White House Attorney Wasn’t Admitted to the Bar Until a Year After His Firm Said He Was Representing Andrew Tate

AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru

Paul Ingrassia, an attorney currently working as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, has drawn controversy over the years for his outspoken views, but may find himself in trouble now over comments that probably seemed mundane at the time but represent a chronological gap that state bar associations take extremely seriously.

It’s not hard to find information about Ingrassia’s past incendiary commentary, including supporting Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, urging President Donald Trump to “declare martial law” after losing the 2020 election in order to illegally stay in power, and pushing an unsupported birther attack claiming Nikki Haley was constitutionally ineligible to be president. He’s also praised Andrew Tate as an “extraordinary human being,” even though Tate and his brother Tristan Tate are facing criminal indictments in Romania and the U.K. and lawsuits filed by British women accusing Andrew Tate of rape and severe abuse. Regardless of how the criminal cases ultimately are resolved, both Tate brothers have repeatedly bragged on video about abusing and demeaning women, including some who were underage.

Ingrassia’s advocacy for the Tates was not limited to just laudatory tweets and blog posts; he worked for a law firm that represented the brothers regarding a civil litigation matter in Florida. That law firm, the McBride Law Firm PLLC, sent out a press release on July 12, 2023 (archived version here) that touted Ingrassia as “a graduate of Cornell Law School and an Associate Attorney at the McBride Law Firm, PLLC” and bragged about his work helping “facilitate” the Tate brothers’ interview with Tucker Carlson.

The problem, as reported by the Daily Dot’s Amanda Moore, is that Ingrassia was not yet admitted to the New York State Bar. He would not even sit for the New York Bar Exam for almost two more weeks after that press release and was not admitted to the bar until more than a year later.

The specific relevant dates here, according to Moore’s reporting, are Ingrassia graduating from Cornell Law School in Spring 2022, taking the New York bar exam on July 25 to July 26, 2023, getting his results in October 2023, and being sworn into the New York bar on July 30, 2024.

The firm’s named partner, Joseph McBride, also mentioned Ingrassia’s work as a “McBride Law Associate Attorney” in a June 28, 2023 tweet (archived here). Ingrassia himself repeatedly referred to himself as an attorney before he legally was one, according to the Daily Dot, with a May 16, 2023 Substack post calling himself “an Associate Attorney at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC” and a later July 2023 post describing himself as an “associate” of the firm.

This is not the sort of thing state bar associations take lightly. When I was in law school at the University of Florida College of Law and then later studying for the Florida Bar after graduation, it was drilled into us that we absolutely forbidden to call ourselves lawyers or attorneys or other equivalent terms until we had passed the bar’s background check, passed all parts of the Florida bar exam, and taken the oath of attorney. Any violation of this prohibition could result in both ethical sanctions from the Florida Bar and criminal penalties as well.

New York approaches the issue of UPL, or unauthorized practice of law, with a similar attitude, deeming it to be both a violation of bar rules and a crime that could be a misdemeanor up to a Class E felony. Moore interviewed several New York attorneys about the seriousness of UPL in that state:

“I actually had an attorney give me a stern warning because I received business cards with ‘Esq.’ after my name the literal day before I was admitted,” one New York employment lawyer said.

The action was “probably unlawful, probably unethical, and during that year they may have engaged in UPL [unauthorized practice of law],” said another senior New York barred attorney who lectures and practices on legal ethics.

This misrepresentation, they said, “could result in a penalty or sanction” from the state bar’s Committee on Character & Fitness.