The left spent a year trying to end Pam Bondi's law career for doing her job.
Now 128 retired judges tried the exact same play on a DHS lawyer.
What Percival posted after he won says everything about how this ends.
Florida Bar Refuses to Touch DHS Counsel James Percival
James Percival runs the legal shop at the Department of Homeland Security.
In July, he started publicly naming federal judges he says are sabotaging immigration enforcement from the bench.
He launched a series he called Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition.
The list included judges who blocked the end of Temporary Protected Status, the judge who ordered the return of Kilmar Ábrego García to the United States, and a California judge who restricted ICE's use of force against demonstrators.
That did not sit well with Washington's legal establishment.
Within weeks, 128 former state and federal judges had signed onto a 24-page ethics complaint against him.
Democracy Defenders Fund and Lawyers Defending American Democracy filed it with the Florida Bar.
Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince led the charge, and her signature appeared first.
The complaint accused Percival of misconduct so severe it put judges' physical safety at risk.
One legal ethics expert went further, telling Axios that Percival had effectively published a "kill list."
The Florida Bar looked at all of it and said no.
The Bar's reasoning was simple: it does not open investigations into people currently serving in federal office, period.
The complaint was closed.
Percival Answers 128 Former Judges With a Meme
Percival did not just take the win quietly.
He marked it by posting a meme with his own face photoshopped onto Gandalf the White, the wizard from The Lord of the Rings.
The caption joked that he had spent the year "defeating" all 128 of them.
Then he went to Fox News Digital and turned the joke into a real challenge.
He said any of the 128 signers who still hold a Florida Bar card should now face the same scrutiny they tried to put on him, since their complaint was frivolous and they knew it going in.
Percival compared the whole stunt to the 2020 letter where 51 former intelligence officials dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election, calling both examples of the left leaning on borrowed credentials instead of debating the facts.
He has a name for it now: "Bar-fare."
This Is the Same Playbook DOJ Has Been Flagging All Year
This was not a one-off grudge match in Florida.
Pam Bondi faced a bar complaint over how she managed DOJ attorneys.
Trump's pardon attorney, Ed Martin, is fighting one in Washington, D.C.
DOJ immigration litigation chief Drew Ensign got hit with one too.
The Justice Department's own review of the bar complaint process, published in the Federal Register in March, said political activists have weaponized the process specifically to punish government lawyers for representing the Trump administration in court.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier responded within days of the complaint being filed.
He wrote to the Bar calling the filing a "shameless publicity stunt" and pointed out that only three of the 128 signers had ever actually served on a Florida bench.
His broader point still stands: holding a runaway court accountable for overstepping its authority is not misconduct, it is the job.
The Kill List Claim Exposes the Left's Real Double Standard
Here is what should get anyone paying attention fired up: a legal ethics expert compared Percival's tweets to a hit list with a straight face, while the same activist network stayed silent for years about actual threats made against Trump officials, their families, and their businesses.
That imbalance is the whole story, and it is not an accident.
The 128 judges who signed that complaint wanted Percival investigated, silenced, and possibly disbarred for stating facts about their own rulings.
Instead they got a Gandalf meme and a public dare to check their own Bar standing.
Every judge who signed that complaint just found out what it feels like to be on a list.
Sources:
- Charles Creitz, "Top DHS lawyer turns tables on 128 ex-judges after Bar declines 'Worst of the Worst' complaint," Fox News, September 4, 2026.
- Staff, "Florida Bar Rejects Leftist Scheme to Probe DHS Attorney for Criticizing Rogue Judges," The Federalist, August 31, 2026.
- Staff, "Uthmeier Demands FL Bar Toss Complaint Against DHS Attorney," The Federalist, August 25, 2026.
- Stephen Dinan, "Florida Bar rejects demands to probe DHS' top lawyer over criticism of judges," The Washington Times, September 3, 2026.
- "Review of State Bar Complaints and Allegations Against Department of Justice Attorneys," Federal Register, March 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Top DHS lawyer's attacks on judges raise alarms, spark ethics complaint," Axios, August 21, 2026.
