On Tuesday, I highlighted the outrageous proceeding in Montana in which minions of the state supreme court are aggressively pursuing ill-founded professional-misconduct charges against state attorney general Austin Knudsen for his vigorous representation of the governor and the state legislature in their 2021 clash with the supreme court over judicial-reform legislation.
In a stunning development that is just the latest in a series of events rife with conflicts of interest on the part of the state supreme court justices and their allies, it turns out that one of the members of the Commission on Practice panel that will decide the charges against Knudsen is Patricia Klanke. Believe it or not, Klanke represented one of the Montana justices, James Rice, in the underlying controversy—specifically, in a lawsuit to quash the legislature’s subpoena. As Knudsen puts it in the motion to disqualify that he has just filed:
This is the same subpoena, controversy, and underlying facts that were at issue in Brown v. Gianforte and McLaughlin v. Legislature. In other words, the exact same subpoena, controversy, and underlying facts that constitute the entire basis for the 41 counts against Attorney General Knudsen. [Emphasis added.]
It boggles the mind that anyone would propose her for the panel and that she would have the terrible ethical judgment to accept an appointment.
It also appears that Klanke took part in the Commission on Practice’s recent order denying Knudsen’s motion for summary judgment. (She was appointed to the panel in June, and the panel issued the denial last week.) If so, as Knudsen’s motion cogently argues, she has tainted the participation of all the other panel members. So the order must be rescinded and the panel must be reconstituted.
In a sane world, the Commission on Practice would promptly dismiss the charges against Knudsen, and its Office of Disciplinary Counsel would open an investigation into Klanke’s participation in this matter.