The first round of our bracket challenge is in the books and the carnage was… mostly non-existent. It’s bittersweet for someone setting up a tournament because you’re proud of yourself for properly seeding the field, but you regret not giving the audience more excitement. But pour one out for Ed Martin. He leaked grand jury material, dropped charges against his own former client, and dressed up like Inspector Gadget to intimidate the New York Attorney General, but he still couldn’t make it out of the first round. When we’re talking about ethical investigations, the competition among Trump’s lawyers is just that stiff.
But now the field is down to eight and the matchups are getting serious. This is where the tournament gets interesting — where “merely” defying court orders has to compete with fabricating criminal prosecutions, where undisclosed conflicts of interest square off against telling federal judges to go f*** themselves.
Voting is open now until Monday at 7:59 p.m. Eastern. Here’s how the regional championship round shakes out.
ROY COHN REGION: (1) Pam Bondi vs. (3) Brendan Carr
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Bondi cruised past DHS General Counsel James Percival in the first round. Carr, meanwhile, pulled off the tournament’s lone upset, knocking off Ed Martin by fewer than a hundred votes.
At first glance, this looks like a mismatch. Bondi is the Attorney General of the United States — the person who fired a career DOJ lawyer for telling a federal judge the truth, sending the unmistakable message that DOJ lawyers must lie or lose their jobs. The whole point of this tournament is to highlight the lawyers most in need of state disciplinary action, and Bondi is now cartoonishly proposing a rule to block state bars from investigating government lawyers altogether. If your response to potential bar discipline is to ban bar discipline, you might be telling on yourself.
But don’t sleep on Carr. The FCC Chair has turned broadcast regulation into a weapon for punishing political speech the president doesn’t like. He pressured CBS into settling Trump’s personal lawsuit, tried to get ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel, and has now threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over news coverage of the Iran war. Ted Cruz called Carr’s conduct dangerous and compared it to a mafia extortion scheme.
One fun wrinkle: a state bar authority already declined to pursue Carr’s misconduct because it was too obvious to justify further action. That’s the ethical equivalent of a cop declining to write you a ticket because you were going so fast the radar gun couldn’t clock you.
VOTE HERE
RUDY GIULIANI REGION: (1) Lindsey Halligan def. (2) He has a Habba
This is the matchup we’ve all been waiting for. The Battle of the Fake Prosecutors. Two lawyers with zero criminal law experience, both installed as top federal prosecutors by presidential fiat, and both told by federal judges that their appointments were illegal.
Halligan earned the 1 seed through sheer volume of incompetence. She suggested James Comey had no Fifth Amendment rights. She submitted an indictment that the full grand jury never voted on. A federal judge ruled she possessed “no more authority than any private citizen off the street.” She then continued using the title anyway until another judge called her out. Eventually she got benchslapped out of a job.
Habba, though, is no slouch. Before her illegal appointment as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, she was already famous for flopping so spectacularly in the E. Jean Carroll trial that the judge had to explain basic trial procedure to her. She and her team also earned $1 million in sanctions for the frivolous RICO suit against Hillary Clinton. Her tenure as phony U.S. Attorney ended when she quit the job she never legally held.
This is a genuinely tough call. Halligan’s disasters were louder; Habba’s have been more sustained. Think of it as choosing between a spectacular car wreck and a slow-motion demolition derby.
VOTE HERE
JOHN EASTMAN REGION: (1) Todd Blanche vs. (2) Jeanine Pirro
Two very different paths to professional disgrace.
Blanche was a Cadwalader partner before becoming Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney and then the number two at the Justice Department. He’s keeping Epstein files under wraps despite the explicit text of a congressional statute, declaring “war” on federal judges, and threatening Trump’s hecklers with organized crime charges. Whenever the administration needs someone with actual legal credentials to say something utterly deranged, Blanche steps up.
Pirro, meanwhile, squeaked past Kash Patel by fewer than 20 votes in the first round, which is impressive for someone whose primary professional skill appears to be losing cases before they even start. Her old bosses at Fox privately called her a “reckless maniac,” which at the time seemed harsh but seems like a letter of recommendation for this bracket. She’s been collecting no-bills like frequent flyer miles, including the botched effort to prosecute Democratic lawmakers for accurately describing the law.
Your call.
VOTE HERE
STEPHEN MILLER REGION: (1) Emil Bove vs. (2) Chad Mizelle
The man who told government lawyers to say “f*** you” to federal judges versus the man who couldn’t be bothered to disclose his potential conflicts until he left the job.
Bove is now a Third Circuit judge — a lifetime appointment! — which is an impressive bit of failing upward. Before ascending to the bench, he reportedly told senior DOJ lawyers that deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act would be leaving “no matter what” and if any court tried to stop them, the response should be… well, we covered this already. He’s already earned bar complaints that amounted to a punt from authorities. And now he’s got life tenure. Cool system we’ve got here.
Mizelle, meanwhile, left the DOJ after a stint as Chief of Staff marked by undisclosed conflicts with companies the DOJ was actively suing, including Apple, Meta, and Visa. He didn’t file his financial disclosure until after leaving government, which is sort of like turning in your marathon registration after the race. He also tried to recruit AUSAs over Twitter, which isn’t necessarily cause for discipline but certainly undermined the public’s perception of the profession.
Bove has to be the heavy favorite here. The “f*** you” alone is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but even without it, his trajectory from DOJ attack dog to federal appellate judge perfectly encapsulates the accountability vacuum this whole bracket is designed to highlight.
VOTE HERE
Polls are open now. Voting will continue through Monday at 7:59 p.m. Eastern. Get in there and vote.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.