During
the 2020 primaries, Kamala Harris told the Tampa Bay Times that she
wanted to end what she called the “failed trade embargo” on Cuba. Few
outside the Cuban American community paid attention to her answer and it
was assumed that her willingness to prop up the Communist dictatorship
was consistent with her general left-wing views on foreign policy.
No one in the media was asked whether she had a financial stake in keeping Cuba open.
When
the Biden campaign released the 2019 tax returns for Kamala and her
husband Douglas Emhoff, it was very clear that while Doug might be
auditioning to be the ‘Second Gentleman’, the entertainment lawyer was
by far the primary breadwinner with $2.7 million from his current law
firm DLP Piper and $115,258 from his partnership stake in his old law
firm Venable LLP.
The 2020 tax returns reflected another $181,627 from Venable.
Venable,
which bought Emhoff’s old law firm and made him a partner, casts a wide
net and boasts that it “helped a client obtain the first licenses for
commercial shipping between the United States and Cuba.” When cruise
lines were sued for “trafficking” in stolen property by using a port
confiscated from its rightful owners by the Communist dictatorship.
Venable represented one
of them, and represented a ‘red’ and ‘green’ case involving wind
turbines being transformed from China to Cuba after the Trump
administration brought back Cuban sanctions that allowed lawsuits by
Americans against companies profiting from their confiscated property.
While
lawyers can take on all sorts of clients, Venable appears to have had a
longstanding interest in the embargo on Cuba, issuing client alerts,
hosting a conference and offering to help clients explore options for
doing business in the Communist dictatorship.
Venable was even registered at one point as lobbying on Cuba trade.
But
the most explosive Cuba case in which Venable took a hand involved
accusations of human trafficking went on even while Kamala was serving
as vice president and aiding the defendant.
In 2022, the
Biden-Harris administration announced that it would provide $100 million
to train 500,000 medical personnel with the UN’s Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) even as the organization was being sued by Cuban doctors who had been used as medical slave labor.
At
the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, attended by Biden and
Kamala Harris, there was no mention of the disturbing allegations
against the organization. Or the fact that it was being represented by
the law firm where the Harris-Emhoff family had made a fortune.
The allegations against the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) were laid out again
in a congressional letter last year from Rep. Maria Salazar, the
daughter of Cuban refugees, and Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Cuban exile. The
letter noted that Cuban doctors are suing “PAHO for playing a major role
in trafficking over 10,000 Cuban doctors”, that “PAHO also funneled
hundreds of millions of dollars to the Cuban government and pocketed at
least $75 million” and that PAHO is “receiving tens of millions of
dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding every year.”
In 2020, PAHO hired
Venable to conduct an “independent review” of its dealings. The
congressional letter noted that “it is now close to three years since
that announcement, and PAHO has not released the Venable, or any, report
to the State Department, to Members of Congress, or to the Plaintiffs’
lawyers in the litigation”.
The allegations are serious. The lawsuit by the trafficked doctors claims that the
UN organization took in hundreds of millions of dollars from Brazil in
exchange for their services, “remitted 85% to Cuba, paid 10% or less to
the doctors, and kept 5% for itself.”
Like most slave labor, the
doctors “were forbidden to move about socially, have visitors from home,
or go out after a strict curfew. Minders were assigned to surveil them
around the clock.”
While Cuba’s Communist dictatorship made billions selling them into slavery, they had little.
PAHO allegedly received millions from this scheme and retained Emhoff’s old firm.
While Emhoff is best known as an entertainment lawyer, at Venable he had represented everyone from a pharmaceutical company
to an arms dealer to an accused sexual abuser, his partnership stake of
almost $1.2 million allowed him to benefit from Venable’s work, at the
very least its financial viability, even when he was no longer actively
working at the firm.
Douglas Emhoff had not been eager to leave
behind his extremely lucrative legal practice which paid in the
millions. When Kamala first ran for president, he did not appear to
budge, only when Biden announced that she had been chosen as his veep,
did he take a “temporary leave”. He did not actually quit until after
the election when he had no real alternative since DLA Piper represented
“numerous foreign governments” including Afghanistan, Qatar’s Al
Jazeera terrorist propaganda network and the PLO’s ‘Palestine Monetary
Authority’ money laundering operation.
The partnership stake at Venable was also in the rear view mirror.
Emhoff’s
legal career paralleled his wife’s political career. Kamala, then
attorney general, had met Emhoff while he was a partner at Venable.
Before their relationship, Kamala received few donations from Venable
lawyers, but afterward dozens of lawyers from her new husband’s firm
were suddenly writing big checks to her.
And the same thing happened again when Emhoff moved from Venable to DLA Piper.
After
Kamala was elected to the Senate and moved to D.C., Emhoff also moved
on from Venable, which had previously acquired his firm, and joined DLA
Piper which has a sizable D.C. and government footprint.
And the donations to his wife’s political campaign from DLA Piper lawyers massively increased.
After
2020, Emhoff followed government retirees and spouses into a position
teaching at Georgetown. While his $174,994 for teaching a class or two
is a far stretch from his millionaire roots, it still comes out to over
$3,000 for an hour of ‘work’. Not bad.
What will Emhoff do after his wife leaves public life? Likely he will go back to a law firm.
Considering
his careful career transitions which paced those of his wife, but in
which he also took few risks and did not leave any established position
until he had to, he likely knows. And it’s likely that Kamala knows too.
Will that influence the political positions that she takes?
Kamala’s
opposition to the Cuban embargo neatly matched the economic concerns of
her husband’s old law firm which the Harris-Emhoff family continued
profiting from for an extended period. Was that a coincidence? There is
no way to truly know. But what we do know is that Cuban doctors
trafficked by an organization Kamala supports are still waiting for
justice.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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