An investigation by the Landmine has found that the local attorney referenced in the lengthy Ninth Circuit Judicial Council report on now-former Judge Josh Kindred is Michelle Nesbett. Nesbett has worked at the law firm Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot since 2020. Prior to that, she worked at a law firm with her husband. Nesbett’s involvement with Kindred raises serious ethical and conflict-of-interest concerns within Alaska’s justice system.
Nesbett is married to Anchorage Superior Court Judge David Nesbett. David Nesbett is the grandson of Buell Nesbett, the namesake of the Downtown Anchorage Nesbett Courthouse.
According to the initial Special Committee report “Judge Kindred’s unprofessional conduct extended well beyond his chambers. As stated in the report, Judge Kindred received nude photographs from another, more senior Assistant U.S. Attorney (ASUA) who practiced before him. Judge Kindred discussed these photographs with his law clerk. According to the report, he also received “sexually suggestive text messages from a local attorney who regularly appeared before him, which he also discussed with his law clerks.” (emphasis added)
The assistant U.S. attorney referenced in the report who sent nude photographs to Kindred has been identified as Karen Vandergaw, who has since been demoted. When the matters involving Kindred were brought to U.S. Attorney for Alaska, Lane Tucker, in October 2022, she reported it to the Chief Judge and District Court.
According to a July 12 email sent by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Wilson, criminal division chief, to the the Federal Public Defender’s Office:
When we first became aware of the possibility of potential conflicts of interest in late October and early November 2022, we took proactive steps to mitigate any conflicts pending investigation into their veracity. We did this by, among other steps, informing the Chief Judge of the District Court of all allegations known to us and cooperating fully in investigative efforts. At that time, out of an abundance of caution, we also requested administrative assignment/reassignment away from Judge Kindred of cases involving three AUSAs and one defense attorney, which the court subsequently did, starting on November 15, 2022 and continuing through Kindred’s resignation.
Vandergaw, Seth Brickey-Smith, and Tara Lewis were the three assistant U.S. attorneys who had their cases reassigned from Kindred. Lewis was Kindred’s former clerk and, according to the report, had two intimate encounters with Kindred shortly after she started working as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Until now, only the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska knew the defense attorney in question was Michelle Nesbett.
All of the cases were reassigned from Kindred on the same day, November 15, 2022. A review of PACER – a tool used to access federal court records – shows Nesbett had two cases reassigned from Kindred on that day. Both of these were cases assigned to her by the Criminal Justice Act panel. Nesbett is one of several defense attorneys who are approved to work as defense counsel on cases that the Federal Public Defender Office is conflicted out of.
The first case was USA v. Martinez. That case was reassigned from Kindred to Judge Burgess on November 15, 2022.
The second case was USA v. Pompa-Villa. In this case, Nesbett and Vandergaw were opposing counsel. That must have been one interesting case! USA v. Pompa-Villa was also reassigned to Judge Burgess on November 15, 2022.
Both Nesbett and Vandergaw put their names forward last April for the vacant federal judge position. This position was made vacant when Judge Burgess moved to senior status at the end of 2021. It remains vacant because Senators Lisa Murkowski (R – Alaska) and Dan Sullivan (R – Alaska) have been unable to agree on a name to put forward to President Joe Biden.
In Nesbett’s letter to the Alaska Bar Association for her candidacy, she referenced her husband, two daughters, and their allegedly happy life. It’s noteworthy that Nesbett and Vandergaw both applied for the vacant judgeship five months after their cases were reassigned from Kindred and when they knew that they were both involved in an ongoing investigation.
On November 20, 2023 – a year after the initial reassignments – Nesbett and two of her co-workers filed a motion to be substitute counsel in a case. The next day, Kindred recused himself.
Multiple sources confirm that Kindred supported Nesbett for the vacant federal judgeship. He went as far as to set up meetings with, and introduce her to, senior officials in both Murkowski and Sullivan’s offices. In the bar poll conducted by Senator Murkowski’s office for the candidates, one respondent noted that Nesbett had “forged a very close relationship with Judge Kindred.”
Nesbett served on term as the lawyer representative on the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. When her term expired on March 30, 2024, the position was advertised by the Alaska Bar Association. In a solicitation regarding the position, the Bar stated, “Lawyer representatives work to foster open communications between federal judges and attorneys, and provide support and advice in the functioning of the court.”
In a weird Alaska twist, Nesbett represented Maria Athens after the insane scandal in 2020 that resulted in the resignation of then-Anchorage Ethan Berkowitz.
Michelle Nesbett did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails, over a four day period, for comment on this story.
Thank goodness it is the Landmine who reported this unsupported story. And that its readership is so small. As it should be since Landmine is simply a very local and not very well Respected Publication with a strikingly small readership.
There will be more to this story and very likely will show that Michelle Nesbett acted with the highest professionalism. But Landmine will surely not print that.
Ha. The “more” will probably turn out to be that Sullivan forwarded Nesbett’s name to the White House after Kindred introduced them.
No. The names Sullivan sent to the White House were Vandergraw and Klugman. Ironic that the three names Sullivan has proposed for the federal bench are 3 people who have had inappropriate relationships with each other.
Where can we find your stats regarding the striking characteristics of the Landmine’s readership?
How about they display the texts so we can decide for ourselves if “Michelle Nesbett acted with the highest professionalism” ????
I highly doubt it. Try to understand conflict of interest, quid pro qou…..sounds like another stooge in government. The only difference here is he didn’t have to pay to cover it up. Or did he?
Sending (allegedly) sexually explicit material to co-workers is the antithesis of professionalism. Strictly speaking, she slipped up if she was trying to gain some advantage or ingratiate herself with her indiscretionaery co-actor; she should have asked that chickenhead VP Harris how it’s done.
Wow Jeff, way to detract from the real problem, the male federal judge who repeatedly sexually harassed women.
Shouldn’t Michelle Nesbitt have to resign for unprofessional conduct as well?? Seems to me they all need to be replaced… This is what’s wrong with our already broken system.
Nothing here to indicate Nesbitt did anything unprofessional. A married woman sending racy texts to a single man may look bad on a personal level, but we don’t fire people for it.
Erik: you miss the point. If a judge and a lawyer that appears before that judge share racy texts the opposing lawyers ( in this case, the U.S. attorney’s prosecutors) , should be informed of that relationship. Or the judge should excuse himself if they are not informed. The question that should be asked is whether the judge will favor the attorney that engaged in the racy texts.
Kindred was married until his wife divorced him. Nesbett needs to pack up her office and get out for practicing unethically.
I believe every person in the federal courthouse is or has been involved in the Kindred debacle in one way or another and they all must be replaced. All of them. The probation officers, the prosecutors the defense attorneys, all of them. Who this is really doing an injustice to is the pretrial defendants who are behind bars tucked away from support, family and resources that can help them in their defense. Alaskans including myself must make our voices very loud.
Supposedly, there’s federal judges and prosecutors fooling around with each other and with journalists, but you want Landfield to frame it as a sexual harassment issue and not a corruption issue, is that correct?
Was there not drugs being used in his federal chambers
No wonder David Nesbett is such a dick to women in the courtroom.
Bingo
Never knew Alaska had a Fulton County
GOOD GOOGLY MOOGLY…. Who in the heck would ever want to be in a nudist camp in Alaska, sounds like this is what it is….I mean cmon man, it shrivels up in the cold water….IN ALASKA OUTSIDE IN ANY OTHER SEASON THAN SUMMER, IT WOULD TOTALLY DISAPPEAR….
Rotten to the core, a very sordid affair. Daylight and shining a light on this stuff is a very good thing. Just goes to show how entitled GOP-associated, politically-affiliated and appointed attorneys keep providing cautionary tales. Nude pictures. Sexual harassment. Cronyism gone awry. It’s quite a line. Clarkson, The fellow after him. At least Treg Taylor, despite his holy rollerism and seeming obliviousness to what the job entails and what he actually does, hasn’t been caught up in a sex scandal, a Pyrrhic minor victory, I guess. How about we just get some attorneys that respect the rule of law,… Read more »
They are all guilty. Judge Scoble,
Christopher Schroeder, all of them. They must be removed from the federal court house and any other court room that makes decisions on any individuals life. They are rotten to the core. I do agree with that.