Hamden attorney disbarred after ‘empty and malicious claims’ regarding Jewish conspiracy

By Bukharian Digital Magazine On Jun 13, 2022

HAMDEN — A Hamden-based attorney was disbarred earlier this week after a judge found she had made “empty and malicious claims” alleging another judge was engaged in a Judaism-based conspiracy and protecting child sexual abuse.

Judge Thomas Moukawsher filed a memorandum regarding his order to disbar attorney Nickola Cunha earlier this week, saying Cunha had engaged in “grave misconduct” while representing a Glastonbury woman engaged in a dissolution of marriage case.

Cunha said in a statement Friday that she was being “targeted for going public with the truth” regarding the case, including the alleged mistreatment of her client and her client’s children.

During the course of the case, Cunha alleged that Judge Gerald Adelman favored Jews in cases, noting that several officials involved in the court’s inquiry were Jewish, as well as discriminated against the disabled and, in this matter, was protecting child sexual abuse, Moukawsher wrote in his memorandum.

Cunha had alleged that she had evidence, including a list of cases in which Adelman had inappropriately favored Jewish people, but, when asked at a hearing, failed to produce any such information and admitted she did not have such a list, Moukawsher said.

“This is a matter about a lawyer. When lawyers speak, the public rightly assumes they don’t speak lightly. After all, the truth is their business. Therefore Ms. Cunha’s lies about a Jewish conspiracy are particularly reprehensible. Without the court exposing them as lies, the public might give them some credit when they deserve none,” said Moukawsher. “Misconduct like this threatens to drag the courts into the primordial ooze that passes for public discourse in some quarters today. One whiff of this swamp should be enough for the courts and those of its officers that are true to their duties to set out firmly in the other direction. This moment is one chance to do so.”

Cunha also had alleged that a relative of her client had sexually abused her client’s children, arguing this was demonstrated in records from the state Department of Children and Families that Adelman was ignoring, according to the memo.

But the records in question found that claims of abuse had been investigated and determined to be unfounded.

“It passes understanding why a person would wager so much on blatant falsehoods,” Moukawsher said. “Ms. Cunha was warned repeatedly of the seriousness of this matter and still chose to reassert and insist on things about the DCF … records when she had every reason to know that they were completely false.”

Moukawsher said officials hoped Cunha would reconsider her stance in a disciplinary hearing earlier this month, but Cunha instead said the proceedings were “intentionally harassing and intimidation,” held “to shut me down for the corruption that I have raised before this Court,” and argued the court had infringed on her constitutional rights.

In making the decision to disbar Cunha, Moukawsher said she had violated seven tenants of the Rules of Professional Conduct governing attorneys, including by offering meritless claims, knowingly offering false information, impugning the reputation of a judge, engaging in dishonesty and deceit and hindering the administration of justice.

Moukawsher said Cunha also had engaged in an effort to inappropriately delay the case, noting she had requested that it be continued 15 times since it was filed in July 2019, and had “tried to jam the wheels of justice by attacking all the other legal paraprofessionals in this case.”

“Ms. Cunha has been disrupting this case for a long time with bogus motions, duplicate proceedings, baseless attacks on the lawyers and judges and experts. She didn’t just lose her temper one day and do things she has regretted,” said Moukawsher. “She has systematically tried to use the justice system against itself in a bid to frustrate it, in a bid to discredit it, in a bid that, if unchecked here and elsewhere threatens to destroy it as a credible instrument of democracy. Ms. Cunha didn’t even stop when she found herself faced with punishment. Once again, she mocked and disregarded the court’s authority. She will not be given a chance to do it again.”

Moukawsher noted she had argued that her speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. He argued in response that “if the First Amendment doesn’t allow anyone to falsely cry ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, it certainly doesn’t permit a lawyer to falsely claim conspiracy in a crowded courtroom.”

Cunha has the right to apply for reinstatement in five years, Moukawsher said.

Since Tuesday, the defendant’s side of the case, including Cunha and the Glastonbury woman, has filed for a mistrial based on the disbarment after the order was handed down, according to state records, which was denied by Adelman.

The defense also has filed a motion to vacate the order, which Moukawsher denied; a motion for contempt of a judicial official for “hiding bench book from the public,” and a motion for clarification of Moukawsher’s order regarding how “disbarment of defendant’s attorney is IRRELEVANT.”

Cunha said in a statement Friday that Moukawsher was “engaged in a mission to destroy my credibility and protect another judge,” saying that she had provided five examples of cases in which Adelman allegedly demonstrated bias.

“What should be questioned is why I was targeted for going public with the truth,” Cunha said.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com

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