A lawyer has been suspended for sending her client an antisemitic letter, and claimed she got suspended because she is a Black female..
Maryland’s Court of Appeals has indefinitely suspended a Virginia-based lawyer who sent an “antisemitic and highly offensive” letter to a client she was representing in an employment discrimination case.
The lawyer, Amber L. Maiden, disputed the court’s findings and called the decision racist and sexist in an interview.
The 21-page opinion concludes that Maiden used “language that is antisemitic, personally insulting, profane, and otherwise inappropriate” in the letter to her client, a white man who had asked her to join his appeal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in order to win more substantial damages.
Maiden, who is Black, initially agreed to the request, according to the opinion, and suggested that she and her client seek $20 million in punitive damages from the man’s former employer, the U.S. Department of State. The client claimed he had been discriminated against because of his gender.
In exchange for joining the appeal, Maiden said she would expect to receive 50% of any damages won.
After an in-person meeting in late 2019, the relationship between Maiden and the client fell apart, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Matthew Fader wrote in the opinion. Maiden told a hearing judge in her disciplinary case that the client was aggressive and attempted to intimidate her during the in-person meeting.
In an email sent after the meeting, Maiden accused the client of “mistaking her ‘for someone far less intelligent,’ which she said was ‘almost always the case when dealing with white Americans.’”
The client emailed back that he took “great offense” to the accusation. Hours later, Maiden responded with an encrypted 20-page letter that required a password to open. The password was included in her email to the client.
Portions of Maiden’s letter are excerpted in the opinion:
“I can tell you right now, money does not move me, the way it moves you. I would say you are obsessed with it, and that’s very unhealthy. At the risk of offending you, I am going to say, it’s probably because you’re Jewish (I think) and that seems to be a part of your culture, (with the men anyway, the women are different.)”
The letter is laced with profanities and criticizes the client for trying to limit the amount of damages Maiden would receive if the employment discrimination case was successful. Maiden wrote that the anti-discrimination law she was basing the case on was written for her, not for the client’s “white a–.”
The letter goes on: “I know why you’re like this. If you are in fact Jewish, this is a part of your culture, yall Jew boys and that money…you think it’s antisemitic for people to call you out … NO. It is not.”
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The appeals court found that Maiden violated a number of ethical rules, including creating a conflict of interest by joining her client’s appeal without having him sign a waiver, misrepresenting to Maryland Bar Counsel that she had sent the 20-page letter by mistake, and sending a letter that showed bias and prejudice based on religion.
“The … letter is laced with statements that are offensive, demeaning, personally insulting, profane, and premised on harmful religious, racial, and ethnic stereotypes,” Fader wrote.
In an email, Maiden told The Daily Record that she found the process of working with the Attorney Grievance Commission to be “extremely racist and sexist.”
“Nothing I said was given any weight in that forum because I am a Black female, who was harassed and threatened by a white male client, who essentially wanted me to continue working for him for free, like a slave,” Maiden wrote.
“I did not write a 20-page antisemitic letter TO ANYONE,” she wrote. “What I did do is have the audacity to set some boundaries with my extremely aggressive white male client.”
Because Black people are clearly incapable of being antisemitic, and any accusation they are is clearly just a manifestation of anti-Black racism.
Alternatively, some of the worst antisemites are from the Black community. Right, Louis?
Actually, the letter is even worse than the above report indicates. Besides the above, she compares the way Black Americans are treated to the Holocaust, compares White Americans to Nazis, says Black Americans hate to read and write (and blames it on slavery), and blames the Holocaust on Jews’ love of money:
conflict- as we say in the diversity/inclusion circles – is good. Or at least it’s to be expected. It’s a part of life, and it simply has to be managed. So, let’s get to managing this conflict. It’s about to get really real…I gotta break into my African-American dialect (lots of cursing) so you will understand- I am 100% that bitch… and not to be fucked with.
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I’m your attorney. And that is actually a very sacred relationship. Almost like marriage [. . .] because our interests are linked. Our financial interests, our representational interests, we both want to win and we both want the money…
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And, I can tell, from my first in person conversation with you, that the best, in your mind, is lots of money. But me? I’m different. So, we have a values conflict already. (We have to manage it.) I can tell you right now, money does not move me, the way it moves you. I would say you are obsessed with it, and that’s very unhealthy. At the risk of offending you, I am going to say, it’s probably because you’re Jewish (I think) and that seems to be a part of your culture, (with the men anyway, the women are different.)
I get that. And I am not dissing your culture. Not exactly. But I am saying that all cultures have some dysfunction and unhealthiness to them. (Black Americans for example, hate to fucking read and write…and there are reasons for that-primarily slavery.) Jews don’t have that problem. They are some reading and writing mfers…and some calculating mfers, all into the money. Sometimes it’s too much. It turns into a love of money. And this is a very dangerous thing for the Jews in Germany.
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You white people…almost everything you say, and everything you do, really pisses us off (Ghetto Princess talking now) because you people are so insensitive to all the fucked up shit that happens to us (like German Nazis) and you expect us to cry over your pain. Pulease.
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[Y]ou do all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid admitting the fact that the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT locked us the fuck up in them hoods, just like the Germans did them Jews. America has its own holocaust – and if you are white in America you are straight up on the
Nazi side of it. And if you think we don’t know who you all are, and what you are about and that most of you who vote Republican are racist AF, and are trying to kill us off, because you just don’t want to deal, well you’re wrong. We know you people. It’s you who don’t know us.—
Okay, so let’s get to it. Let’s talk about the money. You don’t want to give me 50% of the punitive. Well technically…if we ever see them punitive damages (which is sucha crap shoot) YOU CAN ONLY GET TO THEM BECAUSE OF ME! ONLY BECAUSE OF ME! This law, that we are requesting the punies under- IT WAS WRITTEN FOR ME. NOT YOUR WHITE ASS FOR ME. The argument has been made under my own cause of action, because of an injury TO ME – NOT YOU
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And so for you to have the AUDACITY, to get an attitude about a law SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN FOR ME and to try and take WHAT IS MINE?????? Like who in the fuck do you think you are????
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But when you was coming for my fees, the ghetto princess in me, was like This mfer is coming for you, you better back him the fuck up and off of you!
That was what it felt like. I know why you’re like this. If you are in fact Jewish, this is a part of your culture, yall Jew boys and that money…you think it’s antisemitic for people to call you out for the fucked-up shit you do. NO. It is not.
You know how all those Muslim antisemites – like Zahra Billoo and Ilhan Omar – constantly claim accusations of antisemitism leveled against them are a manifestation of Islamophobia, instead of their rank Jew hatred? Same energy.
