Stanford prof who mocked Barron Trump during impeachment trial joins Biden admin

Pamela Karlan, a Stanford University Law School professor who was widely criticized in 2019 for invoking the name of Barron Trump during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, will become a deputy litigator in the civil rights division of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, according to multiple reports.

Karlan made headlines in 2019 when, during her congressional testimony, she said, “The constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a Baron.” The remark earned Karlan a pair of scathing responses from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and First Lady Melania Trump. 

“Pamela Karlan thought she was being clever and going for laughs,” said Ms. McEnany in December 2019, “but she instead reinforced for all Americans that Democrats have no boundaries when it comes to their hatred of everything President Trump.”  

Melania Trump, who was not known for entering the fray of public debates about her family, responded to Karlan on social media, tweeting, “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be very ashamed of your very obviously biased public pandering and using a child to do it.” 

[RELATED: Karlan claimed Trump showed ‘defiance’ of Constitution before he was president]

Former President Donald Trump was the focus of Karlan’s criticism before she commented on Barron, who is his youngest son and only child with Melania Trump. 

In December 2016, Karlan signed a letter to then President-elect Trump, stating “great concern about [his] commitment to the constitutional system.” And in an interview with BBC in December 2017, she said Trump behaves “extraordinarily badly.”

Karlan’s comment placed her in a group of public figures who entangled Barron Trump in the contentious politics of the Trump era. Actor Peter Fonda joined its ranks in 2018 when he tweeted, “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.” And after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Rosie O’Donnell tweeted, “[is] Barron Trump Autistic?’”

Karlan did apologize for her 2019 statement, saying, “It was wrong of me to do that. I wish the president would apologize, obviously, for the things that he has done that’s wrong, but I do regret having said that.” 

The appointment of Pamela Karlan to a post in the Biden administration marks her return to public service since her previous tenure as a deputy litigator in the civil rights division of the Obama administration. 

In 2019, The New York Times described her as a “legal leader committed to progressive causes,” citing her contributions to cases like Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and Obergefell v. Hodges. She is, it continued, “a favorite of the left.”

In July 2019, Karlan donated $1,000 to Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. 

Follow the author of this article: Dion Pierre