Welcome readers of the Mary Ann Akers blog in the Washington Post (via M&N). It’s not clear why anyone is still covering the press releases of Mr. Sibley, who has been suspended from practice in the District of Columbia, and thus has no basis to be filing anything in court. While Sibley has appealed his suspension to the U.S. Supreme Court, I will happily wager that the application for a stay is denied, followed by the denial of the writ of certiorari. This is, after all, Mr. Sibley’s twelfth petition for certiorari on his own behalf, and the first eleven (along with five on behalf of clients who were not Mr. Sibley) have all been denied.

Sibley’s latest stunt is to claim that he will call 800 witnesses who were alleged clients of Palfrey’s call-girl service at the civil forfeiture proceedings over Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s estate. It’s not going to happen: as a suspended attorney, Sibley is ineligible to appear in federal court, which is why the government filed a notice of suspension on May 21. (The victims of Sibley in Larry Sinclair’s lawsuit against bloggers have yet to file such a notice. Not clear what they’re waiting for, though, technically, under the local rules, it is Sibley’s obligation to notify the federal court he has been suspended and is ineligible to practice.) Moreover, the US government has opposed his proposed substitution on behalf of the late Palfrey in Case No. 06-1710, United States v. 803 Capitol Street–Sibley was fired by Palfrey, has no one to represent since there is no executor to the Palfrey estate as of yet, and has a conflict of interest with the Palfrey estate because he filed a claim on his own behalf to the property in question: even if he weren’t suspended, the district court would be exceedingly unlikely to let him intervene in the forfeiture case, much less turn it into a circus, and, indeed, it ordered that the government need not file a formal brief. (Note that Sibley’s motion to substitute acknowledges that he hasn’t sought permission from his alleged client, Blanche Palfrey.) The question is why reporters are permitting themselves to be marionettes to broadcast whatever Sibley blasts as an e-mail, when he has repeatedly demonstrated that he shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Filed under: fishing expeditions, Montgomery Blair Sibley