More Allegations Surface Against Second Dude Doug Emhoff

Last week I looked at Second Dude Doug Emhoff's legal career and began to match it up with Kamala's rise in politics. One thing stood out. According to Wikipedia,

He opened his own firm with Ben Whitwell in 2000, which was acquired by Venable LLP in 2006. Emhoff became managing director of Venable's West Coast offices. . . . Emhoff joined DLA Piper as a partner in 2017, working at its Washington, D.C., and California offices. He earned $1.2 million per year as a partner of the law firm. Following the announcement that his wife would be Joe Biden's running mate in the 2020 United States presidential election, Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm. After the Biden–Harris ticket won, the campaign announced Emhoff would permanently leave DLA Piper before Inauguration Day to avoid conflict of interest concerns.

He married his second wife, Kamala, in 2014, while she was Attorney General of California. In 2016,she was elected to the US Senate as a senator from California. She assumed office in 2017, the same year Emhoff left Venable LLP and went to DLA Piper, where he stayed making $1.2 million a year until his marriage to Kamala became uncomfortable to that firm; he left permanently when Kamala was elected vice president in 2020.

Several things occurred to me last week. One was that DLA Piper didn't see any conflict when Kamala was a US senator -- in fact, they paid him $1.2 million a year precisely because he was married to a US senator. According to Wikipedia,

A 2012 survey by Major, Lindsey & Africa found that law firm partners' average annual compensation was $681,000 ($896,000 for equity partners, $335,000 for non-equity partners) and tended to go up based on number of years in the partnership[.]

So Emhoff, as best anyhone can tell, was a new partner at DLA Piper but earning at the top of the scale. Wikipedia prefaces its discussion of law firm partners with the statement, "In law firms, partners are primarily those senior lawyers who are responsible for generating the firm's revenue." It sounds as if DLA Piper was expecting Emhoff's connection with Kamala to pay off big, at least until, a few years later, it apparently started to make them nervous.

This brings us to the latest allegations against Emhoff, which date from his time at Venable LLP between 2006 and 2017. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Attorneys who worked with Doug Emhoff at his former firm Venable say he yelled expletives, held a men-only cocktail hour in the office, revoked work perks from women who didn't flirt with him, and took only young, attractive associates in a limousine to a ball.

A 2019 lawsuit also claimed sex discrimination by other partners in the LA office Emhoff ran, and that while engaged to Harris, he hired an 'unqualified' part-time model as a legal secretary 'because she was young, attractive and friendly with the powerful men in the office'.

. . . One senior former staffer claimed Emhoff 'bragged' about yelling 'get the f*** out of my office' to a female partner at the firm, later telling his top male colleagues that he had 'put her in her place'.

. . . 'What's worse was he bragged about it to the management at Venable and they were aghast. He's an a**hole. He told them how he "put her in her place". A misogynist, that's who does that.'

Although the story says Emhoff was promoted from Partner-in-Charge of Venable's LA office to West Coast Managing Director in 2015 after he married Kamala, then state attorney general, there seem to have been reasons for Emhoff to leave Venable two years later in 2017. On top of what are reported to have been continuing complaints of harassment and inappropriate behavior, I have a sense that even as the husband of the state attorney general and then a US senator, Emhoff wasn't bringing in the revenue the firm expected -- and this may have happened at DLA Piper as well, since all of a sudden, they saw a potential conflict of interest in his marriage to Kamala, when they hadn't seen one when they hired him, even though she was a US senator.

For starters, I suspect certain of Emhoff's senior colleagues were in fact "aghast" at his various escapades. Emhoff's apparent enabling of sexual harassment by his subordinates at the firm got them sued for it in 2019, after Emhoff had left. But I'll bet Emhoff had been wearing out his welcome at Venable for years, and his marriage to Kamala was, if anything, an attempt to maintain his standing there -- except I have a feeling that even his marrying the ditzy state attorney general never quite resulted in a windfall to the firm, and he was eased out notwithstanding. All of a sudden, his former colleagues are spilling the dirt. They couldn't turn down the opportunity, I would think, and they were happy to see him leave when he finally did.

I would guess the same applied to his brief tenure at DLA Piper: he led them to expect big things from his connection to Sen Harris that never quite paid out, and they suddenly discovered a conmflict of interest, even though they themselves had had great expectations from just the conflict Emhoff tried to sell them.

This just confirms my first impression of the guy -- above all, he's cheesy.