Have you ever heard of someone being sentenced to prison for wrongly checking a box on a form that made zero difference? If you’re a conservative lawyer who was wrongly disbarred, and you accidentally checked a box on a form for your Social Security job indicating that you were a licensed attorney, you can now expect to go to prison for a year.
Retired California federal attorney Jeffrey Moffatt, who previously ran for Congress as a Republican, was targeted by the State Bar of Arizona (SBA) after he exchanged flirtatious messages with a woman on Facebook. He joked about representing her in exchange for a picture. Nothing ever happened; she never sent him any inappropriate photos nor retained him as an attorney.
But because he was a fairly well-known conservative attorney (his wife, Star, also ran for office as a Republican), the SBA disbarred him, citing screenshots of the messages, which he disputes were verified, making it appear that he was asking for a nude photo. In fact, the Moffatts said the woman tried to extort them for money, and they reported the incident to law enforcement.
For most of his career, Moffatt represented people with disabilities attempting to obtain disability benefits from the Social Security Administration. The job does not require a license to practice law. However, on one of the forms he is required to fill out annually for the position, he must check whether or not he is a licensed attorney. Since it’s a long form that he just rehashes every year, he did not catch the mistake after the SBA wrongly disbarred him.
Judge John Kronstadt, who was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama, held a kangaroo court trial against Moffatt. He denied 13 of Moffatt’s 14 pretrial motions, allowing only a minor procedural one. He refused to allow any of his witnesses — including a CIA agent — other than some character witnesses, who were prohibited from discussing SBA corruption. Arizona Senators Wendy Rogers and Mark Finchem traveled to Los Angeles to testify about the SBA, and Kronstadt refused to let them speak. I sat through the trial, and was shocked to see how hard Kronstadt fought to keep the jury from hearing ANY exonerating evidence; he sounded like a wing of the prosecution.
The prosecution told Moffatt they wouldn’t ask for prison time if he dropped his lawsuit against the SBA, but he refused based on principle.
No one ever goes to prison for mischecking a non-material box on a federal form. Especially not someone without a criminal record. Out of billions of form submissions, criminal charges for a wrong box are exceptional (less than 1 in 1 million for non-fraudulent errors). Agencies like the IRS resolve over 99 percent through civil means.
If Moffatt had just been suspended for a year — attorneys who commit real sexual offenses tend to get one-year suspensions — when he checked the wrong box, he would have been back practicing law at that time.
Prosecutors have become so politicized now that they deliberately target conservative attorneys; we’ve seen it happen over and over again with President Donald Trump’s attorneys. There used to be a perception that prosecutors lean Republican, but that has changed. Now the majority of prosecutors in larger districts are Democrats. The 65 Project exists solely to file bar complaints against conservative attorneys, and brags about going after the vulnerable “little fish” who have little means to fight back. Moffatt is representing himself.
The main prosecutor on Moffatt’s case is David Lacman. He previously clerked for Nina Gershon, Senior United States District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton. Gershon is considered a very left-leaning judge. In 2009–2010, Gershon issued injunctions blocking Congress from defunding the leftist group ACORN without “due process.”
In 1999, Gershon ruled that Mayor Rudy Giuliani could not withhold funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art over its controversial “Sensation” exhibit. It included a painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with glitter, resin and elephant dung, with cutouts of female genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background. Another piece of work in the exhibit featured a tent containing the names of 102 people the artist had slept with.
Lacman also clerked for Clinton-appointed Robert David Sack, Senior United States Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That left-leaning judge wrote an opinion against the Trump Organization, refusing to allow a lawsuit against the Trumps to go to arbitration. He joined a Second Circuit panel that stayed a district court order blocking enforcement of a New York gun law, effectively keeping the restrictive law in place during appeals. He served as one of the Special Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry staff during the Nixon Watergate hearings.
Moffatt suffers from a traumatic brain injury and, in 2024, was diagnosed with a tumor on the outside of his brain and cysts forming inside his brain. This could be the reason he missed unchecking the box on the form. He is over 60 and in poor health. A year in prison could easily kill him.
I’ve known the Moffatts for over 10 years. They are some of the kindest, most decent people you will ever meet. Their son graduated from high school at age 16 with a 4.10 GPA, top 10 in his class, and received his pilot’s license that same year. The Phoenix Metro chapter of Reverend Al Sharpton’s powerful National Action Network was so outraged that they issued a statement in support of Moffatt.
The lawfare against conservative lawyers must end. It used to be just disbarment — I guess those were the good old days. Now the corrupt left is taking it to a whole other level with prosecution. Moffatt is appealing, but I have little faith in the California legal system.