Splitsville For Doug And Kamala?

Via the UK Daily Mail,

Kamala Harris was all smiles and affection for her 'beloved' second gentleman Doug Emhoff in the immediate aftermath of her crushing presidential election defeat.

But now that President Donald Trump has been sworn into office, for sore loser Harris, it is now all about the blame game, and her target has flipped to her 'dead weight' husband.

And as she weighs her political future – maybe a 2026 run for Governor of California or another try for the nation's top job two years later – she has to consider whether Emhoff is an asset or a liability.

. . . Despite their brave united front at the inauguration and at President Jimmy Carter's January 9 funeral, those close to the couple believe all is not 'hunky dory' between them.

And word is the husband of California girl Kamala has already signed up for a job with a Big Apple law firm which would require them to split their time between New York and Los Angeles.

The piece goes on to mention that Emhoff chose to forego his legal career to support Kamala's presidential aspirations:

Emhoff famously stepped away from his own prominent career as an attorney in California to fully support Harris' political ambitions in 2020 – becoming hell-bent on perfecting his image as a 'wife guy'.

But now that Kamala is out of power for the foreseeable future, Emhoff is going to have to find other ways to cash in. I looked at Emhoff's prior legal career in this post, where I relied heavily on an entry in Britannica. He graduated from USC Law School in 1990 and was presumably admitted to the California bar soon afterward.

Emhoff subsequently embarked on a career in entertainment law. He worked at the firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and later joined Bingham McCutchen. In the late 1990s he moved to Belin Rawlings & Badal. His clients there included Hollywood Video, a rental chain that he defended after Fox Entertainment Group accused it of underreporting sales and rentals.

In 2000 Emhoff cofounded the 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.

This covers the period of his first marriage, to Kerstin Mackin in 1992, which ended in divorce in 2010 amid allegations of infedelity with their children's nanny in 2008. Following the divorce, there were allegations of sexual harassment against him in his position as Venable LLP's manager of West Coast operations, including playing favorites in case assignments with female attorneys who would flirt with him and holding all-male after-hours drinking parties.

May 2012 was also when a New York attorney who was dating him alleged that he slapped her while they waited in a valet parking line at a French film festival.

However, in 2013, he met Kamala on a blind date and married her in 2014. At that time, she was California Attorney General; she was elected US Senator from California in 2016. This appears to correspond with Emhoff's move to a new law firm. Britannica continues,

In 2017 he joined the global firm DLA Piper, where he represented such clients as big-box store Walmart, arms dealer Dolarian Capital, and pharmaceutical company Merck.

. . . In 2016 when Harris, a Democrat, ran for the U.S. Senate, Emhoff maintained a relatively low profile during the campaign. She ultimately won, and the couple moved to Washington, D.C. Emhoff took on a more public role during the 2020 presidential election, as Harris first ran for the party’s nomination before dropping out and then becoming Joe Biden’s running mate. Biden and Harris ultimately defeated the Republican ticket . . . . During the campaign Emhoff stopped practicing law, and he later began teaching at Georgetown University’s law school.

But it's hard to avoid thinking that being married, first to the California Attorney General, and then to a US Senator, was good for Emhoff's legal career. A partner in a law firm is valuable only insofar as he can bring in clients, and if Emhoff had the ear of a US Senator in particular, he'd bring in clients. Thus he'd be valuable to DLA Piper -- or so you'd think. So why did he stop practicing law just when he was on the verge of cashing in even more?

Exactly why isn't clear -- certainly it was never an obstacle to Hunter Biden's law practice that his father was either a US Senator or vice president. My suspicion all along has been that the firms that hired him soon enough discovered he wasn't all that valuable and edged him out, and that probably included DLA Piper. And the question for me continues to be how Emhoff can bring in major clients now if his only claim to fame is that he was house hubby to an ex-vice president and out of the law business entirely for four years.

According to, New York Magazine,

The couple has been seriously exploring the Manhattan apartment market so they can become a bit bicoastal. They have considered different kinds of uptown units — “Page Six” was recently tipped off to Emhoff’s tour of a big condo near Lincoln Center — and have been working through logistical questions, including security concerns. (Former vice-presidents get six months of Secret Service protection, but that can occasionally be extended depending on risk levels.)

A secondary East Coast base may be helpful for their travels. Harris is likely to give some paid speeches, and she’s already fielded inquiries about writing a book. Emhoff, a lawyer, has spoken about taking on clients again and maintaining a public profile so he can keep up his work combating antisemitism.

This looks like it's mostly smokescreen, and the Daily Mail interprets it as more likely an indication that they'll be living separate lives. And the mention of Emhoff keeping up his work combating anti-Semitism is off the wall -- neither Kamala nor his first wife was Jewish, his children weren't raised as Jews and don't identify as Jews, and Emhoff himself doesn't appear to be observant, other than for occasional staged campaign-related events with Kamala. It's hard to imagine any Jewish organization taking him seriously as a spokesperson.

And it does pretty much look like the days of Emhoff and Kamala celebrating Passover as a family are over. If anything positive comes out about either one of them, I'll have a really hard time believing it.