The Thornburgh Memo was a

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

memorandum A memorandum ( : memoranda; abbr: memo; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered") is a written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated "memo," these messages are usually brief and ...

prepared by then

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

Richard Thornburgh Richard Lewis Thornburgh (July 16, 1932 – December 31, 2020) was an American lawyer, author, and Republican politician who served as the 41st governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, and then as the United States attorney general fro ...

, on June 8, 1989. The memo declared that state ethics rules were not binding upon

federal prosecutor An assistant United States attorney (AUSA) is an official career civil service position in the U.S. Department of Justice composed of lawyers working under the U.S. Attorney of each U.S. federal judicial district. They represent the federal gove ...

s. It asserted that any compliance with state ethical rules by federal prosecutors conducting government investigations was strictly voluntary. While the memo was not legally binding, it represented a dramatic statement of the then executive branch's understanding of its ethical obligations as lawyers. When

Janet Reno Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) was an American lawyer who served as the 78th United States attorney general. She held the position from 1993 to 2001, making her the second-longest serving attorney general, behind only Wi ...

became Attorney General in 1993, the Justice Department backed away from the Thornburgh position. Instead, they promulgated the "

Reno Rules The Reno Rules were ethical rules for federal prosecutors promulgated in the Code of Federal Regulations by then Attorney General Janet Reno. The rules, despite their issuance, lacked statutory authority and were unenforceable. ''See'' ''United Stat ...

," detailed in the

Code of Federal Regulations In the law of the United States, the ''Code of Federal Regulations'' (''CFR'') is the codification of the general and permanent regulations promulgated by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States. ...

. Those rules have since been supplanted by , which provides:

An attorney for the Government shall be subject to State laws and rules, and local Federal court rules, governing attorneys in each State where such attorney engages in that attorney's duties, to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.

External sources

* Richard Thornburgh, Memorandum to All Justice Department Litigators Re Communications with Persons Represented by Counsel (unpublished office memorandum, June 8, 1989), in In re Doe, 801 F. Supp. 478, 489-93 (D.N.M. 1992). Law of the United States Memoranda {{US-law-stub