- Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Some of the Justice Department’s ethically challenged lawyers got a reprieve Monday from having to go back to school for a refresher course in ethics. U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen apparently wants them to repeat Truth-telling 101, which is useful but only an elective in most law schools. But there’s a risk in telling deliberate fibs, stretchers, and lies to certain judges.

In fact, lying to a judge, under oath or not, is nearly always not a good idea. It’s like trying to disarm a policeman. A lawyer, whether a government lawyer and or a lawyer for the poor schlub called to the bar to answer for felony or misdemeanor, is expected to play it straight in court. Lawyers are sometimes bad about stretching facts to cover a lack of authentic evidence, and judges are often quick to forgive a slip of the tongue or memory. Judges are lawyers, too. But not always.

Justice Department lawyers enraged Judge Hanen last month when they told him, loud, clear and several times, that President Obama’s deportation amnesty, called “deferred action,” had not actually gone into effect and was, in fact, still deferred. Only it wasn’t. They had stretched the truth somewhat; if a mere citizen under oath had done this, it would have been called “lying.”

President Obama’s government had, in fact, been granting three-year work permits and stays of deportation to some illegal immigrants under two-year-old policies. But what’s a couple of stretchers among friends? Doesn’t the president himself sometimes help himself to a stretcher or two? That was the theory.

Amnesty litigation is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and who knows what the justices may have heard from the government about that. Judge Hanen is trying now to figure out what to do about 100,000 illegal immigrants who have been granted amnesty for three years, when he was given to understand that they had been granted this amnesty for only two years.

Judge Hanen had originally ordered the government to give him the names of the illegal immigrants who got the three-year amnesty agreements, but Hispanic-rights advocates objected and appealed, saying that President Obama had assured them that their privacy would be protected.

The back-to-school order for the government lawyers was appealed, too, and on Monday Judge Hanen agreed to stay the order. This may give the lawyers a little time to pull a few all-nighters, perhaps to consult a counselor or two. But to whom does a lawyer go to study ethics? A priest or a pastor? Perhaps a rabbi? The mommy and daddy he never listened to in the first place? Surely not another lawyer. That’s how he got in trouble in the first place.

Judge Hanen will listen to new arguments in August. This time the attorney general is well advised to send some of her best of the ethically cleansed.

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