The reasons behind Alaska District Judge Joshua Kindred’s abrupt resignation last week became clear on Monday when the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit released a scathing report detailing how the Trump-appointed judge not only had an “inappropriately sexualized relationship” with a law clerk, harassed her and created a hostile workplace — and repeatedly lied to cover his tracks.
The 30-page report contains many salacious details about how the GOP-backed judge’s behavior created a “hostile work environment for his law clerks by engaging in unwanted, offensive, and abusive conduct and treating the law clerks in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner.” In an era of high-profile reckonings for powerful men who have used their positions to sexually harass women in junior positions, the report also details all-too-familiar attempts by Kindred to deflect blame, accuse his victims of lying and cast himself as the victim.
“Judge Kindred has spent considerable time providing ‘context’ to his behavior, which generally consists of portraying himself as the victim of difficult circumstances,” the report said. “He has also sought to blame the law clerk and portray her as the aggressor or as someone who regularly brings false allegations against others … Judge Kindred often hedged, cast blame on others, claimed not to remember significant details of the events at issue in this investigation … He undertook all these actions without any regard for the impact of and the ethical issues raised by his conduct. He remains strikingly unaware that he was the source of all these issues.”
The report, which nine federal judges signed, details how Kindred frequently used profane, overtly sexual and inappropriately personal language with the law clerks who worked under him, in addition to sexually harassing a law clerk who ultimately stopped working with him. The judges found that Kindred’s behavior fell well short of the high standards for judges, requesting that he voluntarily resign.
While Kindred ultimately resigned, the report notes he repeatedly lied about the exchanges and stonewalled the investigation at other turns. When confronted with text message evidence and other testimony, Kindred ultimately admitted that he had lied to the judges and investigators to conceal his behavior and inappropriate relationships.
Throughout the investigation, Kindred insisted that his main fault was treating his law clerks like friends, a point that the Judicial Council found unconvincing.
“Beyond accepting responsibility for what he describes as his ‘original sin’ of treating his law clerks as friends, he does not squarely acknowledge that his interactions with the law clerks had no legitimate place in any workplace, let alone a federal judge’s chambers,” the report says. “Such lack of awareness is particularly troubling given his admission that he had likely received training on workplace harassment at previous jobs. The Council has no confidence that he will ever conduct himself in a way befitting his office or in a way that promotes public confidence in the judiciary.”
Kindred’s resignation leaves two of the three Alaska District Court seats vacant. Kindred, 47, had been championed by Trump and U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan — who ushered Kindred through the confirmation process — as a conservative pro-industry pick to fill what had been expected to be a lifetime appointment. Kindred ranked poorly in the Alaska Bar Association’s survey.
The broad strokes of the case mirror the scandal that led to the resignation of Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson in 2019. In that case, Clarkson was found to have been harassing a junior state employee through hundreds of inappropriate and suggestive text messages. Before a media investigation made it public, members of the Dunleavy administration were aware of his behavior but sought to keep it quiet, moving the victim to a different position.
In his statement about his resignation, Clarkson defended his actions to a degree, insisting that there was “nothing remotely salacious” about his exchanges and that they had been friendly. However, he conceded that what he “failed to recognize is the impact that these interactions had on this person due to the disparity in our workplace rank.”
That point appears lost on Kindred, and the report skewers him for it.
It notes that some of the text communications — which cover hundreds of pages — may have given the impression of consent, but this was countered by the fact that, as a federal judge, Kindred held enormous sway over the careers of the attorneys working as his law clerks.
“Though the law clerks appeared at times to initiate or reciprocate Judge Kindred’s communications about personal matters, we agree … that because of the inherent power imbalance in chambers, this was driven in some part by the law clerks wanting to preserve good relations with the judge,” reads the report, noting that text messages between the clerks indicated that the clerks were humoring him. “They liked the judge personally and viewed him as a friendly figure, but they also wanted follow-on references, especially if they sought to remain in Alaska, where the legal community is very small. The judge’s casual approach to the chamber’s environment exacerbated the power imbalance, a fact that Judge Kindred still does not seem to acknowledge or understand.”
The investigation recognizes several instances in which law clerks voiced their concerns to Kindred over his behavior, only to be chided and ostracized. However, the report found no evidence of clear-cut workplace retaliation.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
