A legal watchdog group accused three career Justice Department lawyers of professional misconduct on Thursday, saying they had made false statements to a federal judge in a high-profile case challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The accusations by the group, the Legal Accountability Center, were formally filed with the grievance committees of bar associations in Washington and other cities where the lawyers lived or practiced. The move represented a rare attempt to seek professional sanctions against rank-and-file department lawyers who have appeared in court on behalf of the federal government.
“The rule of law is under direct assault right now, and its greatest threat comes when those within the legal system fail to do their duties and stand up against the attack,” said Michael Teter, the executive director of the group. “The message that needs to be heard by all attorneys representing the government is that even though the Trump administration isn’t interested in following the rules, we are watching.”
The bar complaints against the three lawyers — Eric J. Hamilton, Brad P. Rosenberg and Liam C. Holland — came at an extraordinary moment of tension between the Justice Department and many of the federal judges who have been hearing challenges to President Trump’s policies.
Judges across the country have repeatedly called out department lawyers for violating their orders and even for destroying the bonds of trust that the government has traditionally been afforded when its representatives appear in court. The administration and its allies have often responded with lacerating verbal attacks, including threats of impeachment.
Just this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on social media that the department had filed its own misconduct complaint against Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of Federal District Court in Washington who has handled several prominent cases involving Mr. Trump.
The complaint accused Judge Boasberg of having told attendees at a recent judicial conference — among them, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — that he was concerned the Trump administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts” and trigger “a constitutional crisis.”
Ms. Bondi’s move came days after Judge Boasberg himself declared from the bench that he might lodge misconduct accusations against department lawyers who he believes violated an order he issued in March directing administration officials to stop planes of Venezuelan immigrants from being sent to El Salvador.
The judge’s suspicions were recently backed up by the account of a Justice Department whistle-blower who accused a top department official, Emil Bove III, of telling his subordinates that he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign. Despite those accusations, the Senate confirmed Mr. Bove on Tuesday night to a lifetime position as a federal appeals court judge.
The Legal Accountability Center filed its bar complaints amid this rancorous back and forth. They stemmed from a lawsuit brought in February by the National Treasury Employees Union, which accused the Trump administration of illegally seeking to destroy the C.F.P.B., one of the government’s chief consumer protection agencies.
According to the complaints, Mr. Hamilton and his two colleagues misled Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was handling the case, by telling her in a written filing that the administration had never sought to shut down the agency, but had merely closed its headquarters building and “tightened staff supervision.” That assertion was ultimately shown to have flown in the face of internal emails written by Russell T. Vought, the acting director of the C.F.P.B., who had ordered its staff to stop doing any work at all.
After another misrepresentation about the stop-work order, Judge Jackson issued a stinging decision preventing the agency from being dissolved and castigating the Justice Department for lying to her in her own courtroom.
“The court is left with little confidence that the defense can be trusted to tell the truth about anything,” she wrote.
The Legal Accountability Center is not Mr. Teter’s first attempt to police the conduct of lawyers who have worked under Mr. Trump. He was also the managing director of another watchdog group, the 65 Project, which brought ethics complaints against lawyers like John Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani who used their skills in questionable ways in an attempt to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.