Minn. Attorneys in Hot Water for Calling Judge 'Catholic Knight Witch Hunter'
A Minnesota judge has ordered the arrest of an attorney representing an organization described as a "religious cult," after the lawyer failed to appear in court in Wednesday to face a hearing on some controversial statements she made against the judge.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher held attorney Naomi Isaacson in contempt for her absence, and fined her along with Rebekah Nett, another attorney who represents the Dr. R.C. Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology (SIST), $5,000 each for some strong-worded statements they had made in a memo, The Associated Press reported.
According to ex-members of SIST, the group is a cult and is led by Avraham Cohen, an Indian immigrant who is an American citizen. On its website, the organization describes itself as "a world-class educational institute in the Shawano area," and talks about the discrimination it believes it receives:
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"Over the past 30 years, Dr. Samanta Roy has experienced many instances of racial discrimination at the hands of Shawano city officials and local people. This prejudice and discrimination has intensified since the founding of the Institute more than a decade ago, especially since its purchase of various businesses in the Shawano area starting about five or six years ago."
The penalties against Isaacson and Nett regard a memo they filed in November, in which the pair call Judge Dreher "a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter" and a "black-robed bigot." Discussing about the judge's decision to uphold court orders against the organization's bankrupt subsidiary, Yehud-Monosson USA Inc, they said in the memo: "we may as well flush her papal bull order down the toilet."
A number of gas stations and convenience stores in the possession of Yehud-Monosson had apparently filed for bankruptcy last year, but instead of receiving Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would have allowed the business to keep its properties, a bankruptcy judge converted the case to Chapter 7, which allows a trustee to liquidate assets to pay creditors, St. Paul Pioneer Press shared.
Isaacson, who is also chief-executive of SIST, accused the U.S. courts of discrimination, and expressed in the memo:
"Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church."
Nett, who added in the memo that Catholics were behind the Holocaust, the slave trade, the sinking of the Titanic and World War II, made an attempt to backtrack on the comments by describing the November memo as an "emotional outburst" by by Isaacson, and argued against the sanctions by insisting that such remarks will not be made again.
Dreher has called the document "replete with unsupported and outrageous allegations of bigotry, deceit, conspiracy and scandalous statements against this court ... and bankruptcy courts in general," and said that she is not a Catholic and does not belong to any particular faith.
The accused attorneys will have to take legal ethics classes along with paying the fine. Dreher also said that Nett and Isaacson would face a decision on whether they should be removed from the roster of attorneys allowed to practice before federal courts in the state.
