Quick summary of what has happened with the Bar so far regarding Anna Barsegyan:
On November 18, 2021, I filed a Bar Complaint against Anna Barsegyan for harassment and retaliation. The Bar refused to open an investigation into the Complaint on the basis that, since there was a judge on the case, the Bar was absolved of its responsibilities to provide oversight of Ms. Barsegyan.
In December 2022, I filed another Bar Complaint against Anna Barsegyan. There were a slew of new charges, including conspiring to commit suborning perjury (in layman’s terms this means setting someone up as a patsy) and advising her client to break federal and state laws in order to hide evidence of criminal activity from the court. This time, the Bar sent a letter stating “Your recent correspondence presents no new evidence which would merit reopening your complaint.”
I had a back and forth email conversation with Bar employee Roy Kim, in which I stated “… I filed the new complaint, which contained many new allegations against Ms. Barsegyan that had not been included in the original complaint #21-O-14331.
…I found this denial letter to be disturbingly vague. It appears to me that you are trying to sweep these new — and very serious — allegations under the rug by pretending that I never made them.
I request that the Complaint submitted on December 19, 2022 to be treated as new Complaint, that a new file is opened for this new Complaint, that a proper investigation be done regarding ALL charges presented in the new Complaint…”
The Bar responded by agreeing to open a new Complaint.
On April 21, 2023, the Bar issued a turn down which stated “Based on our evaluation of the information provided, we are closing your complaint. The court having jurisdiction over this matter is the appropriate venue for determining the facts and merits of the case…If that court were to find any impropriety by the attorney, please forward such written findings to our office for review.”
I requested a review of this decision. The review department responded that it would take eight months or longer for them to do the review. Below are a few excerpts from Request for Review letter:
Dear CRU Department:
…Per the California Lawyers Association, “The Rules of Professional Conduct (the Rules), adopted by the Board of Trustees of the California State Bar and approved by the California Supreme Court, are intended to regulate the professional conduct of attorneys and establish the standards for purposes of attorney discipline… Once a complaint has been received by the State Bar, an attorney in the State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel will conduct an initial review of the complaint to determine if it shows that the respondent attorney may have acted unethically in a manner that may subject the attorney to discipline…If… the initial review determines that the complaint does describe possible ethical violations that constitute grounds for discipline, the State Bar will assign the complaint for investigation by an attorney and an investigator in the State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel.
On February 2, 2023, Deputy Trial Counsel Roy Kim turned down the Complaint without actually opening a Complaint in the first place.
On March 16, 2023, Mr. Kim agreed to open a Complaint after I sent him an email stating “I found this denial letter to be disturbingly vague. It appears to me that you are trying to sweep these new — and very serious — allegations under the rug by pretending that I never made them……Mr, Kim, your failure to acknowledge the new charges against Anna Barsegyan is unconscionable.”
On April 21, 2023, Mr. Kim issued a letter stating that he would not conduct an investigation. In the letter, Mr. Kim never denied that I had provided sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation. As per the Bar’s guidelines, an investigation should have been conducted and disciplinary action taken if she was found guilty.
However, Mr. Kim did not follow Bar protocol. Instead, in the turn down letter, Mr. Kim wrote “the court having jurisdiction over this matter is the appropriate venue for determining the facts and merits of the case.” I have not found any Bar guidelines which state that the Bar Association is only required to “regulate the professional conduct of attorneys” in situations where the presiding judge determined that the lawyer behaved unethically.
Furthermore, nowhere in the letter did Mr. Kim cite the statutes, rules, regulations or by-laws of the State Bar Association that documents this claim that the Bar’s responsibilities to “regulate the professional conduct of attorneys” are absolved if a case has a judge. I believe that failure to make such a citation indicates that Mr. Kim has provided a false basis for refusing to investigate.
I believe that Mr. Kim has committed two counts of the federal crime of Collusion to Cover Up Criminal Activities. The first count was refusing to open the complaint in the first place, the second count was refusing to investigate a matter that was — by the Bar’s own guidelines — required to be investigated.
I am requesting a CRU review on the basis that Mr. Kim himself indicated that the allegations and evidence provided were sufficient to warrant an investigation to be conducted. As such, I expect CRU to promptly initiate a full investigation.
Since I have documented that FTB utilized Ms. Barsegyan’s legal advice and services to further commit crimes (such as FTB giving Anna Barsegyan our social security numbers so that Anna Barsegyan could post them on the internet, Anna Barsegyan advising her client to violate our California Taxpayer Rights to withhold evidence of crimes committed by FTB, etc), Ms. Barsegyan’s attorney-client privilege with FTB is voided under the Crime-Fraud Exception Provision. Without attorney-client privilege, there is nothing to hinder a full and complete investigation into Anna Barsegyan’s unethical and unlawful activities committed in order to cover up her client’s unlawful activities.
I understand that the people in the Bar Association are employees of the State of California and that there is likely political pressure to cover up crimes that are being perpetrated by other State of California agencies.
The judge in my case never denied the FTB and Anna Barsegyan committed these crimes; the judge simply pretended that the crimes never occurred. The judge is also a State of California employee. I believe that the reason the judge failed to acknowledge these crimes was because of this same political pressure.
As employees of the State of California, Bar Association Employees are civil servants who have sworn an oath to uphold Federal and State laws. The constituents of the State of California pay you a salary to protect us. The crimes being perpetrated by the California Franchise Tax Board are federal crimes being committed against every person who lives in the State of California. How can you allow your parents, children, neighbors, friends, etc to continue to be exploited? Anna Barsegyan set up fellow State of California employees as patsies. How can you allow your peers to be victimized? If you allow these evils to be perpetrated against others, these evils may very well happen to you, too. Please, do your job — protect your constituents and your peers. ..
…I appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to being interviewed by the Bar as a part of the investigation.
Regards,
Christine Grab