Zippyjuan
05-09-2019, 12:59 PM
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/09/trump-john-lambert-students-lawsuit-jail-226802
On the eve of the last presidential election, NBC’s “Nightly News” broadcast featured two skinny college students in jackets and ties, discussing the future of American politics. They were co-founders of Students for Trump, a grassroots group that had tapped the social media power of Donald Trump’s populist movement — and of photos of bikini-clad women in MAGA hats — to become the real estate mogul’s standard-bearer on college campuses around the country.
“I see Donald Trump as reviving the Republican Party,” one of them, John Lambert, declared confidently.
Last month, Lambert, now 23, showed up in the news again. This time, he had been arrested in Tennessee on charges of wire fraud. According to the federal government, at the same time he was building a nationwide political network and serving as one of the most visible young faces of Trump’s populist movement, Lambert was also posing online as a high-powered New York lawyer, eventually making off with tens of thousands of dollars in fees he stole from unwitting clients seeking legal services.
Lambert’s rise to prominence and recent indictment offer a cautionary tale of an ambitious young man caught up in Trump’s allure — a get-rich-quick fantasy of the American dream — who allegedly managed to create his own reality on the internet, only to have the real world come barging in.
It also shines a spotlight on the chaos and confusion of Trump’s ramshackle 2016 campaign, and the cast of characters who sought fame and fortune by riding in his slipstream. Trump ran as a “law and order” candidate. But time and again, the mogul has drawn outlaws and alleged outlaws into his fold, from former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and personal fixer Michael Cohen all the way down. Though he may be the youngest, Lambert is not the first prominent Trump partisan to spend 2016 taunting Hillary Clinton about her supposed criminality, only to end up facing prison time himself instead.
During the 2016, Lambert was everywhere—pumping Trump on television, at campaign rallies and on campuses. Since his arrest and indictment on April 16, he has gone silent. He not yet entered a plea or spoken publicly about the charges. He did not respond to emails, and calls to a cell phone number provided by a friend returned an error message. Calls and messages to numbers for Lambert’s mother went unreturned. The only lawyer listed for Lambert in court records, public defender Julia Gatto, said she represented Lambert only for his bail hearing and was no longer in touch with him.
What happened? Part of the story of John Lambert is splashed across public records, social media posts and news reports. For the rest, POLITICO tracked down people who have known him over the years, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want their names associated with fraud charges.
More at link.
On the eve of the last presidential election, NBC’s “Nightly News” broadcast featured two skinny college students in jackets and ties, discussing the future of American politics. They were co-founders of Students for Trump, a grassroots group that had tapped the social media power of Donald Trump’s populist movement — and of photos of bikini-clad women in MAGA hats — to become the real estate mogul’s standard-bearer on college campuses around the country.
“I see Donald Trump as reviving the Republican Party,” one of them, John Lambert, declared confidently.
Last month, Lambert, now 23, showed up in the news again. This time, he had been arrested in Tennessee on charges of wire fraud. According to the federal government, at the same time he was building a nationwide political network and serving as one of the most visible young faces of Trump’s populist movement, Lambert was also posing online as a high-powered New York lawyer, eventually making off with tens of thousands of dollars in fees he stole from unwitting clients seeking legal services.
Lambert’s rise to prominence and recent indictment offer a cautionary tale of an ambitious young man caught up in Trump’s allure — a get-rich-quick fantasy of the American dream — who allegedly managed to create his own reality on the internet, only to have the real world come barging in.
It also shines a spotlight on the chaos and confusion of Trump’s ramshackle 2016 campaign, and the cast of characters who sought fame and fortune by riding in his slipstream. Trump ran as a “law and order” candidate. But time and again, the mogul has drawn outlaws and alleged outlaws into his fold, from former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and personal fixer Michael Cohen all the way down. Though he may be the youngest, Lambert is not the first prominent Trump partisan to spend 2016 taunting Hillary Clinton about her supposed criminality, only to end up facing prison time himself instead.
During the 2016, Lambert was everywhere—pumping Trump on television, at campaign rallies and on campuses. Since his arrest and indictment on April 16, he has gone silent. He not yet entered a plea or spoken publicly about the charges. He did not respond to emails, and calls to a cell phone number provided by a friend returned an error message. Calls and messages to numbers for Lambert’s mother went unreturned. The only lawyer listed for Lambert in court records, public defender Julia Gatto, said she represented Lambert only for his bail hearing and was no longer in touch with him.
What happened? Part of the story of John Lambert is splashed across public records, social media posts and news reports. For the rest, POLITICO tracked down people who have known him over the years, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want their names associated with fraud charges.
More at link.