Radack in Contempt

On Friday 26 April of this year, Senior District Court Judge Robert E Payne appended the following to a ruling in the matter of Fitzgibbon v. Radack.

Neither contrition nor emotional distress nor illness nor financial difficulties can excuse deliberate misconduct of this sort by any litigant, much less by a lawyer. And, the record here shows that Radack is a sharp-tongued, mean-spirited, proliferous user of social media. Her conduct here is just more of the same. Neither contrition nor emotional distress nor illness nor financial distress have caused Radack to ameliorate her penchant for nasty social media communication.

The 'Radack' that Judge Payne is referring to is of course the well-known whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack.

In the autumn of 2015, mother-of-three Radack and father-of-three Fitzgibbon began making arrangements to meet at a hotel in the DC area. The meet was preceded by several seamy DMs sent by Radack to Fitzgibbon, and followed after the meet by further DMs by Radack to Fitzgibbon, complimenting him on the good time they'd had.

But things took an abrupt about-face some time later when Radack suddenly accused Fitzgibbon of rape for the same incident.

Prosecutors closed the investigation, and Fitzgibbon filed counterclaims against Radack, after which Radack began a series of evasive manoeuvres, all of which ultimately failed, and resulted in the ruling cited above.

Found in Contempt

Senior District Court Judge Payne also enjoined Radack in the same ruling to always make clear, whenever appearing before a court, that she has been found in contempt of court.

'The Court concludes that an appropriate punishment for violating the July 31, 2018 ORDER (ECF No. 41) is that Radack be held in contempt of Court for committing the violation so that, wherever she seeks to practice, she will have to report that she has been held in contempt of Court. That, for a lawyer, is an extremely serious punishment. Radack shall remit payment by May 30, 2019 to the Clerk of Court.'

Trevor Fitzgibbon was previously the media representative for, amongst others: Michael Ratner; Assange, Manning, and Snowden; Move On; Wikipedia; and the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador.