Alaska Election Law · The Tymkovich Network · Ukraine · USAID · #akleg
The Judge Taught Them Judicial Neutrality — They Became Partisan Weapons
Timothy Tymkovich spent years in Ukraine teaching judicial independence and constitutional limits on executive power. His clerks took his training, built careers defending Republican Party interests, and are now in Alaska defending executive overreach in election administration — inverting everything their clerkship was supposed to stand for.
The Clerkship Covenant — And Its Betrayal
A federal judicial clerkship is not merely a prestigious credential. It is a formation experience. Clerks serve a neutral arbiter of constitutional disputes. They research and draft for a judge who decides cases regardless of political outcome. The experience is explicitly nonpartisan — the entire point is to instill judicial values. Neutrality. Constitutional fidelity. Institutional integrity. The understanding that state power cannot be deployed for partisan advantage without constitutional authority.
Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich's chambers reinforced those values with particular force. A judge who promoted judicial independence in Ukraine. Who taught that election administration must be free from political interference. Who built a reputation for constitutional discipline over political convenience. Who spent years warning that executive overreach in election administration corrodes democratic institutions.
Christopher O. Murray and Michael Francisco both clerked in those chambers. They absorbed that training. Then they took it home and built careers doing the precise opposite of what it stood for.
Murray applied his constitutional litigation skills exclusively to Republican Party clients — the RNC, the Romney campaign, the Arizona Republican Party, the January 6th subpoena resistance. Francisco applied his Supreme Court appellate skills to conservative cause litigation — 303 Creative, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Groff v. DeJoy. Neither built a practice that reflects the judicial neutrality their clerkship was supposed to instill. Both are now in Alaska defending a state official who used state power for partisan advantage without constitutional authority — the precise pathology their mentor spent years warning Ukrainian judges against.
The skills came from Tymkovich's chambers. The application inverts everything those chambers stood for.
To understand the full depth of that inversion you have to understand who Tymkovich is. Not just the judge who appeared on Trump's Supreme Court shortlist. Not just the Bush appointee who wrote the Hobby Lobby decision. But the man whose great-grandfather left a Ukrainian village in 1913, arrived at Ellis Island, and worked as a miner in Colorado — and whose grandson spent decades traveling back to that village to teach Ukrainian judges about exactly the judicial values his own clerks have abandoned.
The Ukrainian Heritage
Chaikovichi, Ukraine · Tymkovich Family History
Timothy Tymkovich is a third-generation Coloradan. His great-grandfather emigrated from Ukraine to the United States via Ellis Island and worked as a miner. His grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in 1913 as a six-year-old boy from the village of Chaikovichi, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Tymkovich visited Ukraine as a judge — recruited by USAID to promote western judicial norms — he discovered the Tymkoviches were a founding family in that part of Ukraine. Their status as early property owners qualified them as Ukrainian nobility. "Who knew that you could go from having known nothing about your family to finding out that you're part of the Ukrainian noble class?" he said. During his 2018 visit he spoke to an assembly at a local school. Most of the boys who attended that assembly, he noted, are now probably 18 and fighting Russia.
The USAID Work
USAID recruited Tymkovich to participate in Ukraine's Rule of Law program — an American government initiative to help post-Soviet Ukraine build an independent, accountable judiciary. He visited Ukraine four times since joining the federal bench, speaking to judges and lawyers about western judicial norms, participating in legal clinics, and helping develop an electronic case management system designed to reduce corruption in court administration.
The work was personal. Tymkovich watched a new generation of Ukrainian judges emerge — people who had studied abroad, undergone extensive background and financial checks, and committed to judicial independence as a genuine value rather than a Soviet-era formality. He was optimistic about what he saw.
What made me optimistic was really this new generation of judges that I was working with. Many had traveled widely and some had gone to law schools in the United States. They were subject to really extensive background checks and financial checks to ensure they come on the bench without any substantial conflicts of interest.
— Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich, Colorado Politics, 2022
The principles Tymkovich was teaching Ukrainian judges — independence from political actors, accountability in election administration, constitutional limits on executive authority — are precisely the principles at issue in Sullivan v. Division of Elections. A state election official acted on a political party's demand, without statutory authority, to remove a constitutionally qualified candidate from a ballot. The Alaska Legislature's own lawyers said it was likely unconstitutional. Tymkovich's own clerks are defending it.
The Three-Way Collision
The USAID Destruction and What It Means
In February 2025, Trump's DOGE operation effectively dismantled USAID — including the Rule of Law programs that funded Tymkovich's Ukraine work. The judicial training infrastructure he helped build. The anti-corruption courts he praised. The legal clinics that gave ordinary Ukrainians access to justice. Defunded. Eliminated. By the administration his clerk network now serves.
The personal dimension of Tymkovich's Ukraine work goes further still. When Russia invaded, Tymkovich publicly stated he had been inspired by the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelensky — noting that Zelensky holds a law degree himself — and expressed hope that Ukraine's branches of government would respect due process and resist corruption even under the war's massive strain. That is a sitting federal judge publicly admiring a foreign head of state in the specific context of judicial independence and rule of law.
Trump's posture toward Zelensky has been the precise opposite — public humiliation, demands for capitulation, withheld military aid, and treatment of Ukrainian sovereignty as a bargaining chip. The judge who respects Zelensky built the clerk network that serves the administration hostile to him. The contrast is not subtle. It is documented in both men's own words.
Election administration must be neutral. Executive officials cannot override constitutional processes for political convenience. Judicial independence requires accountability. Background checks and financial transparency matter. These are not abstract principles — they are the specific lessons he carried to Chaikovichi and Kyiv and back.
A state election official who acted on a political party's demand without statutory authority to remove a constitutionally qualified candidate. The Alaska Legislature's own lawyers said it was likely unconstitutional. The official refused to testify. The agency bypassed its own state lawyers. This is precisely the executive overreach in election administration that Tymkovich spent years warning Ukrainian judges against.
The program that funded Tymkovich's rule of law work in Ukraine has been gutted by the administration his clerk network serves. The principles he taught abroad are being violated at home. The clerks who absorbed his judicial philosophy in his chambers are now deploying their skills in service of the political apparatus that dismantled his life's international work.
Trump's animosity toward Zelensky — his public humiliation of Ukraine's president, his demands for capitulation, his withholding of aid — runs directly counter to everything Tymkovich invested in Ukraine. The boys from Chaikovichi who attended his 2018 school assembly are now fighting Russia. The American administration their judge's clerk network serves has treated their survival as a bargaining chip.
The Divergence Within the Network
It would be unfair to suggest Tymkovich endorses what his clerks are doing in Alaska. Judges do not control their former clerks' careers or client choices. The clerkship network is a professional connection, not a chain of command.
But the divergence is real and worth naming. A judge who spent his career promoting constitutional limits on executive authority, who traveled repeatedly to a country now fighting for its democratic survival, who was recruited by an agency since dismantled to teach the very principles at issue in Sullivan v. Division of Elections — his professional legacy now includes both that work and the network of attorneys currently defending its antithesis.
Tymkovich announced his senior status on February 24, 2026 — the same day Trump nominated his clerk Daniel Domenico to fill his seat. The judge stepping back. The network stepping forward. Into Alaska.
The Central Irony
A federal clerkship is supposed to instill judicial neutrality — the understanding that constitutional law protects everyone equally regardless of political outcome. Timothy Tymkovich's chambers reinforced that principle with particular force, then sent it across the ocean to Ukraine where he taught it to a new generation of judges. His clerks Murray and Francisco came home from those same chambers and built careers as partisan legal weapons for the Republican Party apparatus. They stayed away from international work entirely. The principle Tymkovich carried to Chaikovichi never made it into their practice. Now they are in Alaska defending executive overreach in election administration — the precise pathology their mentor spent years warning Ukrainian judges destroys democratic institutions. The judge crossed the ocean to teach the principle. His clerks stayed home and litigated against it.
The Verdict
A federal judicial clerkship is supposed to instill neutrality — the constitutional discipline to apply the law regardless of political outcome. Timothy Tymkovich's chambers stood for that principle with particular clarity. He carried it to Ukraine four times on USAID funds and taught it to judges building democratic institutions under Russian pressure. His clerks Murray and Francisco absorbed his training in those same chambers, then built careers as the Republican Party's election law apparatus — exclusively domestic, exclusively partisan, entirely disconnected from the international principle their mentor embodied. They are now in Alaska defending a state official who removed a constitutionally qualified candidate at a national party committee's request, without statutory authority, likely unconstitutionally. The clerkship was supposed to make lawyers who serve the Constitution. It made lawyers who serve the party. The judge crossed the ocean to teach the difference. His clerks never learned it.
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