The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday indefinitely suspended perennial high court candidate and West St. Paul family law attorney Michelle MacDonald over a pattern of professional misconduct.
MacDonald, a Republican, cannot petition for reinstatement for four months, a penalty the Supreme Court said was appropriate for her repeated misconduct that continued even after a previous license suspension and probation.
The court concluded that MacDonald had "recklessly made false statements about the integrity" of Dakota County Judge David Knutson and repeated those false statements in a 2018 radio interview while she served a two-year probation term that followed a 60-day law license suspension for the misconduct.
Knutson presided over the 2013 child-custody trial of Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, whom MacDonald represented. Grazzini-Rucki was later convicted of hiding her two daughters from their father for two years.
The court also concluded that MacDonald failed to obtain another client's written consent in a fee-splitting arrangement.
The Supreme Court went beyond the one-year probation recommended by a court-appointed referee who looked into a petition for disciplinary action filed by the director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, the legal licensing arm for the state.
"We are especially troubled by the repeated nature of MacDonald's misconduct after discipline, MacDonald's knowledge of the factual falsity of her statements, her refusal to acknowledge the wrongfulness of her conduct, and her lack of remorse," the court wrote in its ruling.
The Supreme Court rejected an argument from MacDonald that her statements about the judge were protected by the First Amendment. She was represented in her appeal by Minneapolis attorney Bobby Joe Champion, who is also a DFL member of the Minnesota Senate.
