WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is challenging efforts to sanction attorneys from the first and second Trump administrations, asserting in a lawsuit that the District of Columbia Bar is unfairly playing politics with the legal disciplinary process.

The lawsuit represents a direct challenge to the authority of the office that enforces ethics standards for attorneys in the nation's capital, where several high-profile investigations of Trump-allied lawyers are playing out.

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"The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations and target executive branch officials with whom they happen to politically disagree, and federal attorneys will once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, a top Justice Department official, said in a statement.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington. An email seeking comment to the D.C. Bar's Board on Professional Responsibility, among the defendants named in the complaint, did not receive an immediate response.

The complaint chiefly concerns the ethics case against Jeffrey Clark, a senior lawyer in the first Trump administration Justice Department who was deeply engaged in legal efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election that President Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

A disciplinary panel has recommended that Clark be stripped of his law license, but the lawsuit seeks to bring an end to those proceedings, calling them "unlawful" and tainted by politicization.

Clark, who has denied any wrongdoing, applauded the lawsuit on X on Wednesday evening, saying, "This is an important step to vindicate the separation of powers."

In an attempt to bolster its claims of bias in the disciplinary process, the Justice Department asserted that bar authorities had treated Clark more harshly than a former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email during the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign.

The lawsuit also backs Ed Martin, an ardent Trump loyalist who now serves as the Justice Department's pardon attorney. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel accused Martin in March of professional misconduct for a threatening letter that he sent to Georgetown Law School's dean last year, when Martin was the top federal prosecutor for Washington.

Martin was the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia when he warned the Georgetown dean that his office wouldn't hire the private school's students if it didn't eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

"The Office of Disciplinary Counsel and the Board on Professional Responsibility, as D.C. institutions, have no authority to decide whether a federal government attorney — no less the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — is upholding his oath of office or whether his official acts comport with the Constitution," the lawsuit states.

The Justice Department last week filed what's known as a statement of interest in support of Martin, who had earlier complained about "uneven behavior" by the disciplinary counsel that filed the ethics charges against him.