DOJ faces ethics nightmare with Trump bid for $230M settlement; The Hill, October 31, 2025

 REBECCA BEITSCH, The Hill; DOJ faces ethics nightmare with Trump bid for $230M settlement

[Kip Currier: This real life "nightmare" scenario is akin to a hypothetical law school exam fact pattern with scores of ethics issues for law students to identify and discuss. Would that it were a fictitious set of facts.

If Trump's former personal attorneys, who are now in the top DOJ leadership, will not recuse themselves due to genuine conflicts of interest and appearances of impropriety, will the state and federal bar associations, who license these attorneys and hold them to annual continuing legal and ethics-related education requirements so they can remain in good standing with their respective licensing entities, step in to scrutinize potential ethical lapses of these lawyers?

These unprecedented actions by Trump must not be treated as normal. Similarly, if Trump's former personal attorneys approve Trump's attempt to "shake down" the federal government and American taxpayers, their ethically dubious actions as DOJ leaders and officers of the court must not be normalized by the organizations that are charged to enforce ethical standards for all licensed attorneys.

Moreover, approval of this settlement would be damaging to the rule of law and to public trust in the rule of law. If the most powerful person on the planet can demand that an organization -- whose leadership reports to him -- pay out a "settlement" for lawfully-conducted actions and proceedings in a prior administration, what does that say about the state of justice in the U.S.? I posit that it would say that it is a justice system that has been utterly corrupted and that is not subject to equal application of its laws and ethical standards. No person is above the law, or should be above the law in our American system of government and checks and balances. Not even the U.S. President, despite the Roberts Court's controversial Trump v. U.S. July 2024 ruling recognizing absolute and limited Presidential immunity in certain spheres.

Finally, a few words about "speaking out" and "standing up". It is vital for those who are in leadership positions to call out actions like the ones at hand that arguably undermine the rule of law and incrementally move this country from one that is democratically-centered to an autocratic nation state like Russia. I searched for and could find no statement by the American Bar Association (ABA) on this matter, a matter that is clearly relevant to its membership, of which I count myself as a member.

Will the ABA and other legal organizations share their voices on these matters that have such far-reaching implications for the rule of law and our nearly 250-year democratic experiment?

The paperback version of my Bloomsbury book, Ethics, Information, and Technology, becomes available on November 13, and I intentionally included a substantial professional and character ethics section at the outset of the book because those principles are so integral to how we conduct ourselves in all areas of our lives. Ethics precepts and values like integrity, attribution, truthfulness and avoidance of misrepresentation, transparency, accountability, and disclosure of conflicts of interest, as well as recusal when we have conflicts of interest.]

[Excerpt]

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) is facing pressure to back away from a request from President Trump for a $230 million settlement stemming from his legal troubles, as critics say it raises a dizzying number of ethical issues.

Trump has argued he deserves compensation for the scrutiny into his conduct, describing himself as a victim of both a special counsel investigation into the 2016 election and the classified documents case.

The decision, however, falls to a cadre of attorneys who previously represented Trump personally.

Rupa Bhattacharyya, who reviewed settlement requests in her prior role as director of the Torts Branch of the DOJ’s Civil Division, said most agreements approved by the department are typically for tens of thousands of dollars or at most hundreds of thousands.

“In the ordinary course, the filing of administrative claims is required. So that’s not unusual. In the ordinary course, a relatively high damages demand on an administrative claim is also not that unusual. What is unusual here is the fact that the president is making a demand for money from his own administration, which raises all sorts of ethical problems,” Bhattacharyya told The Hill.

“It’s also just completely unheard of. There’s never been a case where the president of the United States would ask the department that he oversees to make a decision in his favor that would result in millions of dollars lining his own pocket at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

It’s the high dollar amount Trump is seeking that escalates the decision to the top of the department, leaving Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, to consider the request."

A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job; The Washington Post, October 22, 2019

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post; A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job 

HireVue claims it uses artificial intelligence to decide who’s best for a job. Outside experts call it ‘profoundly disturbing.’

"“It’s a profoundly disturbing development that we have proprietary technology that claims to differentiate between a productive worker and a worker who isn’t fit, based on their facial movements, their tone of voice, their mannerisms,” said Meredith Whittaker, a co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center in New York...

Loren Larsen, HireVue’s chief technology officer, said that such criticism is uninformed and that “most AI researchers have a limited understanding” of the psychology behind how workers think and behave...

“People are rejected all the time based on how they look, their shoes, how they tucked in their shirts and how ‘hot’ they are,” he told The Washington Post. “Algorithms eliminate most of that in a way that hasn’t been possible before.”...

HireVue’s growth, however, is running into some regulatory snags. In August, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a first-in-the-nation law that will force employers to tell job applicants how their AI-hiring system works and get their consent before running them through the test. The measure, which HireVue said it supports, will take effect Jan. 1."

Equity pending: Why so few women receive patents; The Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 2018

E'oin O'Carroll, The Christian Science Monitor; Equity pending: Why so few women receive patents

"The causes for the gender gap are varied and complex, but much of it can be explained by women’s underrepresentation in patent-intensive jobs, particularly engineering. Research shows women make up roughly 20 percent of graduates from engineering schools, but hold less than 15 percent of engineering jobs. Female engineering grads are not entering the field at the same rate as their male counterparts, and they are leaving in far greater numbers.

“It’s the climate,” says Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “The organizational environment is very unforgiving.”

Professor Fouad, who spent three years surveying women with engineering degrees about their career choices, cites inflexible schedules, a lack of opportunities for advancement, and incivility toward women. “It’s not the women’s fault,” she says, noting that she found no difference in levels of confidence in those who stayed and those who left.

Other barriers women face are an absence of supportive social networks and implicit bias on the part of venture capitalists."