Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who lectured Donald Trump about the Constitution at the Democratic National Convention last month, has been touted by the media as a constitutional expert, on par with a Supreme Court Justice. However, far from being a constitutional expert or even a seasoned attorney, the 66-year-old Pakistani immigrant only recently obtained a license to practice law.
On August 1, Chris Matthews of MSNBC likened Khan to Justice Anthony Kennedy (emphasis added):
MATTHEWS: When you pulled out that Constitution the other night and said,
Here, read it, basically, to Trump, did that remind you of the fact you had
to learn it?K. KHAN: Of course. Of course. Read it page to page. I – that was not
the plan, to pull out the Constitution.MATTHEWS: You have it there?
K. KHAN: What I – what I…
MATTHEWS: Where`d you get that, by the way?
K. KHAN: Well, look – look at its condition.
MATTHEWS: It’s all marked up.
K. KHAN: It’s marked up because I read it. And this 14th Amendment, equal
protection of law, is my favorite part of the Bill of Rights.MATTHEWS: That means that your children…
K. KHAN: Exactly.
MATTHEWS: … get all the rights of somebody who`s been here 20
generations.K. KHAN: Exactly. And I did not realize up until I was in the cab to the convention that I had this in my pocket. We talked – I was to say that when you read the Constitution, look for the word liberty and equal protection of law. So I`m putting my coat on, and I touched this, and here it is. So I said, If I pull it like this, it will be this. So I had to place it in this form so when I pull it, it comes like this. We practiced.
MATTHEWS: You`re like Justice Kennedy because Justice Kennedy, Anthony Kennedy, who Ronald Reagan appointed, is the swing vote, you know, and he uses the liberty clause and the equal protection clause for all of his recent big decisions.
But the hype is more about Khan’s use as a political pawn than his actual qualifications.
A résumé posted on his website (removed from the Internet last week) lists court admission and bar membership for New York state only.
A spokeswoman for the New York State Office of Court Administration in Albany, N.Y., said that Khan was admitted to the New York bar on June 22, 2010, which means he became eligible to practice law just six years ago — at the age of 60. He is not listed as a member of any other state bar.
No citations appear in court databases for Khan as attorney of record, based on a search of federal and state court filings through PACER and Lexis.
Nor does Khan appear to have published academic papers or law journal articles about constitutional law. In contrast, Khan’s academic papers touting Sharia law have been cited in dozens of Islamic law articles and have been used in college syllabi for Islamic law courses as recently as 2013.
Sharia law, the barbaric legal code enforced by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the former Taliban government of Afghanistan, is at odds with most of the individual freedoms and rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Other media outlets, such as the Washington Post, have been keen to point out that Khan is a “a Harvard-trained lawyer.”
While Khan did graduate from Harvard in 1986, he did not obtain a typical law degree, but instead earned an LL. M. — a one-year international program tailored to foreign students. He has a similar degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The LL. M. coursework is separate from the three-year law program required to earn a Juris Doctor, or J.D., which is the formal law degree that most licensed attorneys obtain.
“It is most often pursued by students who obtained a law degree in another country,” explained Harvard Law School spokeswoman Michelle Deakin in an interview.
In fact, 97% of students enrolled in the graduate program that accepted Khan are foreign nationals.
Like others applying to the program, Khan submitted a law degree from another country — Pakistan. He received his basic training at the University Law College of Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan. The LL.B., or “bachelor of laws,” which Khan earned there is a two-year program no longer offered in the United States.
Furthermore, University Law College is a small college where courses are taught by professors trained in British as well as Sharia law, the brutally oppressive Islamic legal code that Khan, a devout Muslim, has said supersedes “all other juridical works.” In fact, Khan is a world-renowned expert on Sharia, not the Constitution.
Khan’s alma mater is run by vice chancellor Mujahid Kamran, an anti-Semitic 9/11 denier who in 2013 published a book that blames the Saudi-sponsored 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida on “Zionists,” and trashes the U.S. as a complete dictatorship. His book, 9/11 and the New World Order, was published by the University of Punjab.
In September 2012, Karmran posted on his website excerpts from his forthcoming book, claiming: “Currently 95% of the U.S. media is owned by only six corporations, whose top echelons are dominated by Zionists allied with the banking cabal. With the US military and intelligence apparatus in their control, with their ownership of the media, and with their control of academia, it is easy for them to direct assassinations and false flag operations, such as the murder of JFK and 9/11.”
Added Kamran: “9/11 was an inside job. It was not carried out by Osama Bin Laden or the al Qaeda.”
In September 2013, while promoting his 9/11 book on campus, Kamran was quoted in the Pakistani press saying “that the cabal [of Zionists] wanted to establish a global government and install microchips in every human being in order to control them.” He also claimed “that Nato airplanes had flown the families of Al Qaeda leaders including Aiman Al Zawahri and some members of the Bin Laden family to Central Asia to destabilise the region,” and “that Nato was sponsoring terrorist and suicide attacks in Pakistan.”
The media have also implied that Khan practiced law while working at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson in Washington. Instead, he managed information technology services, or IT, for litigators during his 1998-2007 employment at the Hogan & Hartson firm (now Hogan Lovells), a predominantly Democrat shop with ties to the Clinton Foundation. His job apparently involved pre-wiring the projectors, monitors and laptops, and video conferencing equipment for lawyers making graphic presentations in court. He also helped lawyers search and managed electronically stored records.
After leaving Hogan & Hartson, Khan opened what he described on his business website as a “law office” in New York to, among other things, represent clients seeking E2 and EB5 immigration visas — a practice that Trump’s proposed moratorium on Muslim immigration would throw into jeopardy.
Khan and his wife lost their son when his Iraq post came under attack in 2004. U.S. Army Capt. Humayan Khan was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Democrats are now actively recruiting Khan to run for political office and appear in Clinton campaign ads attacking Trump and his policies. They hope to exploit the media-manufactured narrative that it took a Muslim immigrant-turned-“Harvard-trained lawyer” to school Donald Trump on the U.S. Constitution and put him in his place.
Khan did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment.
Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.
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