seeming impunity. But, this is his way. People he doesnt like are nothing. And he will decide if a lawyer (or lawyers), who should have been disbarred long ago, will continue to make an income into the millions every year. He decides if his friend on the Fourth Circuit rules ones way or another, as he did in this case the law be dammed. And he will decide when a case goes to another judge whom he put on the bench what the resolution will be in advance. The citizens of Maryland should look hard at how this alleged behavior by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz opposes what happens to many non connected, ordinary Maryland citizens every day who are prosecuted as non violent drug offenders by the U.S. Attorneys Office in federal court, who then suffer 8, 10, 12 year sentences in federal prison for possession convictions with no empathy from the court as to how harsh that result is. Right now, down at the U.S. Courthouse is a large file with the sealed documents I sought in it. Every single honest citizen and every single institution which preaches law, order, and fairness should go down to that courthouse and demand to know why rich, white, connected lawyers get to keep their careers, lives, and large incomes while the poor and disenfranchised are paying these very same lawyers who were disqualified in the Bromwell matter to shepherd them to prison for significant terms before Judge Motz and/or the other judges he has put onto the Maryland bench? I am always amazed at how many people in and outside of Baltimore blame David Simon for accurately portraying our citys caste structure, as if somehow he has told a lie. But, I say, David Simon didnt come close to describing the real problem of Baltimore: Corruption is part of the law . . .

 William C. Bond is twice the movant-intervenor in United States of America v. Thomas L. Bromwell, Sr., et al., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. His email is proselitigator@aol.com