Students for Trump founder John Lambert sentenced to 13 months for posing as lawyer https://t.co/fdkSrx9Frn
— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) May 11, 2021
Students for Trump founder @RyanAFournier created a fake law firm with his friend to dupe unsuspecting clients, then ratted him out to the feds to avoid being prosecuted himself, according to new courthouse revelations. https://t.co/LVwHrjZ2Lb
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) May 11, 2021
The younglings discover an ancient legal rule: First to rat out his co-conspirators gets the best deal:
Students for Trump co-founder and pugnacious MAGA Twitter star Ryan Fournier allegedly helped his friend create a fake law firm to bilk innocent clients, only to turn against his one-time partner to help federal law enforcement, according to records and statements made Tuesday by a lawyer involved in the case.
The new revelations about Fournier’s alleged involvement in the fake law firm came after a Tuesday sentencing hearing where a federal judge sentenced Fournier’s Students for Trump co-founder, 25-year-old John Lambert, to 13 months in jail for operating a fake law practice…
Fournier will not face prosecution himself, according to a document filed by federal prosecutors. In a federal court filing, the man now identified as Fournier is described as “providing information to the government since in or about April 2018 in the hope of not being charged for his role in the wire-fraud conspiracy.”
In August 2016, Lambert and Fournier created a fake legal consulting company. Fournier allegedly used the alias “Gregory Shapiro” to create a bogus persona for his fictitious attorney character working with Lambert to solicit legal clients online.
The pair allegedly went to great lengths to trick people into thinking they were high-powered lawyers, including spoofing a phone number with a Manhattan area code, when they were based in North Carolina. Both Lambert and his co-conspirator claimed to have law degrees under their aliases that they did not in fact have, according to court filings.
The elaborate scheme worked, at least for a while. Lambert received more than $46,000 from unwitting clients, according to the Daily News report. Lambert’s attorney has claimed that Fournier received half of the criminal proceeds, though that hasn’t been verified by prosecutors. Fournier left the fake law firm at an unspecified point before the con came to an end, according to prosecutors…
Lambert’s defense jabbed at Fournier in a filing, claiming that he put on airs as someone who “grew up in New Jersey but often claimed to be from Manhattan.”…
[Insert your favorite Sopranos joke here.]
But I’m sure we’ll be hearing more abou this Fournier fella…
While Fournier’s star on the right has been somewhat diminished since the first days of Students for Trump, he has a prominent platform in Trumpworld, including more than 950,000 Twitter followers.
Fournier has kept up a trash-talking attitude in the Biden administration, even to some of his critics on the right. Earlier this week, Fournier made waves on right-wing social media circles with a bellicose Instagram Live in which Fournier addressed his opponents within the GOP.
“If you don’t support me and you’ve supported Trump since Day 1, go fuck yourself, I really do not give a shit about you, because you are a peasant motherfucker,” Fournier said, raising a middle finger to the camera. “Because guess what? Fuck you.”
The 2021 Israel-Hamas Conflict
?BillinGlendaleCA
He seems nice.
SiubhanDuinne
Looking at those faces, I am incredibly grateful to the Germans for giving us Backpfeifengesicht.
piratedan
and the wheels turn slowly…..
I guess I am still at a loss as to why Nancy Smash has not issued a censure of certain GOP members of the house and why we still have not had a commission empaneled regarding the events of January 6th. Are they waiting on the DOJ to starting allowing the prosecution of said spear-carriers to indict prominent GOP officials? Waiting on the NYAG to show the NRA links to Russia via financials, or the fully redacted Mueller report to result in the indictments and charges it should have spawned?
it seems that while we may be turning the corner on the pandemic, that should allow the business of the nation to proceed?
Amir Khalid
As above, so below. It would have been naive to expect these junior TFGistas to be any better than the leaders of their corrupt and crooked tribe.
something fabulous
NotMax! I am behind in my read/lurking today! If you are around, a Happy Birthday bork to you!
Mudbrush
And Jacob Wohl passes his mantle to an even younger generation…
Amir Khalid
It’s been half a year since I lost Bianca. I was listening to Karla Bonoff’s Goodbye My Friend just now, and I got all verklemt.
sanjeevs
@SiubhanDuinne:
George Orwell
Sanjeevs
mrmoshpotato
Bash these fuckers in their fucking fascist faces. Trump trash of all ages apparently.
mrmoshpotato
@sanjeevs:
-me
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
still sorry for your loss, Amir.
we miss all of them,……
Captain C
Party of the working class, my ass.
eclare
@something fabulous: How cute!
Amir Khalid
@Jay:
Thank you.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: I can see why, what a moving song.
Amir Khalid
@eclare:
She wrote it for her cat, who had recently passed away.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
I still miss Tar, I still remember Tar, and he passed 45 years ago,
then there was Tan, Miss Phan, Buff, Sugar, Pablo, Capra, Casey, Digger, and now Bitsey and Mellow are getting old.
Cat’s and dogs don’t have to live with us all that long, because they arn’t “born in sin”, and don’t have to prove to the Universe that they are good.
Origuy
@Jay: Turtles and parrots, though, they know what they did.
Mel
@Amir Khalid: It is so very hard to lose such a fine friend. My heart goes out to you.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Oh wow. Pets do leave imprints on our hearts.
DMcK
I mean, let’s forget about their faces for a moment (please! ugh) and focus on style! In Lambert we have the eternally pathetic “jerk running for student body president” look. But Fournier! The dopey blazer over the T-shirt…the ludicrous ten dollar haircut (which he probably paid way too much money for)…it’s the striving rube’s approximation of a thoughtfully-yet-casually fashion-forward New York dandy. A FailFop.
Mary G
Happy (possibly belated) Birthday, NotMax!
Delk
Did Fournier go to the barber and say,”Give me the Gaetz “?
Jay
@Origuy: ?
Mudbrush
@Delk: “you don’t have enough forehead to pull off a Gaetz, son.”
Anne Laurie
@Delk: ‘Gimme a rooster comb pompador, cuz I’m the biggest cock of the walk’ has been a favorite hairstyle among would-be authoritarians for at least the past hundred years, yes?
Every inch.. of height… helps!
eclare
@Mudbrush: Hahaha…
mrmoshpotato
Is Ryan the son of Ron, or do they just happen to both be slapdicks?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Are we sure he’s not a real lawyer?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More conservative white guys with punchable faces.
I predict President Gaetz will pardon Lambert so Lambert can be his Attorney General.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: True, he sounds like one.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
????
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Only the best people
Dan B
@Amir Khalid: I was entranced by the clarity of Karla Bonoff’s voice. Saw her in concert and let out an audible and over the top sigh at a suddenly quiet moment. I was mortified. My Fandom was in part because her name is similar to mine. It’s sad that public mortification is so memorable
And sorry about your Bianca. They work their way into our hearts and we do our best to work into theirs. One of ours just did it to me after I spent a lot of effort to show my love to him. Now I’m hooked and there will likely be a sad price to pay unless he’s one that outlives me.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Only the best people – Part 7,276,387,911
Anne Laurie
Not according to Wikipedia. Fournier is, apparently, the French surname version of Baker, so it’s not an uncommon one.
Just One More Canuck
@?BillinGlendaleCA: who can counter such a well-reasoned legal argument
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
No Covid thread his morning?
Ramalama
It’s wrong of me to read this post and want to yell out something random like
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
He’d have made a great Piggy in his high school’s production of Lord of the Flies.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Such a wonderful song.
SFAW
Fournier somehow reminds me of Sam Rockwell in one of his slimy roles. [I guess Rockwell, gets cast in other roles, but his slimy one(s) stick out in my “mind.”]
I’d not be amazed to hear that Fournier’s assholishness toward TFGistas upset the wrong type of person to upset, who would then take exception, in a very direct, personal way, to his song stylings (so to speak).
debbie
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Colbert was all over this last night. TFG demanded fat agents be removed from his detail because he didn’t like looking at them. ?
Kay
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
The Trumps are awful people, but Secret Service agents aren’t supposed to be engaging in sexual relationships with the people they’re protecting either. This is really unprofessional and there should be an investigation into what’s going on at the Secret Service that this was allowed.
They’re a sloppy mess and it’s been going on for years.
lowtechcyclist
I’ll confess it disturbs me that Fournier isn’t seeing any prison time. A lighter sentence for his cooperation, sure, but none at all? That’s a miscarriage of justice, IMHO.
Here we have two guys who apparently participated equally in the same series of crimes. If those crimes are worth prosecuting, then both should be prosecuted. Just because the first guy turned on the the second guy doesn’t negate the fact that the first guy did everything the second guy is going to do jail time for. I can see the virtue of a reduced sentence for cooperation, but it shouldn’t be a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Maybe that’s a reasonable outcome when an underling cooperates and testifies against the ringleader, because the ringleader is the guy you really want to bring down. But here, they were co-ringleaders. You want to nail them both.
Kay
They each “made” (robbed) 23,000 dollars. 15 dollars an hour for 40 hours a week is 30,000. They would have made more at a low wage job.
Unemployable outside Right wing grifting circles.
Ken
@Kay: The income from the low-wage job would have had taxes and Social Security withheld. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two didn’t report their grifting income, and now that Fournier has revealed it, the IRS may come calling. “That deal was with the FBI. We’re the taxmen.”
Puddinhead
@Kay: Dan Bongino was a secret service agent. So, well there you go.
Kay
It’s fascinating how the “cancel culture” thing went from self-proclaimed “public intellectuals” claiming they were being silenced to a vehemently and exclusively far Right wing political crusade:
Completely coopted and consumed by the far Right in a matter of months. Claims of “cancel culture” are now used to attack public school teachers and impose criminal sanctions for political protests.
It’s a clusterfuck. Whatever the war against “cancel culture” started out as it has spectacularly backfired.
SFAW
@debbie:
Maybe it’s me, but I have a tough time believing the presidential detail had fat agents in it.
SFAW
@Kay:
Are you sure about that? They — whoever “they” is — may not have planned on it turning into the current “replacement culture” attack, but since “they” have always been happy to make outlandish/stupid/insane claims about the Demon-craps/liberals/non-RWMFs in order to inflame their base, I think they’re succeeding in that regard. Well, maybe not succeeding as much as they’d like, but they’re not unhappy about the present level of success.
Kay
@SFAW:
You start out incessantly whining about “wokeness”, the next thing you know your fellow warriors against wokeness are targeting public school teachers who teach that the civil war was about slavery.
burnspbesq
Lazy bums. It’s not that hard to get a law degree and pass the bar, and then you can legally impersonate a lawyer.
marklar
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Carl Hiassen called this in Squeeze Me, with Mockingbird’s relationship with a Secret Service agent.
burnspbesq
@Dan B:
Linda Ronstadt recorded several Bonoff songs before Karla’s first album came out. The contrast between Ronstadt’s over-the-top treatment of “Lose Again” and Bonoff’s song of quiet desperation was quite remarkable.
Bonoff also wrote “Tell Me Why,” which was a huge hit for Wynnona Judd.
SFAW
@Kay:
Still not seeing how that is a net negative for them, at least with respect to their “base” and the base-adjacent. I see this whole “woke” thing (for example) as them thrashing around, trying to find a word or phrase they can then repeat ad nauseam as part of their “Demon-craps are coming to take your freedumbz!!! OMFG!!!,” scare-the-base go-to playbook. Whether “woke” incites the same response as “Stop the steal!!!” (etc) remains to be seen. But either way, it’s part of their decades-long model of trying to generate fear amongst their base. Although the base appears to have shrunk a bit, that base is humongously over-represented in Rethug elected officials across the nation.
To be clear: you and I are on the same page regarding the evil that is the modern Rethuglican Partei; I’m just not sure that their current tactics (re: cancel/replacement/”woke”) are as much of a clusterfuck as (I think) you do
ETA: In case it wasn’t clear: I don’t see their demonization of teachers (in particular) as necessarily being a net negative with their base. I think their base tends to think that “intellectuals” or “elites” (which teachers are, at some level) look down their noses at them, and so therefore the teachers deserved to be hated. Maybe I’m worng; wouldn’t be the first time.
ET
If John Lambert wasn’t grifting as a “lawyer” he’d be grifting from the pulpit. He has the look (and hair) of an 80’s TV preacher.
waspuppet
Thank you Mr. Fournier; Mr. Trump has your resume and will be announcing his 2024 running mate in due course. You will be notified if you are among the finalists.
laura
“If you don’t support me and you’ve supported Trump since Day 1, go fuck yourself, I really do not give a shit about you, because you are a peasant motherfucker,” Fournier said, raising a middle finger to the camera. “Because guess what? Fuck you.”
I could’ve sworn I heard those exact same words out of the mouth of The Virgin Mayor of Keg City as he demanded his promotion to Supreme Court Justice Gang Bang.
J R in WV
@laura:
Yes, but “The Virgin Mayor of Keg City” was actually a lawyer, who evidently passed a bar exam, somewhere. Great descriptive title for the slime ball, also, too. Thanks!
The Virgin Mayor of Keg City needs to be indicted for all the lies that can be extracted from his congressional testimony, and then impeached, and finally, disbarred.