Trump Pardons Won’t Shield Lawyers Disciplined for Ethics

Attorneys who receive presidential pardons are absolved of federal criminal wrongdoing but it’s no protection against bar sanctions or a guarantee they’ll be reinstated to practice if they’ve already been sanctioned, ethics experts tell Bloomberg Law.

A presidential pardon “relieves a criminal or a criminal defendant of the punishment but it doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the ethics violation,” said Saul Jay Singer, senior legal ethics counsel to the District of Columbia Bar.

Singer and other legal experts interviewed wouldn’t discuss specific cases but said the intersection of pardons and professional sanctions presents an interesting question, one not dissimilar ...