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• Phill Kline

A formal ethics complaint against former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline was announced today.

The complaint alleges Kline violated the state of Kansas' rules of professional conduct in his capacity as AG and later as Johnson County District Attorney in his investigation of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

The complaint alleges that after taking office, Kline met with senior deputy Eric Rucker and investigator Tom Williams and plotted a way to "target" Wichita abortion provider George Tiller and his now-shuttered clinic.

The Kansas

Office of Disciplinary Administrator alleges that under Kline's direction, attorney Stephen

Maxwell -- who worked for Kline in the Kansas Attorney

General's office and later followed Kline to the Johnson County

District

Attorney's office -- tricked a Shawnee County District Court judge into

issuing subpoenas for women's medical records in Kline's now

infamous investigation.

The

complaint also alleges that Maxwell, now an attorney in the Reno County

District Attorney's office, and Kline tried to withhold legal opinions

and law review articles from a Johnson County grand jury in an attempt

to hide the fact that a federal court struck down a 2003 opinion by

then-Attorney General Kline that

interpreted a child-abuse reporting law to say that any sexual activity

between children 16 and younger was child abuse.

In the first complaint, the Disciplinary Administrator alleges that Maxwell knowingly misled

Shawnee County Chief District Court Judge Richard D. Anderson

with bad statistics from the Kansas Department of Social and

Rehabilitation Services in an attempt to start the inquisition into the abortion clinics.

Maxwell

used an affidavit from Kline's investigator, Williams,

alleging a "gross disparity" between the number of incidents of abuse

reported by SRS (175 in Sedgwick County) and those reported by the

Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing

Child Unit (1,884).

The Disciplinary Administrator alleges that Kline knowingly approved of

the deception.

A week after Maxwell's request for an inquisition, Maxwell received an e-mail from Kline's No. 2 man,

Eric Rucker, saying: "there could be a problem

with respect to the SRS statistical information regarding abuse."

Maxwell didn't see a problem.

In an e-mail, he wrote: "It

shouldn't affect us one way or another. They are the ones that

misrepresented the numbers. We used what they gave us. At some point,

we may have to clarify with the judge if and when we go back for

further inquisition subpoenas. At that point, we can tell him what

happened. Tom and I are going through e-mail tomorrow to try and

develop a plan of action."

Except, the complaint alleges, Maxwell never clarified it to the judge.

The complaint alleges that Maxwell knew he was presenting "obviously flawed" information to the court.

On October 29, 2003, Anderson approved the inquisition and

ordered the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and SRS to turn

over the records.

Also in the compliant against Kline, he is accused of using records obtained through subpoena

from a Wichita La Quinta to identify "221 potential adult-patient

names, 221 adult-patient addresses (street, city, and state), and 221

adult-patient telephone numbers" of clients of Tiller's clinic. Kline and his

subordinates are also accused of staking out Tiller's

clinic from January 2005 through the fall of the same year to "identify

visitors and employees of Dr. Tiller's clinic." They are also

accused of "following visitors and employees to their vehicles and

recording automobile license plate numbers" in an attempt to "identify

the name of the driver."

Then Rucker allegedly lied about the attempts to ID patients when

talking to the Kansas Supreme Court in 2005. His allegedly false claims

included:

• Claiming the Attorney General's Office had investigated, but not

  subpoenaed, records of live births by girls under 16, when it allegedly

  was the other way around. 

• Claiming the AG's office

  wasn't seeking "the identity of any adult woman who had obtained

  services by either of the clinics, nor will we ask for that identity,"

  when Rucker allegedly knew of the attempt to cross-reference the hotel

  records against the redacted abortion records obtained from the Kansas

  Department of Health and Environment.

• Telling Justice Donald Allegrucci that

  the Attorney General's office did not know the names of any children

  who had received abortions, when those names were known.
  

On March 28, 2006, Maxwell again appeared before Anderson and

requested the subpoenas for medical records be reissued. Maxwell used

an affidavit from Williams, even though he knew it contained bad stats. Maxwell

also called Williams as a witness at the hearing and "allowed Williams

to claim that a 10-year-old patient from California had received an

abortion from Dr. Tiller, and that the child's pregnancy had never been

reported as abuse."

Maxwell argued that Williams couldn't find a report of abuse

for the girl's late-term abortion. Maxwell said the lack of report showed that either Tiller had

failed to report that the girl was a victim of sexual abuse and the

pregnancy endangered her life, or Tiller didn't have enough evidence to

show the "required post viability findings."

But Maxwell knew a year earlier that the pregnancy had been

reported and the suspected rapist had been prosecuted, the complaint

alleges, and he didn't do anything to tell the court.

The Wichita Eagle reported on a November 2008 hearing in

which the girl's abortion came up. Tiller's attorneys argued that Kline

was lying when he claimed that

Tiller hadn't reported the girl as a possible victim of child rape, the

Eagle reported. Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, even provided documents detailing the girl's story.

"That was more than a year after they learned of the [rapist's] prosecution in the girl's home state," the Eagle

reported. "Another document indicated Tiller had reported the girl's

abortion to Kansas Child Protective Services. But Williams said that

wasn't clear to him at the time."

Based on Maxwell's information, Anderson released 62 records from Tiller's

clinic and 29 from Planned Parenthood to Maxwell on October 24, 2006.

Maxwell was allowed to make two copies of the records and return them

to the court.

On January 1, 2007, Anderson requested that Maxwell turn over a

Status and Disposition Report showing where the records were located.

Maxwell turned it in on January 8. The report didn't say that Kline had taken the records with him to the JoCo DA's office.

In the week that

Maxwell was preparing the report, the records moved from the AG's

office to Maxwell's "open garage" to Tom Williams' car to Judge

Anderson and the Shawnee County District Attorney's office, where Williams

reclaimed the Tiller records at Rucker's request and took them to

Kinko's where he and another deputy spent an hour "in full public view

copying the private medical files of tens of women."

Williams told a deputy to keep the files at his apartment in

Shawnee County.

The records stayed in a Rubbermaid container for 40 days and then transferred to the JoCo DA's office.

The complaint alleges that Maxwell knew his report was "in error" but never corrected it.

The Disciplinary Administrator's office claims Kline lied to it,

claiming that he kept the medical records "under lock and key" at

the Johnson County District Attorney's Office.

The complaint against Kline also alleges that Kline didn't tell Judge Anderson that he

had made summaries of the women's medical records. And when later asked about

it by Kansas Supreme Court Judge Carol Beier, Kline allegedly lied and

said he'd kept summaries of only three records "that pertain to a

theory of criminal liability that would have jurisdiction in Johnson

County against Dr. Tiller." Except the administrator says Kline had all

60 of the summaries of the women's medical records. Beier followed up

and asked him if he had summaries of the records, Kline told her, "I do

not believe that I do. I have sought the records from the Office of

Attorney General and have been refused." Another alleged lie.

The grand jury complaint was made by Stephanie B. Hensel, who

was the grand jury's presiding juror. The grand jury was selected to

investigate Planned Parenthood, and Maxwell was advising the jurors.

The complaint says Hensel requested that Maxwell provide the

grand jury with legal opinions and research on Kansas' child abuse and

abortion reporting law on December 19, 2007.

Specifically, Hensel asked for: "Any opinion, official opinion, Supreme

Court, any opinions based on the interpretation of child abuse."

In January 2007, Kline and Maxwell gave the grand jury three binders

that included Kline's 2003 AG opinion, but didn't note that a federal court issued a

permanent injunction against that opinion. The grand jury found the information on

its own. Hensel and a retired judge approached Maxwell after seeing the

case. Maxwell allegedly "denied knowledge of subject statute and cases

(even though Phill Kline's name repeatedly appeared in the opinion and

[Maxwell] assisted in Mr. Kline's representation) and could not, or

would not, explain why the words 'preliminary injunction.'"

The grand jury recalled the subpoena for records.

Rucker, the former chief of staff for Kansas Attorney General , and Maxwell, another former Kline deputy, are also facing ethics complaints.

Maxwell's

hearing is scheduled for February 17 and 18. Rucker's hearing is

scheduled for April 27 and 28. A formal hearing for Kline has been

scheduled for May 26-28.

Kline has yet to comment, but when he does (likely issuing a statement), we'll post it.

Photo by Michael McClure.