The Campaign Against Whistleblowing Attorneys

The BAR disciplinary process has been weaponized to target whistleblowing lawyers and media has been co-opted.

Minnesota Attorney Michelle MacDonald

I appeared with Ed Martin on The Pro America Report earlier this week.

We talked about my recent investigations into lawyers who become targeted by the Bar disciplinary process.

I’ve recently interviewed both Nickola Cunha in Connecticut and Leslie Ferderigos in Florida. I, along with Megan Fox, previously interviewed Michelle MacDonald in late 2021 about her own affair with the Minnesota Bar disciplinary process.

Michelle’s interview is below starting at 34:15

In 2018, I did a story about Rhetta Daniel, who was targeted after taking on some high profile guardianship cases; Leslie was also targeted after having success fighting off guardianship.

She freed six people- an astounding number- from guardianship, she told me.

Each has been targeted by the Bar disciplinary process while the media has been co-opted in many of those case.

I also referred to Richard Fine in California.

His story is about a decade old and he received lots of positive process, but his story shows this has been going on for a while.

The media angle to this story is interest and worthy of further exploration beyond what I said on Ed’s show and with Leslie on the podcast.

I have previously talked about the media bias in the Rucki case, and the use of the Bar process against Michelle was just one example.

In fact, just about any movement in the Bar disciplinary process would be covered by some press locally in Minnesota, and it was definitely covered by Michael Brodkorb at Missing in Minnesota.

Here’s one of Brodkorb’s.

The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility is requesting that Michelle MacDonald, who is a candidate for the Minnesota Supreme Court, “be suspended from the practice of law for a minimum of 90 days as a sanction for her misconduct.“

The request to suspend MacDonald’s law license was made in a court filing by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility in response to a disciplinary hearing which was held earlier this month. 

In March, the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility petitioned the Minnesota Supreme Court to discipline MacDonald after determining that she violated the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct governing licensed attorneys and the conditions of her probation by which she could practice law.

Here is another from the Minnesota Lawyer, the local lawyer’s trade journal.

The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing to consider the latest discipline matter involving lawyer Michelle MacDonald, a perennial candidate for a seat on that same court.

A virtual hearing for In re Petition for Disciplinary Action against Michelle Lowney MacDonald is schedule for 9 a.m. on March 2.

She will be represented at the hearing by Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, who also is an attorney. In December, he replaced Paul Engh as counsel in the case. Engh represented MacDonald when the case was heard by a Supreme Court referee last fall.

Here’s one from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday indefinitely suspended perennial high court candidate and West St. Paul family law attorney Michelle MacDonald over a pattern of professional misconduct.

MacDonald, a Republican, cannot petition for reinstatement for four months, a penalty the Supreme Court said was appropriate for her repeated misconduct that continued even after a previous license suspension and probation.

The court concluded that MacDonald had "recklessly made false statements about the integrity" of Dakota County Judge David Knutson and repeated those false statements in a 2018 radio interview while she served a two-year probation term that followed a 60-day law license suspension for the misconduct.

Knutson presided over the 2013 child-custody trial of Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, whom MacDonald represented. Grazzini-Rucki was later convicted of hiding her two daughters from their father for two years.

“The Bar disciplinary doesn’t seem to be an interesting thing.” I told Ed. “All of a sudden everyone is talking about how Michelle’s license is suspended.”

Something like this happened in Nickola’s case as well.

While the local press has refused to cover Karen Riordan Vs Chris Ambrose- the case which put Nickola in the Connecticut Bar’s cross- they did, all at once it seemed, cover her Bar discipline.

Here’s one from the Hartford Courant.

A Superior Court judge has taken the unusual step of disbarring a divorce lawyer for making “empty and malicious” claims of abuse and antisemitic declarations to win an advantage for her client by “snarling the case into an un-triable mess.”

In his decision, Judge Thomas Moukawsher blasted attorney Nickola Cunha for what he said are malicious accusations that are unsupported by any evidence. In his long decision laying the groundwork for disbarment — and in an earlier decision in the same case — Moukawsher expressed concern that similar, if less egregious, tactics in the increasingly brutal arena of divorce court have the potential “to disrupt and damage the integrity of the judicial system itself.”

The Connecticut Law Tribune, Connecticut’s equivalent to Minnesota Lawyer, did not cover this story, but other mainstream Connecticut press did: like the New Haven Register.

A Hamden-based attorney was disbarred earlier this week after a judge found she had made “empty and malicious claims” alleging another judge was engaged in a Judaism-based conspiracy and protecting child sexual abuse.

Judge Thomas Moukawsher filed a memorandum regarding his order to disbar attorney Nickola Cunha earlier this week, saying Cunha had engaged in “grave misconduct” while representing a Glastonbury woman engaged in a dissolution of marriage case.

Cunha said in a statement Friday that she was being “targeted for going public with the truth” regarding the case, including the alleged mistreatment of her client and her client’s children.

Nickola’s statement is as close as anyone in Connecticut press will get to covering the corruption in the child custody case.

Meanwhile, Leslie has faced a different kind of campaign.

Her Bar discipline process wound up in the local press but far less. Here’s one example.

The Florida Bar itself released a press release of her discipline.

Leslie Ann Ferderigos, 10454 Birch Tree Ln., Windermere, public reprimand by publication and probation for one year and required attendance at The Florida Bar’s Advertising Workshop effective immediately following a Sept. 23 court order. (Admitted to practice: 2017) Ferderigos made unprofessional remarks and disparaging statements about opposing counsel and the trial judge in letters, emails, and court pleadings. In addition, Ferderigos posted a video to her YouTube channel where she discussed a guardianship matter that she described as “another heavily litigated case of mine” and detailed facts related to the parties and legal issues. While Ferderigos utilized stock video footage and stock photos, Ferderigos did not provide any written or verbal disclaimers that this was a dramatization and not an actual event. (Case No: SC21-549)

The Bar discipline noted, “Ferderigos made unprofessional remarks and disparaging statements about opposing counsel and the trial judge in letters.”

That so-called discipline sounds a lot like what Michelle was accused of, “The court concluded that MacDonald had ‘recklessly made false statements about the integrity’ of Dakota County Judge David Knutson.”

I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

I talked further about these “false statements” on Ed’s show; Michelle was forced to conduct part of a custody trial handcuffed to a wheelchair and she referred to that trial as having “no process.”

The entire Bar disciplinary hearing is below: two parts.

Part 1

Part 2

Meanwhile, Leslie has also been attacked using social media.

A Facebook page has been started Liar Liar Leslie. The page posts such things as the screen shots below.

The Rucki case, which got Michelle into Minnesota Bar’s crosshairs, received a lot of press, but it was almost entirely propaganda against her client Sandra “Sam” Grazzini-Rucki.

That’s when Brandon Stahl of the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article on the two-year anniversary of the girls’ disappearance where Sandra’s advocate Dale Nathan told him Sandra took the kids the day they disappeared: something assumed but not confirmed until then.

Stahl told me this was his first article on the case but declined to respond to all follow up emails.

After Stahls’ article, it was a media feeding frenzy, with constant updates on the search, and endless speculation about how the girls were taken, including a baseless narrative that an underground network was hiding them.

The circumstances in family court which created this situation were glossed over and David Rucki’s criminal and violent record was ignored entirely.

Almost immediately, a blogger named Michael Brodkorb became obsessed with the case.

Brodkorb is a former Republican operative whose affair with the Minnesota Senate Majority Leader forced him out of the Minnesota Republican Party.

In 2014, he matriculated to the Minneapolis Star Tribune which hosted his blog.

Though he previously wrote only about state politics, since covering the case starting in May 2015, Brodkorb has written about little else.

In dozens of blog posts, he painted David as the hero, Sandra the villain, and the system as functioning fine: “I also have to pay compliments to the Lakeville Police Dept. and the United States Marshal Services. This story and how these girls were found is how it should have happened.” Brodkorb once said on a radio show.

Lakeville PD did almost nothing to find the Rucki girls until after Stahl’s article, and the US Marshals once showed up with the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team to arrest Sandra, claiming she was a fugitive, even though it came out later the arrest warrant was sealed, meaning she couldn’t be a fugitive.

He’s said little about the court process which led to the girls’ disappearance and nothing about David Rucki’s criminal and violent record.

He said: “I have no faith in your skills and ethics as a journalist,” when I emailed him, but refused to answer any of the ten questions I asked for this profile.

In May 2016, his relationship ended with the Minneapolis Star Tribune and he started Missing in Minnesota, a blog dedicated to the story.

In his hundreds of blog posts on the case, he’s never exposed any government corruption- not in the judicial, executive, or legislative branch; his focus is negative articles against Sandra, her attorney Michelle MacDonald, Dede Evavold, the Dahlen’s and occasionally me.

Meanwhile, the local press ignored Karen Riordan Vs Chris Ambrose.

This is even as Frank Parlato has devoted dozens of posts and multiple videos by Wayne Dolcefino.

In Leslie’s case, she did receive some positive press for some of the guardianship work she did.

Keegan met attorney Leslie Ferderigos through a guardianship reform Facebook group.

“He found a Nigerian woman to marry off of Craigslist”

"He’s clearly got capacity. He’s been involved in this for six years. And he has tried multiple times, including from himself, to get out of this,” Ferderigos said.

Keegan’s guardianship started after he married a woman from Kenya who his family believed was financially exploiting him.

“He found a Nigerian woman to marry off of Craigslist… the in-person Nigerian scam,” said Fletcher.

Contrary to Fletcher’s assertion, Keegan says it was a legitimate.

She did not receive any press for the custody case which likely also drew the ire of the Florida Bar.

That was Gabe Shapiro Vs Patsy Alcantar.

Leslie represented Gabe while Patsy was represented by Dori Foster-Morales, the Florida Bar’s outgoing President.

As I mentioned to Ed, it must have been mere coincidence that her Bar disciplinary process started when this case was heating up.