I mean, look, only a white man could get away with making a fake law firm and having people believe he had 15 years of experience when he looks 12, but here we are. One of the creators of “Students for Trump” (already a mistake), John Lambert (23), ended up getting arrested after it was discovered that he made a fake law firm that convinced people he had 15 years of legal experience.
Creating a false identity and going by the name Eric Pope of the Pope & Dunn law firm, John Lambert would then give legal advice (sorry, “legal advice”) to those who needed it. Claiming that he was a graduate of the NYU Law School with a finance degree from the University of Pennsylvania, he would give this advice to his clients despite not having a law degree and not having any of the experience he was selling—or, you know, being named Eric Pope.
It’s like Suits, but somehow more insipid and less legally sound.
While Lambert said he performed the scam from 2016-2018 with an unknown accomplice, he was found guilty because, well, he is guilty of fraud. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman talked about Lambert’s sentence and the fact that Lambert had no right to claim he could offer legal advice to anyone:
“John Lambert represented himself to clients as a prominent New York attorney with a law degree from an elite law school. But Lambert’s de facto career was one of a grifter: he had never been to law school and certainly wasn’t an attorney. Today, Lambert admitted to his crimes and faces time in prison for his misdeeds.”
Here’s my hot take: No POC or woman could have pulled off a scam like this because they aren’t afforded the assumed competence of white men, and the fact that this is one of the minds behind the “Students for Trump” Twitter account isn’t an irony lost on me, since the president is no stranger to scams. Never forget Trump University.
To be fair to the “Students for Trump” group (which they don’t really deserve, tbh), they did separate themselves from Lambert and have stated that he hadn’t really done much since they first started the support group. Still, if you look back on the things he said about the campaign and even how he claimed that their organization was more put together than Donald Trump’s actual campaign, to be honest, I’m glad his arrogance was met with jail time since, you know, he ripped people off.
Things like this show that people will go to any length to make money and get rich quick, and it’s worse now because of who the president is. Donald Trump is infamous for his Trump University scam, and he very clearly got away with it, and now this kid, who is 23 years old and started making this mistake at 20, is going to jail for imitating the president he supports.
I don’t feel bad for him; he lied to a bunch of people and supports a racist, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is the kind of world that Trump is ushering in, and it is honestly frightening.
(via NY Daily News, image: Marvel Entertainment)
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