Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up October 24, 2024Montana’s lawyer conduct court, the Commission on Practice, recommended this week suspending Attorney General Austin Knudsen from practicing law for 90 days. It didn’t address whether Knudsen, currently up for reelection, can serve as attorney general if he’s suspended from practice.Broadly, the charges are that Knudsen, and his attorneys, by accusing the Supreme Court of bias, impropriety, and lies, violated rules “intended to preserve the public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of our system of Justice in Montana,” as explained by Tim Strauch who prosecuted the case for the Office of Disciplinary Conduct during a hearing earlier this month.Montana’s Constitution requires that the attorney general be “an attorney in good standing admitted to practice law in Montana who has engaged in the active practice thereof for at least five years before election.”The Supreme Court will now consider the commission’s recommendation but isn’t obligated to follow it. Before the high court weighs in, Knudsen will get 30 days to prepare an argument against the recommendation, COP chairman Ward “Mick” Taleff said Thursday, meaning an outcome is possibly months away. Taleff, who practices law in Great Falls, wasn’t part of the panel of attorneys that heard Knudsen’s case Oct 9 and 10.Meanwhile, Knudsen remains a qualified attorney and is, by appearances, likely to be reelected Nov. 5, as has every Montana attorney general since 1942 who has sought a second term.The charges against Knudsen, 41 counts in all, stem from his office’s defense of the 2021 Legislature over judicial branch documents lawmakers sought by a records request and subpoena from the judiciary. Roughly 5,000 records were obtained by the Legislature without review for private information and later ordered returned by the Supreme Court, which held that any private information in the document dump should have been off limits.The practice commission found that, as the dispute played out, Knudsen and his staff repeatedly refused to observe orders from the Montana Supreme Court, while accusing the justices of “misconduct,” “actual bias,” “misstating facts,” “lacking jurisdiction,” and “making veiled threats and attacks on (Knudsen’s) integrity.” In one case, the commission found, Knudsen’s staff accused the judiciary of issuing a court order “inaccurate almost to a word.” During the practice hearing, Knudsen, who did not write all of the language cited by the commission himself but was supervising the attorneys who did, acknowledged some of that wording may have been too strident.“If I’m being really honest, in hindsight I think a lot of things could be done — could have been done different here, and probably should have been done different here,” he said. “If I had this to do over, I probably would not have allowed language like this, so sharp, to be used.”The attorney general denied that his behavior or the behavior of his staff violated the Montana Rules of Professional Conduct. The commission however, concluded that the criticism of the judiciary was beyond the bounds of permissible attorney behavior. “No attorney licensed to practice law and armed with its privileges and responsibilities, particularly the chief legal officer of our state, charged with the duty to defend any elected official and the laws of our state, can attack other elected officials of our state with impunity, in apparent total disregard for the Rule of Law,” panel chairman Randall Ogle wrote in the commission order.Ogle and other commissioners held that Knudsen and his office could have represented the Legislature’s interests without violating professional conduct rules. In situations where attorneys believe they are confronted with judicial misconduct, they have an obligation to report district court judges or Supreme Court justices to the Montana Judicial Standards Commission, Ogle wrote.The commission also noted that Knudsen wasn’t obligated to take the Legislature as a client. The Legislature has its own counsel and also has the option to hire a private attorney. Knudsen’s attorneys argued the commission should “consider the context” in which the AG’s actions were taken, namely the dispute between the Legislature and the judiciary, which they characterized as a constitutional crisis about the separation of powers.Ogle indicated that the defense had suggested punishing Knudsen for his conduct would create further consequences. The commission concluded the opposite was true. “It is the failure to hold attorneys accountable for their conduct, regardless of the circumstances wherein lies the true terror for our justice system,” the Ogle wrote.—Tom LuteyA fight for satellite votingFort Peck Tribal members sued Roosevelt and Valley County offices for satellite voting locations in the days before early voting started this year. They didn’t receive the voting access they requested. Instead, they got voting locations for a few days, in one case less than five hours on a single day.Roosevelt County set up a satellite polling place in Poplar, the government seat of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes. In the first three days in this year’s general election the site was open, 85 people voted in person. The next day tribal members lined up 100 people deep to vote, said Brett Healy, an attorney who specializes in voting rights in Indian Country. There were so many people in line waiting to vote that the satellite office stayed open for an hour longer than its published hours. On the third day there were 72 people voting. Healy suspects the number of voters declined once word of waiting lines spread.Thursday, Healy and attorneys for the voters were back in Valley County which had agreed to provide a satellite voting site in Frazer for 4.5 hours on Oct. 30. Valley County confirmed what was being offered, but said the tribal government had been slow to respond to county inquiries about setting up a site. “There are 15 counties in Montana where reservations are located and only one, Glacier, has a polling site open on a reservation on Election Day,” Healy said.Montana, where some jurisdictions have a history of discriminating against Native voters, has had several legal disputes over voting access for Indigenous voters in recent decades. Satellite voting locations, which provide easier poll access for voters who may not have access to the reliable transportation necessary to reach off-reservation election offices, have been a perennial request from Native advocates.In 2015, Indigenous voters sued then-Secretary of State Linda McCulloch to force her to create satellite election locations on reservations. The result was a requirement that counties notify tribal governments that they get a one-month window in election years to request satellite voting sites.Healy said the tribes of Fort Peck had submitted potential satellite polling locations to Valley County at the start of the year. Healy also said the county didn’t act because the tribes didn’t specifically ask for polling places. —Tom LuteySenate race spending grows higherTotal reported spending on Montana’s U.S. Senate race surpassed $227 million in mid-October when third-quarter campaign finance filings by Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester added $70 million and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy added $20 million to a ledger that already included more than $137 million in spending by political action committees.Tester’s $30 million in contributions from individuals was a 3-month collection record for the Montana federal races. Itemized contributions, in which donors are reported by name and address, totaled $19 million.Sheehy’s contributions from individuals were $16.9 million.   Tester’s largest source of itemized donations was California at $4.2 million, followed by New York at $1.7 million and Montana at $1.2 million. Tester’s campaign reported 14,054 distinct donations from Montana residents in the third quarter.Sheehy’s largest source of itemized donations was Montana at $1.1 million, followed by California at $577,694, Florida at $511,227 and Texas at $480,633.—Tom LuteyThe post About the attorney general’s law license appeared first on Montana Free Press.