KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday disciplined Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in a widely publicized gun-waving incident during a police brutality protest in June 2020.
McCloskey's law license will be on probation for one year. The court suspended the St. Louis attorney's license indefinitely, but held off on imposing the suspension — giving the justices a hammer to hold over his head in case he steps out of line.
McCloskey and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, also an attorney, were captured on video holding guns and confronting nonviolent protesters from their lawn as they headed past their house on the way to then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson's home. No shots were fired and no one was injured.
The Supreme Court gave little explanation for its decision, but wrote in brief order that McCloskey had "committed a misdemeanor offense involving moral turpitude."
The court issued an identical order to Patricia McCloskey, also placing her on probation for a year.
"I'm disappointed the Supreme Court found it appropriate to discipline us," Mark McCloskey said in an interview. "I think what we did was certainly not an act of moral turpitude."
He said the couple would cooperate with the term of the probation.
The probation falls short of the six-month suspension Missouri's legal ethics watchdog had wanted. In September, Alan Pratzel, Missouri's chief disciplinary counsel, appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate ethics complaints against attorneys, wrote that McCloskey's guilty plea and statements to reporters afterward that he'd "do it again" violated his "duties to the public and the legal profession" and "brought discredit to the profession."
Although McCloskey pleaded guilty, he was later pardoned by Republican Gov. Mike Parson. Pratzel had previously said the pardon had no impact on whether McCloskey could face discipline within the legal profession.
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(The Star's Jeanne Kuang contributed to this story.)
