By Cheryl Sullenger
Topeka, Kansas – Former Attorney General Phill Kline held a press conference at the Kansas Supreme Court yesterday announcing that he has filed suit in Federal Court against the Kansas Supreme Court, alleging that they violated his Constitutional Rights when they indefinitely suspended his law in 2013.
At issue was Kline’s attempt to investigate and prosecute late-term abortionist George Tiller of Wichita and Planned Parenthood in Overland Park for illegal late-term abortions and concealing child rape while serving first as Kansas Attorney General then as Johnson County District Attorney.
Kline included Disciplinary Administrator Stan Hazlett in the suit, who pursued an ethics case against Kline as a political vendetta even though two of Hazlett’s investigators cleared Kline of wrongdoing.
A press release issued yesterday stated that Kline “seeks full vindication and recognition that his law license was never validly suspended” because of:
• Unlawful composition of the court
• Arbitrary conduct by the Judicial Branch
• Illegal actions of an Appellate Clerk
• Improper applications of professional standards
• Judicial conflict of interest
“This Kline saga has been a complete miscarriage of justice and an embarrassment to the Kansas judicial system . . . Mr. Kline set out to protect young girls from sexual abuse and to enforce the abortion laws passed by the people of Kansas. What he encountered was the tentacles of the abortion industry, apparently touching and corrupting everything in its way. This has been the worst abortion jurisprudence I have ever seen, and I have litigated pro-life cases for 26 years. It can only be described by a four-letter word: EVIL,” stated Kline’s co-counsel Tom Condit of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Operation Rescue has for years defended Kline and noted that a 107-count criminal case against Planned Parenthood filed by Kline was suspiciously dismissed by his successor as Johnson County District Attorney, Steve Howe, after evidence against Planned Parenthood was mysteriously destroyed under the administration of Steven Six, an appointee of radical pro-abortion former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. This dismissal took place even though evidence existed in the custody of a Shawnee County Judge that could have been used as evidence.
Kline’s federal complaint describes point after point of “unlawful, unconstitutional, dishonest and incompetent conduct” by members of the Kansas Supreme Court, “and virtually every other attorney involved in the ethics attack on Kline,” including:
• Special counsel appointed for a Johnson County grand jury, conspiring and crafting a secret agreement with Planned Parenthood that subverted the purpose of the grand jury;
• An ethics panel composed of two (out of three) attorneys who had contributed money to the campaigns of Kline’s political opponents and refused to voluntarily disclose those contributions;
• Findings by that same panel that Kline was guilty of disciplinary rules that did not exist at the time of the alleged conduct;
• Kansas Disciplinary Administrator Hazlett breaking the very disciplinary rules that he is required to follow and enforce, and also deliberately withholding exculpatory evidence favorable to Kline, including the report of Hazlett’s own investigator;
• Repeated misrepresentation by the improperly constituted Kansas Supreme Court of Kline’s statements and conduct and of rules and case law to find Kline guilty of things he did not say and did not do.
“The Kansas Supreme Court has long favored the abortionists who were accused of breaking the law over the prosecutor who was attempting to do his duty and enforce Kansas laws. For his faithful service, Phill was persecuted, wrongly demonized in court and in the media, then run out of his home state. The people who inflicted this injustice should be held fully accountable for their corrupt actions that were politically motivated to protect abortionists from criminal prosecutions,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “It’s time to clear Phill’s name once and for all.”
Read Phill Kline’s filing in Federal Court
