Gov. Braun or AG Rokita Must Correct Indiana’s Past Use of General-Flynn-Style Perjury Traps – How IN Prosecutor Aaron Johnson Manufactured Fake Legal Ethics Case to Suspend an Indiana Judge Candidate

Governor Mike Braun needs to act not talk.

The American justice system is meant to punish criminal conduct—not create it. Yet one of the most dangerous tools increasingly used by government prosecutors does exactly that: “the perjury trap.”  

A perjury trap occurs when prosecutors question a target not to uncover a crime, but to induce a misstatement that can itself be charged as a felony. The most notorious modern example is the flawed prosecution of General Michael Flynn, which revealed how easily this tactic can be abused—and why it is fundamentally at odds with due process. Such conduct is criminal and unlawful, yet it was used here in Indiana against a lawyer in ethics case where he was forced to plead guilty at a deposition of be jailed for the crime of perjury after he signed a plea bargain for a reprimand or minimal punishment on advice of his counsel to dispose of the bogus hoax charges against him in 2016 when he was running for Judge against Sen. John Broden (who like CJ Rush and many of the Justice attended Indiana University Law School, creating the impression of impropriety) in the St. Joseph Co. Circuit Court open bench. 

Former judicial candidate Bernacchi was the target, and his life’s work, 5-star reputation, and legal career canceled – as consistent with the cancel culture, use of lawfare, and fake news of that time period.

Perjury is a crime but putting a target in a perjury trap is prosecutorial misconduct or should be.

Lawyers are in short supply in Indiana, it is no surprise, why.

Recently. I read the related articles (linked below) and went down the rabbit-hole of In Re Doug Bernacchi.  Where former 28-year Indiana Attorney who had a long-standing history of ethical conduct, teaching ethics courses, and even tapped following a 5-year FBI sting as what he was: “The Honest Broker” to teach ethics to floor traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where he traded Eurodollar futures while attending night law school.  Meanwhile many other floor traders in his pit were indicted for crimes, conversion, fraud, and other trading infractions.

Did he change is stripes of honest conduct and ethical behavior based on his Catholic school upbringing in LaPorte, never under-capitalized, and with degrees from Notre Dame and Georgetown?  Not very likely.  Yet CJ Lorretta Rush ruled against, and fabricated damages based on state-sponsored perjury that he somehow lost his clients home “which she shared with her grandson,” but which lost based on court and real estate records a year before Ms. Sharon Brown Perry of Kalamazoo Michigan stated that she even hired Mr. Bernacchi. 

This case was once summarily dismissed after investigated but reopened based on nothing new. Then Perry failed to appear at two consecutive court hearings according to her case docket and she instructed Attorney to Bernacchi to withdraw his appearance with he did timely. That should have ended her rights, having failed to cooperate, even when she was served the 4-D’s subpoenaed to appear, which Bernacchi then served on her with a green card certified US Post Office delivery proof.

At Bernacchi’s sanction December 2019 hearing before Hearing Officer Shiela Moss, the State through surprise testimony of Perry presented perjury as fact, and failed to meet minimal proof of any payments at all having been made to the attorney on trial. In fact, the State failed provided any evidence of ever making any retainer payment to him, his staff, or to the paralegal with whom the SCOIN falsely said he had shared a fee of $0.00.  (For a reason unknown to him, Bernacchi’s first attorney, John Tompkins of Indianapolis, changed his Answer response to say that Perry paid him, when Bernacchi denied that completely, and later Tomkins told Bernacchi that “if she paid him then should could not have paid Sims,” which was the conflicting averment in the VC to support a proscribe, unethical fee split with a non-lawyer that never occurred or could have occurred.  This cases was flawed, wrong, and illegal. Regardless, Bernacchi "never split any legal fees with any non-lawyers, save supporting his wife and large family with his legal fees."

But what really drew this journalist concern was the utter lack of due process afforded by the state of Indiana, and now herein infra is the form of a Writ of Mandamus that HE suggests Gov. Mike Braun file with the Clerk of the Indiana Supreme Court seeking action after more than 8 year of injustice to his former home-grown Hoosier who came home to help and serve his community after his education and success as a floor trader.  In 1992 cycle he even ran for Congress.  When the Town of Michiana Shores come to him to file bankruptcy, he help as a pro-bono lawyer for 10 years to restructure the town as counsel with town president Dr. Jean Pollard,  father of HE staffer Johannes Poulard, the Board Secretary of Hoosier Enquirer and a Michigan City resident, officially declared candidate for the Indiana State Senate District 4 seat as a Republican.

What Is a Perjury Trap?

In a legitimate investigation, questioning is designed to discover facts. In a perjury trap, the facts are already known. The government’s objective is not truth, but contradiction.

Courts have long warned that when questioning serves no independent investigative purpose and exists only to create criminal exposure, it crosses the constitutional line. The government may investigate crimes. It may not manufacture them.

The Flynn Case: A Blueprint for Abuse

In Flynn’s case, FBI agents questioned him about routine diplomatic conversations they already had transcripts of. There was no underlying crime. No allegation of espionage. No claim that the conversations were illegal.

Flynn was interviewed without counsel, without warning that misstatements could lead to prosecution, and months after the conversations occurred—an ideal setup for imprecision or faulty recollection.

Internal FBI notes later revealed that agents openly discussed whether their goal was to “get him to lie” so they could prosecute or remove him from office. That admission alone should have ended the case.

This was not law enforcement. It was entrapment and Flynn was acquitted, eventually.

Why Perjury Traps Are Illegal

Perjury traps violate core constitutional principles.

First, they offend due process. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from using deception to create criminal liability where none exists.

Second, they represent an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors are sworn to seek justice, not convictions at any cost. Manufacturing crimes corrodes public trust and the legitimacy of the system itself.

Third, they create a chilling effect on public service. If honest officials can face prison for imperfect memory or imprecise phrasing, only the reckless or dishonest will be willing to serve.

Finally, perjury traps invite selective and political enforcement. They are rarely used against ordinary criminals, but frequently deployed against political opponents, whistleblowers, and disfavored figures—precisely where restraint is most needed.

Courts Have Warned Against This

While the Judges in the Southern District of Indiana denied Attorney Bernacchi a hearing, Federal courts have repeatedly cautioned that questioning designed solely to extract false testimony is improper. The Supreme Court has emphasized that criminal law must punish conduct—not bogus forced confessions wrongly forced on political candidates in lieu of perjury felony charges.

Truth-seeking is legitimate. Trap-setting is not.  Bernacchi has never had a hearing on the merits of the numerous ghost-written false charges in the Request for Investigation against him.  And when the State’s inexperienced ethics prosecutor Aaron Johnson filed his Verified Complaint sworn under oath, Johnson had incompetently made conflicting averments, which lead to another staff lawyer at the Supreme Corut Disciplinary Commission filing an Amended Verified Complaint which add two new counts against Bernacchi, which Johnson had told him on the telephone that he had found no evidence to support. Of course, which Bernacchi never got to defend either.   It was rigged justice by any review. Bernacchi was even proscuted for hiring a contract paralegal which is a protect right to contract and which the Supreme Court later clarified but failed to correct Bernacchi's liability. Meanwhile, Aaron "AJ" Johnson today is an appionted Magistrate judge working along side 8 elected judges and Magistrate Johnson received both his undergraduate and law degrees from Indiana University Bloomington. (If you really want to puke, click on the link and then read https://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2384&ARC=4054 and then further read https://readthereporter.com/magistrate-judge-aaron-a-j-johnson-announces-candidacy-for-hamilton-county-superior-court-4/ )

The State's DEI-selected ethics prosecutor assigned his very first case, Arron (now Judge AJ) Johnson, even told Mr. Bernacchi that was selected to reopen a previously investigated complaint and reopen it without any new evidence, but for the stated purpose of “putting you out of (the law) business.”  Mr. Johnson was actually that green -- and also being used because of his race to prosecute Bernacchi for Sharon Brown Perry, black woman, before a hearing officer from Gary Indiana Hearing Officer Shiela Moss, a Lake County small claims judge, also a black woman.  Everyone was Black. Bernacchi was white, and Moss told him he was only entitled to a trial if Johnson agreed, and he wasn’t agreeing.  At his sanction, hearing Moss denied all of Bernacchi’s and his attorneys listed witness after ruling not to separate the witness at the start of that sanction hearing when the completely incompetent Johnson sheepishly admitted he did not know what the judge Moss meant when she asked him if he was going to make an oral motion to separate the witnesses. 

Yet, he was ostensibly prosecuting Bernacchi for incompetence.  The facts matter…even if years later.

Why Prosecutors Keep Using Them

Despite their dubious legality, perjury traps persist because they are effective and rarely punished. They require no proof of an underlying crime or ethical misconduct, shift all risk to the targeted person, such as Bernacchi, and are protected by broad prosecutorial immunity—even when misconduct is later exposed as herein.

In short, the incentives are backwards; justice rigged.

The Broader Threat

If memory lapses and verbal inconsistencies can be criminalized, then every citizen is vulnerable, even a general who served his country and a lawyer with no prior history of character issues. No one recalls every conversation perfectly, especially under pressure from trained interrogators, but when the perjury stems from a denied plea bargain, or especially when there was no public hearing on the plea denial, due process is avoided perse.  It is ironic, wrong and unfortunate that lawyers accused in ethics case have less rights that accused criminals, and when the fought years for criminal rights and criminal procedure that then does apply to their profession.

That is not justice. It is lawfare.  It one-side, lacking any real appeal rights or even access to legal counsel since all lawyers report to the same party the state and our under the thumb of the opposing side in these rigged cases.  Bernacchi has been patient and he never admitted guilt save in what his counsel told him was a nolo contender plea bargain “for a short time out.” He got one year suspension but without automatic reinstatement which has turned in 8 years so far.  This needs reconning and of course troubled Chief Justice Lorretta Rush who HE recently called on to resign is again the DEI leader in charge during this time.

Once normalized, perjury traps discourage cooperation, undermine confidence in courts, and transform the justice system from a shield of liberty into a weapon of intimidation.

Conclusion

HE concludes that former judicial candidate Bernacchi was the target of a perjury trap, and his life’s work, 5-star reputation, and legal career canceled – as consistent with the cancel culture, use of lawfare, and fake news of that time period. Attorney Bernacchi who nonethelss nearly won the judgeship after recieving more than 44,000 votes (that was 30,000 more than former judge G. Michael Witte ever got--Witte who resigned the post was the former Executive Secretary of the Indiana Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Commission and who targeted Bernacchi and for nearly 10 years other lawyers with Italian heritage in the state). So he did very well at the ballot box in 2016 while under the cloud of a bogus ethics investigation and other fake news. Attorney or Judge Bernacchi would have become a so-called "revered ornament of the bar" by this time, instead of living in exile near NYC after his home state attacked him, and the internet continues to post false truths, and have labeled hime an unethical lawyer.

Resigned G. Michael Witte Doug Bernacchi, MBA/JD The Honorable head of the Snake!

When reached for comment, Bernacchi he said that he has been offered more than 40 jobs -- yet, all of which let him go or rescinded the offers based on false reports online and after completing background checks. This was a case where one "client" called on the phone, never paid, never met with him or kept a single appointment to meet, and this Stupid State Supreme Court believed her? The State destroyed a good person and his family when on the other side of the scale he had served 10,000 plus other Hoosier clients with distinction and success. The scales of justice fell over but in Bernacchi's favor. Perry lied under oath and G. Michael Witte knew it, failed to correct it, and he obstructed justice when the Lake County Sheriff contacted him regarding the crimes by Johnson and Perry. Bernacchi's punishment defies all justice in mere proportionality--8 YEARS? ARE THEY ALL NUTS AT THE SCOIN OR JUST CHEIF JUSTICE LORETTA RUSH?

The Supreme Court did not return calls to comment or answer that question or any others.

So, the Flynn case was not a 2017 politically driven anomaly—it was a warning; it is an act contrary to rule of law, against equal justice for all, and was unconstitutional. It was correct but what Bernacchi has endured has yet to be addressed or corrected. Bernacchi concluded the call saying, "God knows."

Perjury traps invert the rule of law by turning questioning into a weapon and truth into a liability. Courts and lawmakers must reaffirm a basic principle: The government may investigate crimes. It may not invent them.

Anything less invites abuse—and erodes the very freedoms the justice system exists to protect as here in Indiana recent times.

HERE IS THE DRAFT WRIT FOR GOVERNOR BRAUN TO SIGN AND FILE:

STATE OF INDIANAOFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

WRIT OF MANDAMUS

TO:The Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court of Indiana, 301 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204

RE: Request for Writ of Mandamus — In re Bernacchi, No. 46S00-1512-DI-694 (Oct. 16, 2017)

COMES NOW Michael Braun, Governor of the State of Indiana, by his undersigned counsel, and pursuant to Ind. Code §§ 34-30-4-1 et seq., petitions this Court for a Writ of Mandamus compelling performance of the Supreme Court’s official duty to correct a long-standing injustice in In re Bernacchi and restore due process protections to lawyers facing disciplinary proceedings.

I. INTRODUCTION

1.     The American justice system is tasked with punishing criminal conduct, not inventing crimes through coercive procedural devices.

2.     In In re Bernacchi, No. 46S00-1512-DI-694, the Supreme Court of Indiana issued an Order of Suspension on October 16, 2017, suspending attorney Doug Bernacchi for at least one year without automatic reinstatement.

3.     This Writ seeks correction of procedural and substantive constitutional defects that undermined due process, including:

• denial of a hearing on the merits of the underlying complaint;

• reliance on coerced admissions obtained under threat of perjury charges;

• exclusion of defense witnesses and evidence;

• and reliance on allegedly false testimony without independent verification.

4.     The result has been an injustice persisting for over eight years, damaging career, reputation, and professional livelihood.

II. LEGAL GROUNDS FOR MANDAMUS

5.     A writ of mandamus is an extraordinary remedy to compel performance of an official duty where an inferior tribunal or body refuses to perform a clear legal obligation. See, e.g., State ex rel. Wilson v. Schroeder, 644 N.E.2d 1184 (Ind. 1994).  Correcting the perjury, where rebuttal was not allowed at the hearing on December 19, 2016, but presented to this court in Respondent’s Objected to Assessed Fees which the court or Commission in its Reply failed to address.  (The court did reduce fees and only one argument was could be the basis for that change – There was acutal perjury used and acknowledged.)

6.     The Supreme Court of Indiana has a clear legal duty to ensure disciplinary proceedings comport with constitutional guarantees of due process, equal protection, and fundamental fairness.

7.     Where evidence shows procedural error, manifest injustice, or denial of due process, this Court has authority to correct the record, reopen proceedings, or grant appropriate relief.

III. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

8.     Respondent Bernacchi was disciplined by the Indiana Supreme Court based on a disciplinary complaint filed in December 2015, later amended and resolved through deposition and sanction proceedings.

9.     The Supreme Court’s Order of Suspension was predicated on findings of misconduct as reflected in the hearing record.

10.  However, Bernacchi has alleged that:

·       His forced admissions (in the presence of a State Police Officer who advised him he was there to arrest him if he did not agree and engaged in perjury at his deposition) were obtained under threat of criminal prosecution absent a meaningful hearing;

·       defense witnesses, even in rebuttal, and testimony/evidence were improperly excluded, even from Mario Sims who was present to refute under oath all the allegations by Ms. Perry;

·       material testimony lacked any corroboration;

·       and he was denied a fair opportunity to present a defense, which cannot stand in this day.

IV. PROCEDURAL IRREGULARITIES

11.  The absence of a hearing on core factual disputes and failure to allow defense evidence and witnesses infringed on fundamental rights afforded in analogous criminal and administrative proceedings.

12.  The disciplinary process, as applied, operates without the same procedural safeguards required in criminal prosecutions, creating potential due process violations.

13.  The persistent refusal of appropriate relief at lower levels leaves Bernacchi without a meaningful remedy.

V. RELIEF REQUESTED

WHEREFORE, Governor Mike Braun respectfully requests that this Court issue a Writ of Mandamus directing the Indiana Supreme Court to:

Reopen In re Bernacchi, No. 46S00-1512-DI-694, remanding it for a new full and fair evidentiary hearing on the merits of the disciplinary complaint, or alternatively, take judicial notice of the lack of damages required in this State for any legal case in controversy to be heard and reverse this Court's orders; and/or additionally change prosecutors and require Mr. Johnson to testify, allow admission of defense witnesses and evidence that were previously excluded; change the Hearing Officer, too, or appoint a 3-person panel as in IN Re Rokita, to accurately correct the record, restore Bernacchi's law licenses in all Jurisidictions, and issue findings consistent with the facts and after constitutional due process; and grant such further relief as justice may require under Indiana law and the State and Federal Constitutions, and give notice to Illinois and Utah, both Jurisdictions, which sadly then also wrongly issued reciprocal attorney discipline without regard for the truth.

Respectfully submitted this _____ day of _________________, 2026

________________________________________