DHS Lawyer Flips the Script After Florida Bar Tosses Ethics Complaint From 128 Former Judges

James Percival isn’t backing down. The Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel just turned a complaint from 128 former judges into a boomerang, and now he’s asking the Florida Bar to investigate the very people who tried to come after him. The Bar already declined to investigate Percival, citing a longstanding policy against going after sitting officers appointed under the Constitution while they’re still in office. But Percival thinks that’s just the beginning of the story.

Here’s what happened. Those 128 former judges filed a 24-page complaint accusing Percival of violating Florida’s ethics rules because of his “Worst of the Worst Judges” series, which called out what he considers activist judges making decisions beyond their authority. They said he was making baseless attacks that could undermine confidence in the courts. Pretty serious stuff, right? Except the Florida Bar essentially said thanks but no thanks, we don’t investigate people in positions like his while they’re serving.

Percival thinks the former judges knew this all along. He’s calling their complaint frivolous and pointing out that the Bar already made its position clear in a previous case involving former Attorney General Pam Bondi. The whole thing was destined to go nowhere, which makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.

That’s where his new term comes in. Percival calls it “Bar-fare,” playing off the now-familiar term lawfare. It’s the idea of weaponizing professional disciplinary processes for political purposes rather than legitimate ethical concerns. And he’s not mincing words about what he thinks is really happening here.

“The 128 former judges are sort of an example of a tactic the left has used for a long time,” Percival said. He’s comparing this situation to the 2020 controversy when 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter suggesting Hunter Biden’s laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. We all know how that turned out. The laptop was real, but those 51 names carried weight and shaped the narrative at a critical moment.

The pattern is pretty clear if you step back and look at it. When the political left doesn’t want to debate something on the merits, they trot out people with impressive credentials to shut down the conversation. Trust the experts, they say. Trust the 128 former judges. Trust the 51 intelligence officials. Don’t ask questions, don’t think for yourself, just defer to the people with fancy titles.

Percival isn’t buying it anymore, and honestly, a lot of Americans aren’t either. “The left has just like often hid behind this veneer, this prestige of expertise and they’ve gotten people who carry weight to carry their water for them,” he explained. “And I really think the emperor has no clothes on this, but we have to call it out and expose it.”

The complaint itself came from rule-of-law groups with names that sound pretty official. Democracy Defenders Fund and Lawyers Defending American Democracy teamed up with those 128 former judges to file the ethics complaint. They claimed Percival’s public criticism of certain judges violated professional standards and could even increase physical threats against judges. Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince led the group, lending her considerable professional standing to the effort.

But that’s exactly Percival’s point. The strategy relies on borrowing authority from people’s past positions to give political arguments more weight than they deserve on their own. It’s intellectual credential-laundering, if you want to get blunt about it.

Democracy Defenders Fund put out a statement after the Bar declined the complaint, saying the ethics rules exist to prevent baseless attacks that undermine confidence in courts. You can almost hear the frustration that their tactic didn’t work this time.

The whole episode raises bigger questions about how we have conversations in this country. Are we supposed to just accept judicial decisions without criticism because judges wear robes? Can lawyers who work for the government not call out what they see as overreach from the bench? The left seems to think criticism itself is dangerous, that questioning authority threatens the whole system.

Conservatives see it differently. We think robust debate, even uncomfortable debate, is what keeps institutions honest. Percival’s “Worst of the Worst” series identified judges he believes stepped beyond their constitutional role. That’s not undermining the judiciary. That’s participating in the civic conversation about what courts should and shouldn’t do.

The Bar’s decision not to investigate actually vindicates Percival’s approach. If his criticism had truly violated ethical standards, the Bar would have said so. Instead, they cited a procedural reason that everyone involved should have known about from the start. Which makes the complaint look less like a good-faith ethics concern and more like political theater designed to intimidate.

Percival’s fighting back now, asking the Bar to look into whether the Florida-licensed attorneys among those 128 former judges abused the disciplinary process by filing a complaint they knew was doomed. It’s a smart move. If you’re going to weaponize ethics rules against your political opponents, you better make sure your own hands are clean.

This whole situation is a microcosm of our broader political moment. One side wants to wrap itself in institutional authority and declare certain topics off limits. The other side is increasingly willing to say the emperor has no clothes, even when that means challenging people with impressive resumes. You can guess which approach serves the truth better.

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