The Grinding Wheel of the Bar — 101 Judges Seek Todd Blanche’s Disbarment

The Grinding Wheel of the Bar — 101 Judges Seek Todd Blanche’s Disbarment

“The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” For months on The Teske Brief (my YouTube podacast at www.youtube.com/@judge teske), we have examined a quiet, desperate struggle behind the scenes of American power. We predicted that once the temporary shield of executive power inevitably recedes, the independent, state-level bar associations—which do not answer to the President—would step into the vacuum to enforce the rules of professional conduct. In this landmark episode of our “Bar Card” series, that prediction officially transitions from a warning into a historic, filing-stamped reality. In New York, a bipartisan coalition of 101 former state and federal judges—acting in partnership with Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) and the Democracy Defenders Fund—has filed a devastating 69-page ethics grievance seeking the disbarment of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Retired Chief Judge Steven Teske breaks down the four core ethical violations detailed in this unprecedented complaint: * The Tax Immunity Sham: How Blanche acted as Donald Trump’s private family lawyer while drawing a taxpayer paycheck, executing a backroom IRS deal that violates Rule 1.7 and Rule 1.9. * Retaliatory Prosecutions: The systematic weaponization of grand juries to pursue politically motivated charges against political adversaries (Rule 8.4). * The Cryptocurrency Conflict: Dismantling federal crypto fraud investigations while personally holding up to $485,000 in digital assets. * The Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Cover-Up: Personally delaying and withholding files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act to shield prominent political allies. As a retired chief judge himself, Steven Teske reflects on the profound sense of institutional pride this complaint brings. Todd Blanche is about to discover a hard truth: while a President can offer political protection in the short term, a state Supreme Court holds your professional future in the long term. The pattern is clear. Pam Bondi is finding out right now in Florida. Todd Blanche is next in New York. And once that license is stripped away, the empire of immunity collapses. Subscribe to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com. You can also listen to his other podcast on YouTube at www.youtube.com/@judge teske. It’s called The Teske Brief. #TheBarCard #ToddBlanche #DOJ #LegalEthics #TheTeske Brief #RuleOfLaw #PamBondi Thanks for reading Justice ReDesigned! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe [https://steventeske.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

ACT II:The Settlement That Forgot the Constitution

Author’s Note If you’ve already read my accompanying Justice ReDesigned essay, The Collapse of the DOJ and the Suicide of the Bar,you may notice that this podcast takes a different form. That’s intentional. The essay presents the complete legal and ethical argument as a traditional written analysis. The podcast that follows does something different. Rather than simply reading the essay aloud, I have reimagined it as a five-act closing argument—a dramatic presentation that gradually builds from constitutional absurdity to professional reflection, much like a trial attorney delivering a final summation to a jury. Each act corresponds to a major section of the essay. Together, all five acts comprise the complete podcast adaptation of that single essay. While additional commentary, humor, storytelling, and historical context have been woven into the presentation, the constitutional and ethical themes remain the same. This approach also marks the transition from The Teske Brief’s Bar Card and the Breakdown of Justice series to Justice ReDesigned. The Teske Brief examined these events as they unfolded. This essay—and the five acts that accompany it—step back from the daily headlines to ask a larger and more enduring question: What does honor require of a lawyer when power and professional duty collide? Whether you choose to begin with the essay or experience the story through the five-act podcast, my hope is the same: that we remember the rule of law ultimately depends not upon institutions alone, but upon the men and women who choose to honor the oath embodied in a simple piece of plastic called a bar card. — Steven Teske The following five acts constitute the complete podcast adaptation of the accompanying Justice ReDesigned essay, The Collapse of the DOJ and the Suicide of the Bar. They are intended to be experienced as one continuous closing argument. Thanks for reading Justice ReDesigned! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe [https://steventeske.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

ACT I: Trump v. Trump

AUTHOR’S NOTE If you’ve already read my accompanying Justice ReDesigned essay, The Collapse of the DOJ and the Suicide of the Bar, you may notice that this podcast takes a different form. That’s intentional. The essay presents the complete legal and ethical argument as a traditional written analysis. The podcast that follows does something different. Rather than simply reading the essay aloud, I have reimagined it as a five-act closing argument—a dramatic presentation that gradually builds from constitutional absurdity to professional reflection, much like a trial attorney delivering a final summation to a jury. Each act corresponds to a major section of the essay. Together, all five acts comprise the complete podcast adaptation of that single essay. While additional commentary, humor, storytelling, and historical context have been woven into the presentation, the constitutional and ethical themes remain the same. This approach also marks the transition from The Teske Brief’s Bar Card and the Breakdown of Justice series to Justice ReDesigned. The Teske Brief examined these events as they unfolded. This essay—and the five acts that accompany it—step back from the daily headlines to ask a larger and more enduring question: What does honor require of a lawyer when power and professional duty collide? Whether you choose to begin with the essay or experience the story through the five-act podcast, my hope is the same: that we remember the rule of law ultimately depends not upon institutions alone, but upon the men and women who choose to honor the oath embodied in a simple piece of plastic called a bar card. — Steven Teske Justice ReDesigned is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe [https://steventeske.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Great Colorblind Illusion

In the concluding episode of In Defense of DEI, Steven Teske confronts one of the most seductive—and dangerous—ideas in today’s civil-rights debate: that “colorblindness” is the same thing as equality. Using a recent media controversy involving a student bullied for wearing a MAGA hat, Teske draws a necessary distinction between individual prejudice and systemic discrimination. Bullying and bias against any student are wrong and must be addressed. But isolated acts of mistreatment do not erase the enduring structural realities of racial exclusion, unequal access to power, and institutional barriers that civil-rights law was created to confront. From Chief Justice John Roberts’s vision of formal equality to the continuing effort to dismantle disparate-impact protections, this episode examines how supposedly neutral rules can preserve deeply unequal outcomes. Teske explains why facial neutrality is not enough when hiring systems, testing structures, algorithms, and institutional practices continue to produce predictable racial exclusion without ever mentioning race. As corporations quietly retreat from public diversity targets and courts increasingly treat race-conscious remedies as the greater constitutional harm, The Great Colorblind Illusion asks the question at the heart of this series: Are we creating a genuine meritocracy—or simply protecting old pipelines of privilege under a new legal vocabulary? This is not an argument for quotas or lowered standards. It is an argument for reality-based justice: objective systems, structured decision-making, and laws capable of recognizing discrimination even when it is carefully disguised. The final episode of In Defense of DEI is a call to reject willful blindness, challenge manufactured grievance, and keep the nation’s civil-rights guardrails from being turned against the very people they were designed to protect. Justice ReDesigned is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading Justice ReDesigned! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe [https://steventeske.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Grace for the Oppressor? Part Two

In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske continues his examination of memory, accountability, and the moral inversion at the heart of the modern backlash against diversity, equity, inclusion, and historical truth. Part One asked whether enslavers and Confederate leaders deserve grace because they were “products of their time.” Part Two asks a different question: What happens when a society continues to honor them? Drawing on history, law, civic responsibility, and personal family history, Teske explores the difference between remembering the past and celebrating it. He argues that museums teach history, textbooks provide context, but public honors—school names, monuments, and commemorations—communicate values. This episode examines: • Why naming a school is an act of honor, not historical documentation• The difference between remembrance and celebration• How Confederate symbols continue to communicate exclusion and hierarchy• Why “wokeness” has become a slur for awareness and historical accountability• What Germany’s confrontation with its past can teach us about public memory• Why discomfort is not oppression—and why accountability is not humiliation Teske also shares a deeply personal reflection about his own family’s connection to slavery and explains why acknowledging history honestly is not an act of self-condemnation, but an act of civic integrity. At its core, this episode asks a simple but profound question: What belongs in memory—and what belongs in places of honor? Because some things belong in museums. Some things belong in textbooks. Some things belong in memory. But not everything that belongs to history deserves celebration. And when we confuse remembrance with honor, we do not preserve history. We rehearse humiliation. Steve Teske is a retired judge from Georgia and currently is legal counsel to the Department of Social Services for the Pascua Yaqui Pueblo Tribe. He has testified before Congress on four occasions and numerous state legislatures on issues involving civil rights, reducing racial disparities in justice systems, and juvenile justice reforms. Teske has authored several articles published in professional and peer-reviewed journals and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Juvenile Law Prize Award. He hosts The Teske Brief podcast at www.youtube.com/@judgeteske Justice ReDesigned is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading Justice ReDesigned! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe [https://steventeske.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]