Montana's attorney general faces a hearing on 41 counts of professional misconduct

Posted 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024

AMY BETH HANSON

The Associated Press

HELENA - A succession of controversies marks Republican Austin Knudsen's nearly four years as Montana attorney general.

His office sided with a man who made an armed threat over a pandemic mask mandate and was accused of pressuring a Helena hospital over its refusal to administer a parasite drug to a COVID-19 patient. He tried to block three constitutional initiatives from the November ballot, recruited a token opponent for the June primary so he could raise more money, and got sued after forcing the head of the Montana Highway Patrol to resign.

Knudsen is facing a hearing today that could bring a reckoning in yet another dispute: allegations of professional misconduct over his aggressive defense of a law that allows Montana's Republican governor to directly fill judicial vacancies. That law was part of a nationwide GOP effort to forge a more conservative judiciary.

A judicial disciplinary office concluded in 2023 that Knudsen's office tried to evade the state Supreme Court's authority by rejecting the validity of court orders.

His hearing before a state judicial panel on 41 counts of professional misconduct could last up to three days, officials said.

Knudsen, who could lose his law license, argues he and his staff were "zealously representing" the Legislature in a separation-of-powers case. He also pressed allegations of judicial misconduct, saying the court was interfering in the Legislature's investigation of the conduct of the judiciary.

Chase Scheuer, Knudsen's spokesperson, said Tuesday that the case should have been dismissed months ago.

"The allegations are meritless and nothing more than an attack on him orchestrated by those who disagree with him politically," Scheuer said.

Republicans have long accused Montana judges of legislating from the bench when the courts find Republican-passed laws regulating abortion or gun rights to be unconstitutional.

The alleged misconduct by Knudsen occurred in 2021. At the time, Montana lawmakers were working on a bill to eliminate a commission that reviewed potential judges.

Lawmakers learned a Supreme Court administrator used state computers to survey judges about the legislation on behalf of the Montana Judges Association. After the court administrator said she had deleted emails related to the survey, the Legislature subpoenaed the Department of Administration, which includes the state's IT department, and received 5,000 of the administrator's emails by the next day.

The Montana Supreme Court later quashed the subpoena, but not until after some of the emails had been released to the news media.

Then-Chief Deputy Attorney General Kristin Hansen, now deceased, responded to the Supreme Court writing the "legislature does not recognize this Court's order as binding" and added that lawmakers wouldn't allow the court to interfere in its investigation of "the serious and troubling conduct of members of the judiciary."

The Legislature also moved for the Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from hearing the case, arguing that justices had a conflict of interest because the subpoena involved the court administrator. The justices denied that motion and suggested that the Legislature had tried to create a conflict by sending each justice a subpoena for their emails.

In a May 2021 letter to the court, Knudsen said the justices' writings "appear to be nothing more than thinly veiled threats and attacks on the professional integrity of attorneys in my office." He added that "lawyers also have affirmative obligations to report judicial misconduct."

The complaint against Knudsen found the statements in his letter were contemptuous, undignified, discourteous and/or disrespectful and violated rules on practice. It also noted that complaints against the judiciary should be filed with the Montana Judicial Standards Commission.

Knudsen's office in late 2021 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, claiming judicial self-dealing on a possibly unprecedented scale. The justices declined.

Montana's Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law allowing the governor to appoint judges.