“Judges and Lawyers: The Right Thing to Do,” by IP attorney and award-winning author Timothy Trainer
Two recent events occurred that highlighted the work and responsibilities of judges and lawyers. A lawyer resigned knowing he was about to be fired. A federal judge tossed a case by strongly suggesting that lawyers acting on behalf of their client, the President, reread the rules regarding what should be in a complaint to initiate a lawsuit.
Unlike television dramas, the real practice of law can be tedious. There’s a lot of sifting through information. That information might be factual, anecdotal, opinions or something wholly different. In Virginia, Erik Siebert, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned after hearing that the President was unhappy that he had not filed charges against those the President believes need to be prosecuted.
It isn’t as if Mr. Siebert is soft on crime. His background includes several years as a police officer before pursuing his law degree. Eastern District of Virginia | Meet the U.S. Attorney | United States Department of Justice. Since graduating from law school, Mr. Siebert has practiced criminal law for the Justice Department where he has prosecuted cases since 2010. His demise as the appointed U.S. Attorney is reportedly due to doing something fundamental to the work of an ethical attorney: weighing the evidence and determining whether the evidence supports a criminal prosecution.
Siebert’s failure to initiate cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey became an issue for the White House. Top US prosecutor overseeing Letitia James case resigns after Trump threat | Reuters. It seems that Siebert expressed his reservations about the evidence in the cases against the two that are in Trump’s crosshairs. Siebert fell into disfavor because, well, he was doing what a responsible and ethical prosecutor should do: determine whether sufficient evidence exists to criminally prosecute someone, anyone. Doing the right thing is not at all acceptable to Trump and, therefore, the prosecutor who engaged in the kind of evaluation we should expect and demand before any person is subjected to a criminal charge had to go.
In another case, Federal Judge Merryday dismissed Trump’s 85-page defamation complaint against The New York Times. In his four-page ruling, the judge underscored the basics to Trump’s lawyers regarding what the point of a complaint is and isn’t. gov.uscourts.flmd.447437.5.0.pdf. The judge explained that Trump’s complaint was not the proper place to “rage against an adversary”. He wrote that “A complaint is a mechanism to fairly, precisely, directly, soberly, and economically inform the defendants — in a professionally constrained manner consistent with the dignity of the adversarial process in an Article III court of the United States — of the nature and content of the claims. A complaint is a short, plain, direct statement of allegations of fact sufficient to create a facially plausible claim for relief and sufficient to permit the formulation of an informed response”.
Essentially, the judge reminded Trump’s legal counsel that there is a clear and distinct difference between a legal filing and a political rant of displeasure toward people the president targets. Most of the judge’s four pages seemed aimed at Trump’s lawyers, reminding them of the decorum expected of officers of the court.
These developments should serve as a reminder to everyone about the role of legal counsel and the judiciary. A lawyer’s zealous representation of a client does not mean straying from his or her legal and ethical responsibilities before a court. Mr. Siebert’s decision-making process of weighing evidence before deciding whether to prosecute is admirable because it was the right thing to do. Judge Merryday’s dismissal of Trump’s complaint was also the right thing to do while giving the would-be plaintiff time to amend and refile the complaint in accordance with the rules.
We have arrived at a point and a time when those who do the right thing, who still respect the rule of law, and the U.S. legal system, try to prevent the dismantling of a system that helped make the United States a great nation. While Trump and a number of his appointees are intent on violating the laws of these United States, we need judges and other officers of the court to live up to their oaths, remain committed to the rule of law, and act accordingly even when those holding the highest offices in the country refuse to do so.
About the Timothy Trainer: Writing books is a passion for attorney Timothy Trainer, who for more than three decades focused on intellectual property issues in his day job. He has worked in government agencies and in the private sector and his assignments have taken him to 60 countries around the world.
Tim found time to pen a few non-fiction tomes, including his first book, Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights; the 15th edition was published in 2022. Thomson Reuters’ Aspatore Books published Tim’s next title in 2015, Potato Chips to Computer Chips: The War on Fake Stuff.
Fiction was a genre he always wanted to try. In 2019, Pendulum Over the Pacific, was released by Joshua Tree Publishing. “This political intrigue story is set in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and centers on trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan in the late 1980s,” Tim explains.
In 2023, his first series hit bookstores: The China Connection.
In 2025, he published the sequel, The China Factor, which ranked #63 on the Amazon Asian Literature list in May.
