DOJ Hires A State Judge Who Was Once Suspended To Advise The Deputy AG

A new top Justice Department appointee brings a bizarre past to the job: he was a state judge in Oregon but was, in 2018, suspended by a state ethics board over misconduct allegations.

Vance Day, the ex-Marion County, Oregon, Superior Court judge, started work last week as a senior adviser in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the appointment to TPM. Local news outlets in Oregon first reported the hiring.

Day didn’t reply to TPM’s requests for comment.

Day’s checkered record in public service raises acute questions about his appointment at DOJ, where he’ll work in an office that manages day-to-day affairs at the nerve center of federal law enforcement.

During his time as a judge, Day was accused of a cascading series of ethical lapses, culminating in a decision by Oregon’s Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability to submit a June 2015 complaint that ultimately resulted in the state’s high court suspending Day from the bench for three years. One of the allegations, which involved Day purportedly allowing a convicted felon to handle a firearm, led to a multi-year criminal investigation. Prosecutors dropped the case on the eve of trial after a key witness declined to testify.

A new kind of DOJ

The former Oregon judge will join a DOJ whose senior leadership is already stacked with people who, mere weeks ago, were being paid by Trump to work as his criminal defense attorneys. There’s Todd Blanche, set to be Deputy Attorney General after Senate confirmation, and Emil Bove, the current acting DAG who traveled to New York City last week to appear in-court and argue in favor of a corrupt bargain that could end the Eric Adams prosecution. Attorney general Pam Bondi defended Trump during his first impeachment. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director-designate Dan Bongino made careers of praising Trump in far-right media.

That the DOJ would hire a senior official with a documented record of ethical lapses stemming from alleged abuses of power would come as a surprise in any other era. It is an example of handing over an enormous amount of power to someone with a questionable record — in this case, a person who, an Oregon court found, abused an earlier office.

Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, recalled being grilled with ethics questions during his hiring process.

“You need to make sure that the people who are in those roles are the right people and not make mistakes,” Sandick told TPM. “The only way to protect people from out-of-control prosecutors is to hire the right people and make sure they’re supervised.”

“You have to make sure that the people who have these positions are people who have the character necessary that you feel that they can be trusted to use that power,” he added.

God, guns, gays, and a kid’s soccer game

In a 2018 court ruling, Oregon’s high court issued against Day what was, at the time, it’s longest-ever suspension from the bench.

It found that Day’s conduct during a few different episodes had violated judicial ethics rules.

One involved Day allegedly using his status as a judge to try to intimidate the referee at his son’s soccer game; the court found that Day then tried to mislead an inquiry into the incident by suggesting that he had been assaulted.

In another case, Day allegedly concocted a scheme to avoid having to certify gay marriages. Staffers at the court were instructed to tell gay couples that Day was not available on the day that they requested, allowing him to avoid having to perform the marriage.

In another incident, according to court records, Day had developed a friendship with a former Navy SEAL who had pleaded guilty to a felony DUI charge in his court. The court found that Day had allowed the veteran to handle guns with members of his family in two instances, violating the terms of the guilty plea.

“He falsely accused another person of assaulting him, and he otherwise acted dishonestly and for his own self-benefit,” the court found. “His misconduct suggested a character that reflected poorly on his fitness to serve as a judge and his ability to exercise sound judgment.”

After receiving the three-year suspension, Day branched out into other areas of political life. He had a stint of several years as a leader in the Promise Keepers, an evangelical men’s organization that opposes marriage equality and advocates for male dominance of the household, among other things. He appeared on a talk show hosted by Mike Huckabee. Separately, Day has compared his travails to those of Donald Trump, calling the experience like a “Russian hoax against me” and blaming it on “government brown shirts” who wanted to compel him to conduct same-sex marriages.

It’s not clear how the Trump DOJ found Day. He had an unsuccessful run for the Oregon Court of Appeals; he’s made the news in other ways, including for having hung a picture of Adolf Hitler in his courthouse as part of what Day said was a broader display celebrating the triumph of liberal democracy.