A progressive LGBTQ rights attorney has been charged in a federal indictment with lying about a phone call he made while under oath. The lie was given during a judicial inquiry into whether Carl Charles and others engaged in "judge shopping" while attempting to challenge Alabama's Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act (VCAP).
Charles, an attorney at Lambda Legal based in Atlanta, Ga., was charged in an indictment unsealed on Monday in federal court in Montgomery. The charges come months after a judge sanctioned him and referred him for a criminal investigation.
In February, U.S. District Judges W. Keith Watkins, R. David Proctor and Jeffrey Beaverstock said in a report unsealed in March that the plaintiffs' attorneys suing Alabama attempted to manipulate which judge heard the VCAP lawsuit by trying to dismiss and refile their original lawsuit with a different court.
The results of that inquiry was detailed in a 234-page order in which U.S. District Judge Liles Burke said, "[T]he Court PUBLICLY REPRIMANDS Carl Charles for his repeated, intentional, bad-faith misrepresentations of key facts to the three-judge panel about his call to Judge Thompson's chambers, imposes MONETARY SANCTIONS in the amount of $5,000, and REFERS this matter to the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama and Charles's licensing bar organizations," Burke said in the order.
The order said, "Charles stood before this Court and testified just as he testified before the Panel—with his pants on fire."
"No case is worth the price of one's integrity; and yet Melody Eagan, Jeffrey Doss, and Carl Charles chose to gamble with theirs," Burke wrote. "Inexplicably, they decided it was worth the risk."
Charles, who worked in the Justice Department during the tenure of President Joe Biden, pleaded not guilty on Monday to making a false statement before a court.
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