After years of judicial complaints about federal lawyers’ conduct, courts are beginning to take action. According to Techdirt, judges have repeatedly said that ICE and DOJ attorneys violated court orders and constitutional rights, and in some cases lied in court or allowed agents to lie. But concrete penalties have been slow to arrive.
That is starting to change, though only slightly. The article reports that sanctions are finally being imposed on some of these lawyers, but the consequences so far are described as barely even a wrist slap. Techdirt suggests the punishment is far too mild to address the scale of the behavior documented in court.
Because the report relies on a single source, there are no conflicting accounts to compare. The main takeaway is that while judges have moved from warnings to sanctions, the practical impact remains unclear.