JACK THOMPSON DISBARRED FOR LIFE

BREAKING BLOG NEWS: FDIC SEIZES WASHINGTON MUTUAL AND SELLS ASSETS TO JP MORGAN. LARGEST BANK FAILURE IN US HISTORY. 

Very strange. FDIC usually seizes banks Friday afternoons so they have all weekend to work on the books. Our sources tell us the WAMU top brass were not even told when the FDIC seizure went into effect. 

I thought long and hard about posting this. I take no joy in this news about Mr. Thompson. The title links to the Florida Supreme Court opinion. I obtained the link from the Broward Blog.

Mr. Thompson found this blog about a year and half ago and was a welcome participant. We didn't agree on much, but he was entertaining, committed to his ideals, and thoughtful.   I welcomed his participation against warnings from others. 

I soon found those warnings correct. He delighted in the indictment of Ben Kuehne and his actions towards  the family of Steve Chaykin shortly after Steve's tragic death were reprehensible. 

Somewhere along the line as Mr. Thompson and I parted ways I began to see his other side. I was subjected to a barrage of nasty and threatening emails that were entirely inappropriate. 

From the Supreme Court's order: 

"Over a very extended period of time involving a number of totally 

unrelated cases and individuals, [r]espondent has demonstrated a 

pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and 

willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and 

anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes.  He does 

not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional 

behavior, but rather uses other means available to intimidate, harass, 

or bring public disrepute to those whom he perceives oppose him. 

...

Among the extensive findings of fact presented in the report, the Court takes  particular note of the following which occurred during the three-year period at issue  in five counts in these cases:  ... (4) respondent publicized and sent hundreds of pages of vitriolic and disparaging missives, letters, faxes, and press releases, to the affected individuals;... 

(10) respondent retaliated against attorneys who filed Bar complaints against him  for his unethical conduct by asserting to their clients, government officials, politicians, the media, female lawyers in their law firm, employees, personal friends, acquaintances, and their wives, that the attorneys were criminal pornographers who objectify women. " 

In our experience  the above quoted actions of Mr. Thompson are entirely accurate. Having been on the receiving end of these diatribes, I cannot imagine actually litigating in a civil and decent manner with an individual who acts in the way described in the order.  Mr. Thompson, in our view, holds his beliefs in an absolute manner that allow him to utilize any and all methods to achieve his goals because of his simple belief that he is right. Because he is right, he theorizes, the ends justify the means.  But he fails to recognize that he lives in country in which the the means- democracy and the right to a different opinion- are sacrosanct.   

This is a sad day. Mr. Thompson has a wife who has battled a serious cancer and a teen age son to support and shepherd into adulthood. I take no joy in this order, fully cognizant that because of his hatred for me, he would never ever extend me the same courtesy or compassion. He would have me disbarred and ground into the ground in a second if he could- merely because I disagree with him. I still wish him well and peace. 

See you in court after I withdraw my money from WAMU first thing in the morning.

Judge Tunis Needs More Time.

Here is the link to the GamePolitics Blog post on our favourite lawyer, who is otherwise banned from posting on this blog. The topic was Judge Tunis's request to the Florida Supreme Court for more time to issue her reccomendation in the Florida Bar versus Jack Thompson.
GAMEPOLITICS


The comments are enlightening if not downright funny.

Here is the link to the post of Judge Tunis's request for more time.
TUNIS REQUEST

We especially like paragraph ten of the request:

"10. Following the conclusion of the trial in December 2oo7, Mr. Thompson has filed with the undersigned in excess of 400 pleadings, emails, letters and missives (including pictorials) through today's date. These communications with the court are in addition to voluminous copies of filings related to other lawsuits filed by Mr. Thompson in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and other lawsuits allegedly filed in the Circuit Courts of Miami-Dade and Leon counties."

(emphasis added by Rumpole.)

In the interest of disclosure, Mr. Thompson has filed a bar complaint against "Rumpole" (lord knows what they do with those in Tallahassee) and has threatened repeatedly to sue us. We are sure we will be the recipient of more threats, except we cannot read them because we have placed his email on spam block, because he has repeatedly refused our polite requests to take us off his email list.

Want to fill up your email in box? As Judge Tunis knows, just give Jack your email address. Presto, he's good for 3 on a slow day, and a dozen when he's really motivated.

See You In Court not reading emails, threats, etc., from you know who.

JUDICIAL ELECTIONS

Nice DBR article on the different election problems Florida Judges face from County to County.

DBR

For instance, North of the Border, if you run against an incumbent judge and win, the Judges in power respond by assigning you the weekend bond hearings for the first 5 1/2 out of six years of your first term, with the remainder of the time spent being required to read "The collected wit and wisdom of Dale Ross." (Pompous Publishing, 2007.)

Jack Thompson: more fun with pleadings:

This from a recent filing with the Florida Supreme Court:

"Mr. Chaykin, who is presently serving the best interests of the citizens of Florida, is the one who demands permanent disbarment for Thompson. Mr. Chaykin is has publicly branded anyone who does not agree with him on gay adoption (Thompson does not) an “enemy of The Bar” and “outside the core values of our Bar.” This is terrific. The Bar has a paranoid on its Board of Governors who actively seeks retribution against his “enemies” with enhanced punishment because they aren’t square pegs that fit into his pro-gay hole.

Thompson should like to propose a deal to this Court, since this is obviously how this Court operates: Thompson will change his party affiliate to “Democrat,” pronounce his fondness for gay adoption and the gay lifestyle, have sex with 16-year-old prostitutes, have forced sex with his female clients, launder money for the Medellin cocaine cartel to benefit Roy Black, confine his criticisms, like the aforementioned Roy Black, to Florida judges on national television rather than in Thompson’s letters to those judges, represent the porn-to-kids industry rather than attack it, stalk a former employee, as did Thompson Bar complainant Tom Tew, commit perjury like Larry Kellogg and Al Cardenas to try to nail an anti-obscenity crusader, and last, but not least, exhibit the Spitzer-eclipsing hubris of one of you sitting on the Supreme Court and announce that we need to round up lawyers with bad manners and suspend them, the United States Constitution notwithstanding.

If Thompson does all of that, will you, this Honorable Court, give me a “get out of jail free and get out of disbarment free” card? Apparently one has to be a pervert to catch a break from this Court and its “official arm,” The Floriduh Bar."

Rumpole notes: no one can ever accuse Mr. Thompson of backing down in the face of adversity.

See You in Court on Monday, have a nice weekend and enjoy this great weather.

RULE ...SHMULE

When we last left Jack Thomson, Esq., he was hard at battle with the Florida Bar, Florida Supreme Court, Judge Tunis, and the video game industry.

The Florida Supreme Court filed a rule to show cause as to why Mr. Thompson should not be held in contempt for his frequent filings in the Supreme Court, many of which have been posted in the comments section of this blog.

Now we received this.....remarkable document. "Remarkable" is truly the only word for this pleading. Let us just say this: no matter how hard we fight in court for clients, there comes a time when even we cut our losses. Not so Mr. Thompson. He has taken the Florida Supreme Court's Rule to Show Cause and quite literally torn in up and tossed the pieces in their faces.

We would never have been so..... brave (we recognize other adjectives may well apply here.) Our copy of the pleading came e-mailed with a picture of a rabbit in a briar patch. One can only wonder if the original pleading was similarly adorned:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
THE FLORIDA BAR,

Complainant,

v. Case Numbers SC 07 - 80 and 07- 354

JOHN B. THOMPSON,

Respondent.

RESPONDENT’S PRELIMINARY RESPONSE TO SUPREME COURT’S
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE

Comes now respondent John B. Thompson (Thompson) and provides this court with a preliminary response to its show cause order of February 19, 2008, with a more detailed response to follow prior to the court’s March 5 deadline, noting:
Thompson deeply appreciates, more than this court could ever know, its show cause order as it opens the door to Thompson’s seeking and receiving relief from the federal courts.
The federal court system dismissed Thompson’s prior suit on abstention grounds, stating that Thompson had an “adequate state remedy” to seek redress for any infringement of rights by The Bar and by this Supreme Court that is supposed to oversee and remedy the misdeeds of The Bar.
This court’s panicked threat against Thompson, apparently stemming in part from the court’s having been caught by Thompson not complying with Florida Statute 876.05 (Loyalty Oath Law), has wonderfully proven not just that Thompson has no “adequate state remedy” but that he has no state remedy at all. This court threatens Thompson if he even files this pleading. This is a brazen attempt by this court to repeal the absolute right of every citizen, under the First Amendment, to “petition the government for a redress” of grievances.
This court’s misstep exquisitely proves his point to a federal tribunal that it no more understands the First Amendment than it understands the legal and constitutional issues on which it was so grandly reversed in Bush v. Gore.
Thompson has Fifth, Sixth, Fourteenth, and First Amendment rights that this court’s show cause order wildly infringes upon. Thompson has a right to represent himself in traffic court and before this court. Thompson is a competent lawyer with 31 years of continuous good standing within The Bar who has a string of victories against powerful corporate interests—the very interests who filed these SLAPP Bar complaints.
Ted Bundy, for Heaven’s sake, was not even a lawyer, and yet he was allowed to represent himself in this state within its courts. Thompson, who has committed no crime but whose “sin” is that he has waged a successful campaign against the very porn industry that helped train Bundy to kill, is being petulantly threatened by this court that he is to be muzzled and denied access to this state court. Nonsense.
US Supreme Court Justice Douglas in Lathrop v. Donohue warned that integrated state bars would eventually become “goose-stepping brigades.” This court has confirmed that those brigade are now here in this state and that this court is brazenly leading them. This court is free to enter a show cause order against the ghosts of Justices Douglas and of all the US Supreme Court Justices who handed down Keller v. State Bar of California
if it likes. Even King Canute knew he could not order the tide not to come in.
All this court with its panicked show cause threat has accomplished is handed Thompson the keys to the federal courthouse. Abstention is out the window, thanks to this High Court.
What “adequate state remedy” does any citizen have, let alone a lawyer have, when the very court that has negligently failed to oversee The Bar threatens a whistleblower with retribution because he dares to keep blowing the whistle?
This court has threatened Thompson. He does not threaten back. He hereby informs this court that he will see it in federal court. This court has just thrown Brer Rabbit into the briar patch.
Thank you so very, very much.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that this has been provided this February 20 2008, to Bar staff counsel Sheila Tuma, to Kenneth Marvin, Director of Lawyer Regulation for The Bar, to Dava Tunis, and to all Bar Governors as well as to Bar President Frank Angones.

JOHN B. THOMPSON, Attorney
Florida Bar #231665
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366

THOMPSON V TUNIS continued

OK, here's where we are in this brouhaha:

Mr. Thompson claims that Florida Statute 876.05 requires all elected officials to file a loyalty oath before taking office. The oath that is filed must be notarized.

Mr. Thompson has obtained two oaths said to be executed by Judge Tunis and he alleges that one of them is forged and not her signature.

Mr. Thompson also believes that all but one Florida Supreme Court Justice must be removed for not complying with the same loyalty oath statute.

As to Judge Tunis Mr. Thompson is relying upon the below affidavit of a questioned documents examiner. (If you click on the document is should take you to a larger version of it.)

What does this all mean?

We haven't the foggiest idea, but it bears watching.

Speaking of having no idea, what's going on with the Democrats?

The NY Times reports
HERE that in January Senator Clinton loaned her campaign 5 million dollars and that when all the votes cast on Super Tuesday are counted, that Senator Obama will have won ten more delegates than Senator Clinton.

Senator Clinton won the larger states, (California, NY, NJ) but Obama won more states and Obama raised an astounding 32 million dollars in January. Therefore, it can be assumed that Senator Obama is financially more able to compete in the upcoming primaries than Senator Clinton.

What does this all mean?

We haven't the foggiest idea, but it bears watching.

See You In Court.

A PLEADING

We received this pleading in an email from its author. It is, in our multi-decade experience as an attorney, the most remarkable pleading we have ever seen. We have not added anything. The pictures are ORIGINAL. Because of space requirements, we have edited out a lengthy quote from a cited case and some other material. This is about 90% of the pleading we received. However, to print the pleading with the pictures as it was emailed to us and presumably sent to the Florida Supreme Court, we had to separately download and place each picture. Therefore, the picture placement is close but is not 100% accurate to the document filed. With over 35 pictures, at some point we got a headache and just wrapped it up.


We have often said we do not always agree with the ideals of the author, however, it takes something (and we're just not sure what) to send this pleading to the Florida Supreme Court with your Bar license on the line.





IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
THE FLORIDA BAR,
Complainant,
v. Case Numbers SC 07 - 80 and 07- 354
JOHN B. THOMPSON,

Respondent.
RESPONDENT’S VERIFIED MOTION TO VACATE THIS COURT’S
TWO ORDERS ON THE BASIS OF THE FLORID BAR’S FRAUD


COMES NOW respondent, John B. Thompson, hereinafter Thompson, on his own behalf, and moves this court, pursuant to Rule 1.540, Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, to vacate its two orders entered, respectively, on January 24, 2007, and March 7, 2007, directing Miami-Dade Circuit Court Chief Judge Farina to appoint a referee in each of these “disciplinary” actions, on the basis of The Florida Bar’s fraud, stating:

Thompson, because he is a lawyer, has been trained by our profession to communicate with ten words when one will do and to hide truth in polite euphemisms. This training, as to Thompson, has been only partly effectual. In 1914, the term “legalese” was first used to identify the problem. Legalese obfuscates, making the meaning of the writer difficult for the reader to understand. Thompson apologizes, as his apparent inability to communicate one simple fact to this Honorable Court is the only possible explanation for the Court’s inability to comprehend what should be the patent illegitimacy of these two disciplinary actions that were just tried before Referee Tunis.
Therefore, just as one of our nation’s Founders, John Hancock, wrote large his name on the Declaration of Independence so that “King George III could see it without his spectacles,” Thompson in that same fine historical tradition resorts to clear, large images herein, as words alone have apparently obscured rather than illuminated The Florida Bar’s fraud which he has repeatedly tried to explain.
American songwriter Paul Simon

wrote and performed the song “Kodachrome”

and notes “When I look back on all the crap [imaged withheld] I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” The analysis explaining the undersigned lawyer’s or any lawyer’s lack of communicative clarity, applies to law school, times ten. This must explain Thompson’s inability to convey to this court the initial, fatal flaw in this prosecution. As the “Man with No Eyes” said in : “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Here, then, is a renewed attempt to communicate a problem that Thompson has not made clear but which should now be so clear with this filing that even
could see it.

The most important person in the entire disciplinary process utilized by is what is called the “designated reviewer.”

The court knows this. Thompson need not explain why this is so. Thompson’s designated reviewer from the time the first SLAPP Bar complaint was filed against him in August 2004 by a porn industry lawyer was Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne .
Mr. Kuehne, while guaranteeing the “fairness” of the Bar proceedings against Thompson, received a target letter from the United States Department of Justice alleging that Mr. Kuehne had laundered Medellin cocaine cartel money .
The Bar, knowing this, never disclosed this to Thompson, and in its fraudulent withholding of this information denied Thompson the state equivalent of a McLain hearing by which Thompson would have been apprised that there just might be a problem with the “fairness” of proceedings against him when overseen by an alleged thief (apologies to Greenberg Traurig and Barry Richard) .
The video game company


footing the bill for the SLAPP Bar assault upon Thompson, in violation of the Preamble to Section 4 of our Bar Rules, is Take-Two Interactive Software which has sold millions of units of the Mature-rated to minors. Take-Two has more money to throw around than the Medellin cartel. Whether Take-Two got to Mr. Kuehne or not, Thompson was entitled to a McLain hearing with a DOJ-alleged crook presiding over proceedings that are designed to end the law career of the video game industry’s most successful and most hated critic, Jack Thompson. Take-Two’s targeting of Thompson began when Ed Bradley personally invited Thompson to return to CBS’ 60 Minutes after Thompson had first appeared thereon six years earlier.

The above picture of Thompson is taken from this Friday’s edition of the Daily Business Review, owned and operated by American Lawyer Media. Yesterday’s two DBR articles written in collaboration with The Florida Bar and SLAPP complainant Tew Cardenas are false and defamatory, as exculpatory facts fully known to that publication prove the illegal, unconstitutional nature of these “disciplinary proceedings.”
The DBR’s predecessor, the Miami Review, similarly wrote an article in 1992 about Thompson bearing the headline

“Is This Lawyer Too Crazy to Practice Law?”

or

This court may remember, but would undoubtedly like to forget, that that similarly libelous article was generated by this very same Florida Supreme Court, which was hoodwinked by some of the same SLAPP complainants into entering an order based upon the assertion that “Jack Thompson is so obsessed against pornography that he is mentally disabled and unfit to practice law.” The happy consequence of the Florida Supreme Court’s outrageous unconstitutional assault upon Thompson in that fashion the first time is that Thompson is now the only officially Bar-certified sane lawyer in Florida, and The Bar’s carrier paid Thompson damages for this court’s prior “mistake.” So, here we go again, with the career-crippling libelous news coverage ginned up by The Bar, with The Bar’s own prosecutor, Barnaby Min, blogging libelous disinformation during Thompson’s trial that tells the legal community that Jack Thompson is “a nut case.”

Does this High Court actually think that the supervision of the “disciplinary proceedings” of Jack Thompson, upon which hinge literally tens of millions of video game industry dollars, can be supervised by a USDOJ-alleged crook? Does this High Court actually believe that the local television affiliate of

has erroneously reported Ben Kuehne’s DOJ target letter? Does this Court think that the US DOJ officials who asked to meet with Thompson and did meet with Thompson were impersonating DOJ officials for Halloween?

Does this court think, for one minute, that Thompson is not going to get whatever Referee Tunis

decides in these “disciplinary proceedings” overturned when the one man at the center of it all is considered by the Justice Department to be a thief? This one man, Ben Kuehne, a) overrode The Bar’s own outside investigator, b) failed to disclose his DOJ target letter to Thompson, c) demanded that Thompson undergo more lunacy proceedings, and d) was protected by Referee Tunis when she refused, in violation of state law, to issue a subpoena Thompson sought to depose Kuehne prior to trial.
Thompson has no problem with enduring a fair disciplinary process. He has not had it, and no Justice sitting on this High Court could rationally think fair this Ben Kuehne-led high-tech lynching of an uppity Christian .
These “disciplinary proceedings” are supposed to be like

Caesar’s wife .

What are they now? What have they been for these forty-one months because of Benedict P. Kuehne?

They have been an ideology-driven sham and they have proven the wisdom of Justice Douglas’
prediction in Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U.S. 820 (1961), that integrated state bars, like Florida’s, would eventually become “goose-stepping brigades.”

If this court is offended by the immediate above, then it should sue the estate of the late Supreme Court Justice Douglas who in Lathrop wrote of integrated state bars:

(Rumpole has edited out the cited text for space limitations. But I think you get the point.)
The pattern of this legislation is regimentation.

This High Court has known of its “Ben Kuehne problem” for months and it has oddly and negligently pretended that it does not exist

The targeted Mr. Kuehne is this Bar’s and this Court’s Achilles Heel when it comes to this fatally flawed prosecution of Thompson. ... (Rumpole has again edited out some text and cites)


WHEREFORE, respondent Thompson moves this court to vacate its two orders directing Judge Farina to appoint a referee to preside over these matters. Those two orders were procured by The Bar’s fraud. .. (edited by Rumpole because we lost the picture associated with a point here.)
Either this Florida Supreme Court will do the right thing and vacate these two Kuehne-procured orders which would not have been entered but for Ben Keuhne, and give Thompson, for the first time, a fair review of this regulatory abortion [picture withheld- (this is Thompson's own comment not ours)]...

Respondent Thompson hopes that he has finally been clear. If he has, somehow, not been clear with this children’s picture book for adults, then this Honorable Court should read Thompson’s book about how this Bar and this Court unsuccessfully tried to pathologize his Christian faith the first time in 1992:


I SOLEMNLY AFFIRM, under oath, and under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing facts are true, correct, and complete, so help me God.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing has been mailed this December 22, 2007, to Bar prosecutor Sheila Tuma, The Florida Bar, Orlando, Florida, and emailed to every single Bar Governor, as well as to The Bar’s designated blogger/libeler/public relations hit man/John Berry wannabe Barnaby Min.
_____________________________
JOHN B. THOMPSON, Attorney
Respondent

Thompson Thread 2- Free speech and the Bar.

Mr. Thompson kicks off the week with a letter to the ACLU, confirming the oft quoted affirmation that politics makes strange bedfellows. The letter is in the comments section.

Query re: The Bar and Broward Attorney Sean Conway: Should there be any regulatory supervision over what an attorney says about a Judge? Or should it just be a free for all?

Attorneys (are supposed to) occupy a special place in our society. In our practice we are very judicious about what we say to our clients about judges assigned to their case. The door swings both ways on this. A client who has a tough case assigned to a Judge that we believe is very fair and not afraid to grant a motion despite the consequences, may still well end up with a poor result (although hiring us is a step in the right direction.).

Similarly, a client with what appears to be an easy case may have a Judge who we believe is prosecution oriented to the extent they will ignore favorable case law if at all possible.

In those cases we believe, unless the circumstances are extreme, we have a responsibility to not disparage the justice system and try our best and let the client see the outcome in court. However, the Aleman scenario in Broward may well be that extreme situation. We would not have resulted to crass name calling on a blog (far be it from us to do that!). But we would have expressed an unfavorable opinion to the client about the Judge's policy of what we view as pure extortion in the misguided attempt to get clients to waive their rights to speedy trial by threatening them with a trial before their counsel had time to prepare.

But this analysis goes a step further. Assume the Bar exonerated Conway's statements because of Aleman's conduct. The result is a gutting of the Bar's prohibition regarding derogatory comments about Judges. Any Judge who had a case reversed on appeal would be fair game for the worst possible comments about their ability (hmm...we could be on to something here) and any attorney challenged by the Bar would have a sure-fire defense.

Questions of such magnitude are better suited for the wise and learned legislature and experienced Judges.

Ok. We shall stop joking. The serious issue is that unless we as attorneys and Bar members resolve this issue together with the Judiciary, we will have an answer forced upon us by yahoo politicians who never pass up an opportunity to disparage attorneys, especially criminal defense attorneys, to get curry favor with voters.

See You In Court, where we go out of our way to heap tons 'o' praise upon our learned and distinguished robed readers.

THOMPSON v. TUNIS

We received this remarkable document in an email from Jack Thompson, Esq., and we reprint it in its entirety:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
THE FLORIDA BAR,
Complainant,
v. Case Numbers SC 07 - 80 and 07- 354
JOHN B. THOMPSON,
Respondent.
RESPONDENT’S VERIFIED PETITION FOR WRIT OF PROHIBITION
TO DISQUALIFY REFEREE TUNIS

COMES NOW Bar disciplinary respondent Thompson and petitions this court for a writ of prohibition to disqualify and immediately remove Dava Tunis (Tunis) as referee herein, stating:

Any lay person, knowing the facts stated herein, would reasonably believe that Thompson could not possibly receive a fair trial presided over by Tunis, who is, in a bar proceeding, both the finder of fact and applier of the law. The standard for recusal is more fully delineated by Florida Statute, 38.10, and if Tunis does not, by her antics, qualify for recusal, then there should be no such remedy for any judicial misconduct.

Thompson has previously raised the propriety of recusal of Judge Tunis. She denied Thompson a continuance while his wife was facing life-threatening cancer surgery and arduous chemotherapy. She refused, for ten months to allow discovery sought by Thompson, even refusing to comply with Florida law that mandates subpoenas “shall” be issued upon the mere oral request of a party or attorney. Tunis, remarkably, even went so far as to deny Thompson’s simple request to look at The Bar’s own files it has on Thompson. Tunis upheld The Bar’s demand that Thompson pay $4000 up front simply to look at the files. No such payment by a party is imaginable under Florida law, as it violates Article I, Section 21 of the Florida Constitution.

This is a judge, acting as a referee, who afforded far more due process to the criminal defendants in orange jumpsuits in her courtroom than she did a lawyer in continuous good standing for 31 years with The Florida Bar. Thompson has been under attack from the porn industry with its SLAPP Bar complaints filed against him in order to “shoot the messenger” rather than defend their clients’ criminal activities on the merits.

But yesterday, eclipsing all that she had done before this, Tunis revealed herself to be either unwilling or incapable of acting like a judge. When Thompson made the point that the Preamble to Section 4 of the Rules allows for a harmonization of our roles in society with the role of lawyer, Tunis recoiled, stating derisively, Don’t enlist me into your culture war! It was a non sequitur revealing her bias.

Tunis had refused at the start of the trial on November 26, 2007, to conduct a hearing on jurisdiction. She had denied that hearing for months. As a result, The Bar had to admit, in the last hour of proceedings, after the nine-day trial itself was over, that the court never had jurisdiction over certain charges in the complaint.

When this revelation of fraud “hit the fan,” Tunis ran out of the courtroom for no apparent reason. It now appears that she did so in order to consult with someone, as she returned to the courtroom with a new and utterly contrived legal argument that was completely inapposite to the issue before the court. Tunis had taken on the demeanor and the function of a third Bar prosecutor.

Then it really hit the fan. One of The Bar’s prosecutors then asserted, again after all testimony had been given and long after The Bar had rested its case, that Tunis could, entertain and convict Thompson on new, never disclosed charges, despite testimony limited to the specific charge brought against him in the complaint at the behest of the Howard Stern Show shock radio law firm, Tew Cardenas—an alleged violation of Rule 4-8.4 (d). Tunis was told she could, in the months ahead, comb through 3000 pages of testimony and all of the Bar Rules and come up with new charges, conduct a trial on her own, with no witnesses, and convict Thompson of violations of undisclosed Rules with which he had never been charged and which were not even mentioned during the course of the trial.

How could The Bar do such a thing? Answer: The Bar, in the last hour of the proceedings, raised the notion that Rule 4-8.4(a) allows The Bar to have the referee conduct a trial all on her own, because the Rule states
“A lawyer shall not: (a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another;”

The Bar, however, in the charging document, the complaint, chopped off the last two items in the above series, and charged Thompson with “a violation of the Rules of Conduct” with no other Rules specified. Clearly, any sentient being knows that the above Rule 4-8.4 (a), in its entirety, is a rule against conspiracies to violate Bar Rules; namely, Thompson or any lawyer cannot either through surrogates, or acting as a surrogate on behalf of others, violate or attempt to violate, vicariously or through others, Bar Rules. In other words, Rule 4-8.4 (a) says that a lawyer cannot do indirectly what he cannot do directly.

But The Bar took only the first of the three in the series listed in Bar Rule 4-8.4 (a) and actually stated to the court that it means what is noted above, that Tunis could come up with any Bar Rule violations on her own and convict him, after trial, on the basis of what she thought Thompson might have done, with no input, of course, from him by way of a defense.

Tunis, upon Thompson’s protesting this ambush after the trial was over, again fled the courtroom. She returned to then lead The Bar’s prosecutor, from the bench, as if he were a child trying to ride a two-wheeled bicycle for the first time, through the tortured reasoning that would enable The Bar to have a referee indict, try, and convict a lawyer, in absentia, on charges of which he has never been apprised, in the privacy of her own home.

In the middle of the trial, with the Tew Cardenas porn lawyers on the stand and their having to admit that Thompson had no client, had not impacted a judicial proceeding, and was not engaged in the practice of law in his dealings with them (thereby making a Rule 4-8.4 (d) prosecution impossible), Tunis helpfully intoned, out of the blue, that Mr. Thompson had been also charged with a violation of Rule 4-8.4 (a). We, on the defense side, had no idea what she meant when she said this. But in the last minutes of the proceedings, yesterday, it became clear: The intention all along was to spring this “you can charge him and convict him of new offenses without any notice” surprise on him when the trial was over. Tunis had inadvertently tipped her hand that she was somehow in on the ruse.

It is so clear that Tunis may have been coached by someone during the trial, with her unexplained sprints from the courtroom as if she had a plane to catch, only to return with contrived legal arguments that no one had made previously, that Thompson has had to subpoena her phone records in the state court proceeding he has brought against the State of Florida for this regulatory assault upon the First Amendment that violates Florida’s Anti-SLAPP and RFRA statutes.

But Dava Tunis’ world late yesterday got even weirder. Earlier in the trial, The Bar’s counsel stood up in open court and announced that he had psychiatric records proving that Thompson’s co-counsel was mentally ill. The medical records waved by Mr. Bryk consisted of a favorite shrink used by The Bar’s FLA who claimed that this lawyer’s execution of an affidavit on Thompson’s behalf in Thompson’s federal civil rights action proved he, Thompson’s lawyer, was a “paranoid.” In other words, assisting Thompson shows mental illness. Mr. Bryk claimed all he was trying to do was apprise Mr. Thompson that his co-counsel was incompetent. If that were The Bar’s real desire, the whole issue , of course, would have been handled privately, discreetly, and not in open court. Thompson explained patiently to the court that Mr. Bryk could have shared the information with Thompson’s co-counsel and asked him to share it with Thompson, and then confirm that Thompson felt he had no problem. But, that, of course, was not what The Bar wanted to do. The Bar wanted to smear both his attorney and Thompson in open court. Judge Tunis held onto the stolen medical records in her possession. The co-counsel had never given a release allowing The Bar to have these records.

At the very end of the proceedings yesterday, Tunis asked what Thompson and his co-counsel would want her to do with the confidential, stolen medical records she held. It should be noted that the medical records are stolen, there having been no release of medical records form signed by co-counsel. Thompson’s co-counsel and Thompson asked and in fact demanded that the stolen medical records be returned to The Bar, as Tunis had absolutely no right to hold onto them, as they were not admitted into evidence. She was holding stolen property.

Co-counsel forcefully and emotionally stated that The Bar had committed a wrongful act in procuring these medical records without authorization, and they then compounded the offense by parading them in open court. Tunis then ordered co-counsel not to shout. He was forcefully and cogently identifying a wrong that had been committed against him by The Bar, and for an ulterior purpose.

Whereupon, Tunis, got to her feet, commenced shouting from behind her bench, and started flailing her arms wildly as if she were a Dutch windmill caught in a thermal inversion. It was the most bizarre, outlandish, odd, and embarrassing thing the undersigned has ever seen a jurist engage in during his 31 years of practicing law in Florida. Tunis made the “Crying Judge” Larry Seidlin in the Ana Nicole Smith case look like Supreme Court Justice Kennedy. She was out of control. She went from a jurist to a prosecutor to raving, shouting loose cannon in mere minutes.

When Thompson then referred to his co-counsel as his client in this medical records matter, she shouted from the bench He’s not your client! Is the court reporter your client, too???!!! With her meltdown, Tunis did more to harm the judiciary than anything Thompson is even alleged to have done.

She now sets off to prepare her Referee’s Report in a matter in which she displayed animus, bias, and a lack of judicial temperment. She has so tainted the proceedings with her pettiness and her injudicious comments and actions that no finding she could ever enter against Thompson can possibly be considered valid. This Bar must disqualify her immediately.

I SOLEMNLY AFFIRM, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing facts are true, correct, and complete, so help me God.

I HEREBY CERTIFY that a copy of this pleading has been provided by mail and fax to Sheila Tuma, The Florida Bar, Orlando Bar Office, and to Dava Tunis, 1351 NW 12 Street, Miami, Florida, this December 7, 2007.
_____________________________
JOHN B. THOMPSON, Attorney
Florida Bar #231665
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146