On Thursday, October 10, 2024, AP News reported that Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen testified at a disciplinary hearing regarding allegations of professional misconduct in his defense of a law allowing the governor to directly appoint judges.
Knudsen is facing 41 counts of misconduct and could lose his law license if found to have violated rules of practice.
The alleged misconduct occurred in 2021 when Montana lawmakers were considering eliminating a commission that reviewed potential judges. Legislators learned the Supreme Court administrator had used state computers to survey judges about the legislation on behalf of the Montana Judges Association. After emails related to the survey were deleted, the legislature subpoenaed the Department of Administration to obtain over 5,000 of the administrator’s emails.
The Supreme Court later quashed the subpoena, but not before some emails were released to the media. Knudsen’s then-deputy Attorney General Kristin Hansen responded to the Court that the “legislature does not recognize this Court’s order as binding.” Hansen asserted the legislature’s position that the Court should not interfere in its investigation of the judiciary.
Knudsen testified that Hansen, a former legislator, wanted to strongly push back against what they saw as judicial overreach. He argued he and his staff were “zealously representing” the legislature in a complex separation of powers case that had not been fully litigated before.
However, Knudsen conceded that some of the language used in motions to the Court, including Hansen calling the email release a “serious and troubling” situation, may have been too sharp. If he could redo it, Knudsen said he would not have allowed such confrontational language.
Special counsel Timothy Strauch questioned Knudsen multiple times about whether the language in submissions to the Court was disrespectful, contemptuous, or undignified. Knudsen consistently answered that it was not.
The hearing examines whether Knudsen overstepped in his aggressive defense of a law that was part of nationwide GOP efforts to appoint more conservative judges. Republicans have long accused Montana judges of judicial overreach in cases regarding abortion, gun rights, and other issues.
Source: AP News
