President Trump’s attorneys could face professional discipline after their client alleged that notes they took on special counsel Robert Mueller’s planned interview questions were leaked without his permission.

Trump denied giving his consent to release a document listing the questions, tweeting Tuesday, "So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were 'leaked' to the media."

If Trump's lawyers shared the document without his permission, they could face a yearslong disciplinary process that threatens their ability to practice law.

Experts on legal ethics and rules of attorney conduct say the document would be a confidential client record and that the lawyers could only share it with a third party with Trump’s explicit or implied consent.

“It seems like the legal team disclosed it to someone outside the legal team, which is a violation of the rules, and that person disclosed it to the Times,” said Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and an expert on legal misconduct.

Gershman said members of Trump’s legal team could only share the document with outside experts or White House staff with Trump’s explicit or implied permission. “A lawyer has to advise him of the risks, and then his consent is valid,” he said.

"Even if it’s negligent, sloppy, whatever — you’re violating the rules. You have to safeguard this information,” Gershman said. “This is one of the critical rules that embraces lawyer-client relationships. This is one of the most critical rules there is in our legal system.”

Georgetown University law professor Michael Frisch, who has prosecuted and defended attorneys facing discipline in the nation’s capital, said the D.C. Bar's new disciplinary counsel, Hamilton Fox, could mean bad news for a leaker, given his role in a recent confidentiality case.

“The D.C. Bar would take it more seriously than it ever has before, that’s my view,” Frisch said. “There was recently a bar prosecution of a lawyer and the lawyer’s lawyers for essentially violating confidentiality in a disclosure to the press."

The New York Times reported Monday that the Mueller questions were “read by the special counsel investigators to the president’s lawyers, who compiled them into a list” and that the document “was provided to The Times by a person outside Mr. Trump’s legal team.”

Frisch said that “if an attorney directed a third party to violate confidentiality, the attorney would be responsible for that as well. There’s a rule for attorneys that says you can't do through others what you can't do yourself.”

Potential penalties vary widely based on the facts of a case and an attorney's history of other violations, including a nonpublic reprimand or a more serious action such as a suspension. The looming threat of penalties often is described as the most harrowing part of the process.

One limiting factor, Frisch added, is that "if Trump doesn't want to make an issue of it, nobody else really can from a point of view of confidentiality."

Indeed, Trump is himself a notorious anonymous source to the media, reportedly dialing journalists from the White House and asking them to attribute the information to an unnamed senior official.

“We don’t know who leaked the questions or if the leaker was a current or former lawyer for Trump. The professional conduct rules do not apply to non-lawyers,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law.

“A current or former lawyer could not ethically leak the questions without Trump’s express or implied consent," Gillers said.

But he added: "For all we know, Trump may have approved of the leak, whether by a lawyer or not, if he perceived a political advantage in doing so."

Jay Sekulow, who leads Trump's outside legal team, did not respond to a request for comment. John Dowd, a former member of the team, declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on whether Trump waived confidentiality.

Fordham University law professor Bruce Green, a legal ethics expert, said he doubts Trump's lawyers are at risk of discipline.

"First, he would have to fire his lawyers. I didn't see him fire anybody. So, either he doesn't know who leaked it or they had permission to leak it or he doesn't really care."

"Let's suppose he cared and he knew who was responsible," Green said. "There is a fact issue about whether they had permission or not. And who are you going to believe?"

Gershman added that it's often very difficult to trace leaks to their source.

"I’m sure some people are thinking Mueller is doing it so the public knows what he’s doing," he said. "There’s going to be a lot of speculation here and my guess is nobody's going to get to the bottom of how this thing happened.”