Rep. Espaillat Files Complaint Against Lawyer Who Unleashed Racially Charged Rant
Man in video identified as 42-year-old Aaron Schlossberg
New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat filed an official grievance through the state court system against a man who was filmed this week going on a racially charged rant in a Midtown Manhattan lunch market.
The video, in which the man berates two workers at the market for speaking Spanish and taking his money through the “welfare” system before threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to deport them, has since gone viral.
“What was witnessed in the vile video … is a humiliating and insulting attack on the more than 50 years of progress that this nation has made since the Civil Rights movement,” Espaillat and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. wrote to the New York court system’s attorney grievance committee.
The committee reviews and investigates complaints and can issue penalties. Depending on the outcome of the review, Schlossberg could be disbarred or have his license to practice law suspended.
“The audacity to profile and verbally assault innocent bystanders and customers in a public commercial location is a violation of our civil society,” Espaillat and Diaz wrote. “We watched [the] video and we were disgusted.”
The man has been identified in media reports as 42-year-old lawyer Aaron Schlossberg. Schlossberg’s law firm has been booted from its office space on Madison Avenue.
“His actions are just not consistent with our community and rules and regulations,” Corporate Suites President Hayim Grant told The New York Post. “It’s totally contrary to everything we believe in as a company and personally.”
Schlossberg has a history of confronting strangers in public and questioning their nationality.
Willie Morris, 34, posted a video on Youtube in October 2016 that appears to show Schlossberg calling him an “ugly f—ing foreigner” on a sidewalk in New York.
Morris is from Massachusetts.
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