Last week The National Law Journal disclosed that District of Columbia bar authorities had filed formal charges against a former Department of Justice lawyer who had called a New York Times reporter (from a phone booth!) to alert the reporter to an unlawful wiretapping program being operated by the Justice Department with the full knowledge of then Attorney General John Ashcroft. Bar authorities have accused the lawyer—Thomas M. Tamm—of violating bar rules by having failed to report the misconduct to the Justice Department’s internal inspector general and for having disclosed confidential attorney-client information to the reporter.
The propriety of disciplining a lawyer for disclosing confidential client information seems like a pretty straightforward proposition. But that proposition gets more complicated when the lawyer is a public employee, the disclosure is about egregious unlawful conduct and is made to a newspaper reporter, and the client is the government.
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