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It may come as little consolation to Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, but the Oregon State Bar has dismissed an election-eve bar complaint that former longtime Multnomah County prosecutor Chuck French filed against Schmidt in April.
In his complaint, French alleged that Schmidt misrepresented the facts in the cases of two convicted murderers for whom he asked then-Gov. Kate Brown to grant clemency.
Related: District Attorney Mike Schmidt Faces Bar Complaint as Election Nears
Schmidt told the bar he depended on his staff to provide the appropriate information to the governor. The complaint captured a fundamental disagreement between Schmidt, who won election in 2020 on a reform platform, and more conservative prosecutors such as French, who criticized Schmidt’s approach as soft on crime.
In the May primary, voters sided with the latter view, choosing one of Schmidt’s senior prosecutors, Nathan Vasquez, to replace him by 7 percentage points.
While voters went with Vasquez, the bar’s assistant general counsel, Linn Davis, told French in an Oct. 18 letter that the bar was dismissing his complaint.
“Your concerns do not support a reasonable belief that Mr. Schmidt engaged in lawyer misconduct,” Davis wrote. “There is no sufficient evidence that Mr. Schmidt had reason to believe he could not rely on the work of his staff.”