The State Bar of California has said that they won’t disbar a lawyer who is currently under fire for making allegedly anti-Semitic social media posts.
David Lange documented the posts in his Israellycool blog screenshots from the lawyer, Farhad Khorasani, who runs his own law firm. According to Lange, the alleged posts included a statement about how Jews are an “existential threat” and that “we need a new Hitler.” Khorasani is also alleged to have said that “the main enemy of the human race is Israel and the satanic cartel behind it.”
The posts that Lange highlighted in screenshots appear to have been deleted, but a post about how Representative Mary Miller (R-Ill.) being “under fire” for saying that “Hitler was right about one thing” still appears on Khorasani’s feed. “Freedom of speech is under assault by the Jewish-Israeli lobbies and their allies in the US, including the big techs,” the post states.
In a statement to the Journal, the State Bar condemned Khorasani’s posts as “hateful, morally reprehensible, and inconsistent with the expectations of a California licensed attorney,” but that isn’t grounds to disbar him.
“All California attorneys as officers of the court take an oath to conduct themselves ‘at all times with dignity, courtesy, and integrity,’” the State Bar’s statement read. “This oath, however, is aspirational, and unfortunately, the State Bar generally cannot take action against attorneys who engage, as Mr. Khorasani has, in offensive speech in their private nonprofessional lives, no matter how objectionable.
“Further, not all hateful, discriminatory, or harassing conduct in the practice of law constitutes grounds for disciplinary action against an attorney because of constitutional, free speech rights. A former statute that required attorneys to ‘abstain from all offensive personality’ was repealed in 2001 after a United States Court of Appeals found it unconstitutional.”
Khorasani responded to allegations of anti-Semitism in an Instagram post accusing “Zionist-Israeli newspapers” of running “extremely Iranophobic, racist, & Islamophobic statements that clearly libel and incite violence against me. I am exploring all possible next steps, including law suits to be taken regarding this matter.” He also applauded the State Bar for not taking action against him.
“I have been reached out by many in the community including the Alt-right communities, to offer me support and applauding me for ‘telling the truth in a world of lies,’ & ‘calling out the zionists for their crimes against humanity,’ based on the Jewish media articles,” Khorasani wrote. “They also relayed to me that ‘we need more attorneys like you in CA,’ and called on GOP to ‘come 2024 & put [me] in the ballot if [they] want [their] vote,’ & to ‘make [me] president now because the white people can’t do the job,’ & asked me ‘what is the solution to this problem?’ And that ‘it takes a courageous man to speak out against zionists in the USA.’”
He also denied calling for genocide, stating that he has “spoken out against the ongoing Holocaust of six million Palestinians at the hands of the genocidal Israeli government, & have said never again to the Holocaust of millions of Iranians during World War One at the hands of the English.”
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The Anti-Defamation League has defined the alt-right as the “new white supremacy.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted, “Iranian regime executes one wrestler, another awaits execution. Has this lawyer condemned the #Ayatollah or is he too busy spouting anti-Semitic slurs? Bar Association needs to look again at this Jew-hater!”
Iranian regime executes one wrestler, another awaits execution. Has this lawyer condemned the #Ayatollah or is he too busy spouting anti-Semitic slurs? Bar Association needs to look again at this Jew-hater! https://t.co/LWAF5VvAQn
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) January 19, 2021
Lange responded to Khorasani’s Instagram post by stating, “As for convincing people that the accusations against him are false, I wouldn’t have thought mentioning support from the alt-right, speaking of the Jewish media, or accusing Israel of a Holocaust of 6 million palestinians (not just a grotesque lie, but clearly meant to elicit comparisons with the Holocaust of the Jewish people) would disabuse people of that notion.”
