Alaska Judge’s Sex Scandal Brings Scrutiny to US Attorney Tucker

The sexual misconduct findings that toppled a federal judge in Alaska will prompt fresh scrutiny of the Biden-appointed US attorney there, according to two of her predecessors in the post and lawyers experienced in similar inquiries.

S. Lane Tucker, the Anchorage-based US attorney since 2022, wasn’t mentioned by name in a judicial panel’s July report that concluded Judge Joshua Kindred had inappropriately sexualized relationships with two Alaska prosecutors, forcing him to resign.

But defense lawyers are preparing to challenge dozens of cases involving Kindred and those prosecutors. Tucker also faces separate complaints to investigative agencies that raise questions about how the office leadership responded to the allegations.

In one, to the independent US Office of Special Counsel, Kindred’s former law clerk claims Tucker and other top managers retaliated against her after she reported the judge’s behavior to them. In the other, public defenders asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate alleged ethical breaches at the prosecutors’ office.

The IG has referred that complaint to Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews attorney misconduct allegations, according to an Aug. 2 letter obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Robert Bundy and Karen Loeffler, Alaska’s US attorneys during the last two Democratic administrations, expect OPR to probe the office, which they said would inevitably include an examination of what Tucker knew, when she knew it, and how she responded.

“It goes to what the US attorney was doing to ensure that her office was following the appropriate rules of professional responsibility and the obligations in the Justice Manual,” Bundy said. 

Spokespersons from both investigative agencies declined to comment or acknowledge their inquiries.

A spokeswoman for the Alaska US attorney’s office declined a request to interview Tucker and declined to comment in response to a detailed list of questions.

Xochitl Hinojosa, the Justice Department’s chief spokesperson, also declined to comment for this story.

Kindred’s resignation capped an 18-month inquiry in which the Ninth Circuit judicial panel found he created a hostile work environment, sexually harassed his clerk, and received nude photos from a senior Alaska federal prosecutor.

Both the US attorney’s office and federal public defenders launched internal reviews after he stepped down to identify cases where the judge or the prosecutors failed to disclose or act on obvious conflicts. Prosecutors disclosed at least 43 cases so far, and defense lawyers, poring over past cases, say they’re preparing to seek relief in many more.

That raises the prospect that leadership in the US attorney’s office missed or ignored red flags and now could be forced to reopen dozens of closed cases.

“There obviously was nobody steering the ship,” said Rich Curtner, the longtime former chief federal defender in Alaska, who retired in 2020.

‘Prompt Response’

In a staff-wide July 12 email obtained by Bloomberg Law, Tucker touted her office’s “prompt response” after the former law clerk, whom she had hired as a line prosecutor, first reported in fall 2022 that Kindred had sexually harassed her.

Tucker and her top deputy, Kathryn Vogel, quickly referred the allegations—including the claim about the other prosecutor’s nude photos—to the Ninth Circuit and OPR, according to internal administrative proceeding records viewed by Bloomberg Law.

The office has never publicly said it undertook its own internal review after learning of Kindred’s claim that the senior prosecutor, Karen Vandergaw, sent him nude photos. Tucker later promoted Vandergaw to an advisory role in September 2023.

The judicial panel substantiated that Vandergaw sent the photos and had a “flirtatious rapport” with Kindred in its July report. She was effectively demoted shortly after the report’s publication.

Tucker also initially declined to approve the former clerk’s request to be reassigned out of the district, according to the clerk’s whistleblower complaint with OSC. In a separate filing in the internal administrative proceeding, Tucker said that she viewed the former law clerk as spreading gossip by discussing the nude photos allegedly sent to the judge.

Three legal ethics professors told Bloomberg Law that such a serious allegation should’ve compelled Tucker to initiate her own review within her office, while waiting for OPR to complete its process. 

“This is not a situation in which the US attorney should be taking a hands-off attitude,” said John Strait, a professor emeritus at Seattle University School of Law who has run ethics training for the Alaska US attorney’s office.

Of particular concern, given the potential conflicts of interest, was Tucker’s decision to elevate Vandergaw into a role with oversight of more cases during the pendency of the Ninth Circuit probe.

In response to a convicted cyberstalker’s motion for a new trial due to Kindred’s failure to recuse, prosecutors Sept. 3 argued the guilty verdict must stand because Vandergaw “played only a minor advisory role.”

Bloomberg Law’s analysis of the 43 potentially conflicted Kindred matters flagged by the US attorney’s office shows Vandergaw was involved in nearly three dozen of them. Neither Kindred nor Vandergaw have commented publicly since the judicial panel released its findings.

Loeffler, the US attorney in Alaska from 2009 to 2017, said the public attention on Kindred’s misconduct should have turned the ethics problems into a “a nonstop daily issue” for that office’s leadership. “You have to be there every day dealing with the fallout,” she said. 

Tucker waited nearly a month after Kindred’s resignation to call an in-person, all-staff meeting to discuss it, said current and former staffers who requested anonymity to discuss internal operations.

A detached leadership style and out-of-state absences have become hallmarks of her two-year tenure, according to interviews with nine current and former employees of the office and three lawyers and law enforcement officials who have business there.

Tucker left Alaska for roughly a third of weekdays in her first year on the job, according to an analysis of travel documents obtained by Bloomberg Law. 

“That’s just unheard of,” Loeffler said.

On July 12, four days after the public release of the judicial report about Kindred, Tucker sent a staff-wide email. “It is important for you all to know how proud I am of the ethical compass of our office and the work we do on behalf of our community,” she wrote.

Nine days later, Tucker left the state to attend the Ninth Circuit’s judicial conference in Sacramento. She had initially scheduled to spend an extra eight days of personal time in Palm Springs after the conference, the documents show. It’s unclear if she kept those plans.

Warning Letter

Tucker grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and graduated from law school at the University of Utah. She moved to Alaska in 2002 after working as a government attorney in Washington. She served as an assistant US attorney and then civil chief in the office before moving to private practice at two prominent law firms in Alaska—Perkins Coie and Stoel Rives. 

Both firms declined to comment for this article.

Cecy Graf, the former chief financial officer at Stoel Rives, said Tucker was a “force to be reckoned with” and was considered whenever there was a “major decision to be made.”

When she was under consideration for the US attorney’s job, two former prosecutors in the office shared a letter they’d drafted for the Biden transition team with Tucker. The letter urged Alaska’s next top federal prosecutor to prioritize addressing what they characterized as the office’s pattern of discrimination complaints from women attorneys. 

They also highlighted a November 2020 decision from DOJ’s internal complaint adjudication office, reviewed by Bloomberg Law, which found “there is evidence that a discriminatory and retaliatory culture existed within the” Alaska US attorney’s office.

One of the letter’s authors, former Alaska federal prosecutor Kimberly Sayers-Fay, said Tucker never responded to her message.

Tucker was confirmed by the Senate in May 2022 to lead the office, a staff of around 50 to 60 tucked inside a tight-knit legal community. Her resume lists 15 years of Justice Department experience—all as a civil attorney, without referencing criminal cases. She discussed her inexperience in criminal law openly with staff after taking over as US attorney, employees said.

Faced with multiple veteran departures, Tucker turned to James Klugman, who had four years of federal prosecution experience, to helm the criminal division at the start of 2023.

Tucker delegated wide-ranging authority to him, while rarely attending criminal meetings herself, said multiple people with direct knowledge of the office’s operations. Klugman was reassigned back to regular line attorney around a year later.

“It sounds like a perfect storm,” said Mark Yancey, a former US attorney who later ran DOJ’s national training academy for prosecutors. “You really need strong leadership in your criminal division.”

Yancey added that his former division, DOJ’s Executive Office for United States Attorneys, could also look into leadership’s response to the Kindred scandal.

Judicial Application

Tucker has already set her sights on her next career move: one of the district’s open judgeships. 

In a 2023 letter to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) expressing interest in the vacancy, Tucker wrote: “I have developed a balanced perspective that allows me to recognize the validity of disparate viewpoints and arguments, treat all with dignity and respect, and resolve problems with fairness and efficiency.”

The Alaska Bar Association rated Tucker as one of the four most qualified applicants for the judgeship.

Murkowski, who had previously praised President Joe Biden’s choice of Tucker for US attorney, declined to say if she also recommended Tucker as a finalist for the previous court vacancy—which is still awaiting a White House nomination. 

Both she and the state’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, have called on the Justice Department to investigate the US attorney’s office in light of the scandal.