Former two-time gubernatorial candidate and registered sex offender Eliot Cutler can no longer practice law in Maine.
That comes after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court approved a petition from the Maine Board of the Overseers of the Bar to revoke his law license. The order, dated Monday, was signed by Judge Michael Duddy in place of a justice.
Cutler was arrested in March 2022 after police raided his home in Brooklin as part of a child pornography investigation, which ultimately found 142,000 images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.
He was sentenced in May 2023 to four years with all but nine months suspended as part of a plea deal. Cutler was released from the Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth in January after seven and a half months for good behavior.
He is now a lifetime registrant on Maine’s sex offender registry.
Cutler was first admitted to the bar in 1974 after graduating from Georgetown University’s law school and began practicing environmental law.
Cutler twice ran for governor, in 2010 and 2014, as an independent. He came within 10,000 votes of the Blaine House during his first campaign.
His disbarment in Maine follows a similar sanction in New York, where that state’s high court ordered Cutler’s law license revoked in July 2023. The Maine Board of the Overseers of the Bar met in February to disbar Cutler, which Monday’s order made official.
Monday’s order is effective Feb. 21, 2024.
