Maryland officials appear to have begun to circle the wagons in defending Hillary Clinton’s lawyers, according to the lawyer trying to get them punished by the state bar.

Ty Clevenger, who last month won a court order demanding the state’s attorney grievance commission investigate David E. Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson over accusations of destruction of evidence, says the state is now refusing to divulge the progress of the probe, breaking its usual rules.

Mr. Clevenger also said the state’s top court quietly changed the rules in June to allow the bar to refuse to investigate complaints filed by people who gain their knowledge through public reporting rather than personal knowledge — which would have affected his Clinton lawyer request, had the new rules been in place when he filed his complaint.

“I suppose I should be flattered that Maryland changed the rules just for little old me, but I’m not,” Mr. Clevenger wrote Monday on his blog, LawFlog.com, saying Maryland appears to be trying to protect powerful lawyers from activists like himself.

Mr. Clevenger has been on a mission to seek punishment for Mr. Kendall and the other Clinton lawyers, saying they violated legal profession ethics by helping Mrs. Clinton delete official government record emails kept on her secret account, even as they were being sought in a congressional probe.

Last month Mr. Clevenger went to court in Maryland and won an order forcing the state bar to investigate the lawyers. The bar had tried to dismiss the complaint without investigation, asserting it was frivolous.

On Monday Mr. Clevenger went back to court asking the judge to order the bar investigators to release documents from their probe so far.

He said he’s tried to pry loose the documents but hasn’t gotten any response, which he said means either the bar counsel isn’t really conducting the full probe the judge ordered, or else they are denying him fair access to their progress.

Either way, he said, it amounted to “First Amendment retaliation.”

Neither the state Attorney Grievance Commission nor Alexis Rohde, the state lawyer who fought Mr. Clevenger in court last month, responded to messages seeking comment Monday.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.