We were asked if Barack and Michelle Obama surrendered their law licenses to avoid ethics charges? This is a very old internet rumor that goes back to at least 2012. It has been debunked by Factcheck.org, Snopes and Truth or Fiction.
This is the chain email that was spread:
Chain email: I knew they had both lost their law license, but didn’t know why until I read this.
This is legit. I check it out at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It’s the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean as hell. (Talk about irony.) Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn. Big surprise.
Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and U.S. President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.
Consider this:
1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application. A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license five seconds before the state suspends you.
This is Fact Check’s response:
No. A court official confirms that no public disciplinary proceeding has ever been brought against either of them, contrary to a false Internet rumor. By voluntarily inactivating their licenses, they avoid a requirement to take continuing education classes and pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. Both could practice law again if they chose to do so.
Based on many credible fact checkers debunking this, we rate this claim a BLANTANT LIE.
Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources
So you say….time will tell …I believe a lawyer only gove up a lic out of necessity or self preservation….so if neither pic up their lic that they spent so much time and tax payer money on to get ….What would you conclude is a valid reason…?
The point is we don’t know the reason. The fact check is looking at the claim that they did it to avoid ethics charges. There isn’t evidence for that at this time so it is a false claim until proven otherwise.
Judging by the 2 ignorant comments here, you can’t fix stupid. I don’t think either one spent tax payer money to go to school, they didn’t wait till he was president to go. Next, yes it costs money and you have to go for continuing education to maintain your license and you have to pay state bar fees, maintain malpractice insurance etc. If you’re not going practice law because, say you win TWO elections, why would you pay for all that for a license you’re not using? Many lawyers do this when not practicing. But these are facts, and obviously facts elude the other 2 commenters.
Mike, Michelle was licensed in 1989. She surrendered her license in 1993. That was long before any thought of winning an election. Don’t you find it even a little odd that someone who went to school for a long time and spent a lot of money to do so would surrender that license after less than 4 years? I don’t think CEUs are that costly or burdensome. Doesn’t seem to pass the smell test.
In order to keep abreast and current the license must be renewed by continuing education and payments to the Bar Association, periodically. After being away from practicing law for several years, am I to believe that all an errant attorney must do is to go back to practicing law? No, Continuing Education to bring ESQ up to date, right? Yes that does mean intense time and expense to take and pass the Bar all over again, right? Or, can he just step into any old law office and say he’s a licensed attorney after making up all of the continuing education he missed out on while on sabbatical? Just back from taking a little time off, like maybe eight to ten years?
I have an inactive bar license in the state of Georgia. I am no longer practicing law (I quit to parent and homeschool my special needs child ten years ago). I didn’t (and don’t) see the need to pay for an active license and pay (and find childcare to attend) CLE classes when I have no intention of practicing law. And yes, all I need to do to activate my license is send a check to the state bar of Georgia. It’s not a big deal at all.
First of all to go to School for so many years as a African American Woman i can’t imagine how Proud she must have been.. and being a mom of two girls to give that HUGE $
Read the facts a little more carefully. No formal ethics charges were ever FILED. That does not necessarily mean there was no “deal” made to not file ethics charges if obama surrendered his law license. He could have surrendered his license to avoid the charges being filed; and there would be no record. Did this happen? I have no idea. But to say he did not surrender because of ethics violations based solely upon the fact no charges currently appear in the IADC records is not conclusive.
I would say that a written legal record is a better form of evidence than speculation, Mr. Morris. If the IADC records are not conclusive, I fail to see what else could be in this case.
Could you please reference which court official confirmed that that it is not true, please.
Thanks
LOL, coping the same thing Snopes and the other “fact” checking websites. Reminds me of the parroting the MSM does. Claiming it’s false because Snopes (proven to be biassed) is not a claim that it’s false.
No he lied and lied to us about where he was born and that he is muslim
They both lost thier law license because they lied. Just because he get it up before he got busted doesn’t make it any better or right.
I guess facts no longer matter, it seems that people will just make up their minds based on what they want to believe even if there is zero evidence what so ever of any wrong doing. You can point them to fact checking sites, but if the result isn’t what they want to hear they scream BIAS and it’s usually the folks on the right doing the screaming. It amazes me how tightly closed those tiny little minds are! We are living in an age of “customized news” and it’s seriously starting to piss me off!
C’mon if you know the right people and grease the right palms you can cover-up and make-up anything. Just ask the Clinton’s. And because you say it’s a false report makes it so. NOT SO. We all see the bias.
“Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”) is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four: true, false, unknown between true and false, being unknowable (among the first three. In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.”
“…a court official…” That’s your source? An unnamed court “official”? How do we cerify that source? What have you given us? Not much, I’m afraid
These people who are claiming cover ups have no evidence, whereas their beloved president has literally paid off women he’s had affairs with, for which there is a paper trail, and covered it up to con the voters. That’s a fact. These same stupid people called Obama a socialist and a fascist in the same sentence (you can’t be both) while he was muslim that went to Rev. Wright’s church (you can’t be both)
Ryan. And your past two beloved Presidents? Well the last one gave guns to Cartels (Fast and Furious), Blamed the slaughtering of an ambassador and other Americans on a YouTube Video, knew that illegal FISA warrants used to spy on American citizens and got on TV and told us that wasn’t true, oversaw more debt incurred than the prior 43 Presidents combined. And your other hero was a molestor going back 25 years, got sued, committed perjury, was impeached by the House and disbarred. All documented and indisputable. But Trump had flings. But Trump is the bad guy, right? Facinating.
The last two presidents are not the issue. This BS propaganda piece is the issue and has been soundly debunked several times, by several reputable sites.
As for the claim regarding arguing from ignorance, that does not apply here. All available evidence points to the original claim being false. The greater claim (that he was about to get caught doing something that would force him to give up practicing) requires the greater evidence.
He is not Muslim.
My Cthulhu there is a lot of ignorance here.
Although no charges were officially filed, they would have been if obama hadn’t of voluntarily surrendered it.
No one really knows. And that’s on purpose. The Obamas have closed off, blocked out, banned scrutiny of, and covered up, any and all records from their lives before he was POTUS. Too bad “journalists” of today (and I use that term loosely) don’t bother to investigate the real underlying story of the Obamas. They’d rather drink the koolaid, and go along to get along, than do their jobs.
his license is not inactive it was surrendered. . That would be like when you surrender a drivers license, why would you do that?
We currently have one of the sleaziest presidents in history stealing from us left and right, and you conspiracy nuts keep posting verifiable false information. Integrity is not something you idiots care about evidently.
No “Anonymous” his licensed was NOT surrendered.