Nobody's Picked This Up

Apparently the disastrous outcome for Gov Walz from Tuesday's debate overshadowed a great deal of other news yesterday, not least the UK Daily Mail's story Kamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff 'forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man' in booze-fueled assault after date to star-studded gala:

Vice President Kamala Harris's husband assaulted his ex-girlfriend, three friends have told Dailymail.com.

The Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, allegedly struck the woman in the face so hard she spun around, while waiting in a valet line late at night after a May 2012 Cannes Film Festival event in France.

One of her friends told DailyMail.com that the woman called him immediately after the incident, sobbing in her cab, and described the alleged assault.

The accounts and surrounding documentation gathered by the Daily Mail provide a revealing glimpse into Emhoff's lifestyle, and I think more importantly, why Kamala would find this guy a compatible match. I decided to see where this episode fit into Emhoff's timeline. According to Britannica,

In 2000 Emhoff cofounded the [law] firm Whitwell Jacoby Emhoff. . . . In 2006 Whitwell Jacoby Emhoff was acquired by Venable LLP, and Doug Emhoff became head of that firm’s Los Angeles branch and later manager of its West Coast operations.

. . . Emhoff married film producer Kerstin Mackin in 1992. The pair had two children, Cole Emhoff and Ella Emhoff, before divorcing in 2010. Three years later Doug Emhoff met Harris—then California’s attorney general—on a blind date, and they wed in 2014.

Venavble LLP is a major white-shoe law firm. Its expansion to the West Coast was an important move, and Emhoff was put in charge of their operations. Heavyweight dude, right? The Daily Mail has a lot to put the story in context, including this e-mail from "Jane", the alleged victim, to a friend regarding the hotel she and Emhoff stayed at during the Cannes Film Festival (click on the image for a ;arger copy):

The story puts this in moire contextt:

Jane's friends said she was given tickets by wealthy friends to go to the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Gala Dinner, an elite charity auction filled with top celebrities and Hollywood executives, held on May 24, 2012 at the Hotel du Cap in Antibes, near Cannes in Southern France.

. . . The friends said Jane brought her then boyfriend, Emhoff, as a plus one.

One of Jane's friends, a top New York businessman, said he was at home getting ready for bed that night when he got an unexpected phone call from her.

'It was hard to hear her because she was sobbing,' he said. 'She told me she was with a guy and he hit her.

'It was very clear what she was telling me. She said she was with a guy, her date, she was at the Cannes Film Festival, and he hit her. She was in the car with the guy at the time.

. . . 'In later conversations, but pretty contemporaneous with that, she told me more about the guy,' he added.

'It was something like 3am. They were trying to get out of there and they both had been drinking. There was a gigantic line for taxis.

'[Jane] went up to one of the valet guys, offered him 100 Euros or whatever, to get to the head of the line. She told me she put her hand on his shoulder. Doug apparently thought that she was flirting, and came over and slapped her in the face.

. . . A second friend, another female New York attorney, said Jane told her about the alleged attack at the time – and said it came out of nowhere.

. . . 'I think she asked him 'what the f*** was that all about?' in the car, and the only thing she could really get out of him was that he thought she was hitting on the valet.

'[Jane] told me she was so embarrassed. She couldn't believe he is the person that he is, and that it turned into this trailer trash moment.

'It woke her up about the self-delusion she was having, explaining away the teacher [i.e., the nanny] story. She realized he was bad news. This was the first time she saw his ugly side.

This sort of thing isn't good for a prominent lawyer's reputation. According to the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct,

A lawyer's conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer's business and personal affairs.

As best I can tell, Emhoff's hard-partying, jet-setting lifestyle wouldn't be consistent with managing an important part of a white-shoe law firm's operations. He left Venable LLP in 2017 and became a litigation partner with DLA Piper, another white-shoe firm with Democrat connections. Married to Kamla in 2014, she was elected to the US Senate in 2016, and it would be hard not to interpret the move as connected to Harris's career, as well as growing dissatisfaction at Venable with Emhoff's escapades.

In fact, it looks like Emhoff didn't have a good reputation before his elevation to Second Dude:

This is a horrifying story. I will say that it matches with something I recently learned from two California individuals who know Emhoff fairly well and said his reputation for poor treatment of women was notorious in their circles. https://t.co/0UBAcs6j6d

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 2, 2024

A few commentators have3 raised the quesion of whether Kamala was ever vetted as a vice presidential choice, suggesting Biden's deal with James Clyburn to nominate a black woman for the job pre-empted any serious vetting process. It looks more and more to me as though it was a serious mistake not to look more closely into Emhoff beefore selecting Kamala.