Rightwing superlawyer Larry Klayman, who once failed spectacularly at suing Yr Wonkette for libelslander and whom we have judicial permission to describe with “vigorous epithets” such as “batshit,” a “grifter,” and a “bigot,” got his ass disbarred by the US Supreme Court Monday. The Court declined to opine on whether Klayman’s ass is “like a pile of muscle,” as that power is reserved to the Executive Branch.
The Court also didn’t specify what particular offense might have earned Klayman his disbarment, just that he had previously been suspended from practicing law or (whatever it is he does) before the Court in June. He was required to “show cause why he should not be disbarred” and submitted a response. Wouldn’t you love to see that document? Here’s the entire two-paragraph order:
We were amused that the two-paragraph ruling on Klayman was tacked on at the end of a 14-page laundry list of procedural rulings by the Court — mostly refusals to grant certiorari in scores of cases. Poor Larry didn’t even get his very own document. We are not a lawyer, but isn’t this kind of like having your disbarment sandwiched between a shoplifting case and a possession of drug paraphernalia case in night court?
The disbarment means Klayman can’t do law-talking stuff before the Supreme Court but apparently doesn’t outright revoke his law license everywhere. Other jurisdictions make their own determinations, and as we understand it, if you fuck up badly enough for the Supremes to kick you out, said fuckup may lead to additional disbarments.
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This is just the latest legal setback for Klayman, who in recent years has balanced his practice of filing annoyance lawsuits with losing a string of disciplinary actions. Just about a year ago, the batshit crazy conspiracymonger had his law license suspended by the Florida Supreme Court for two years. That decision cited his earlier 18-month suspension in 2022 by the DC Court of Appeals for his conflict of interest in representing a woman for whom he had the hots but who didn’t love him back. The Florida SCOTUS wrote that the record in that case “includes writings from Klayman in which he expressed to Sataki that his emotions had rendered him nonfunctional as a lawyer.”
Which was one of the things he unsuccessfully sued yr Wonkette for — Wonkette cheated by reading all 185 pages including the footnotes of his harrowing DC Bar disciplinary report, and then writing about what it said, like that he told his poor client that he loved her too much and couldn’t stand to see her with anyone else and then chased her into a hotel lobby women’s room — which was some bullshit and we won!
Then again, we aren’t sure how his bonermooning over his client rendered him more nonfunctional as a lawyer than any of the other times he was terrible at lawyering. (This statement is constitutionally protected rhetorical hyperbole, we must point out.)
A few months before the Florida suspension, in August 2025 Klayman was slapped with a separate 18-month suspension by the DC Court of Appeals for his attempt to represent high plains grifter Cliven Bundy in a criminal case related to Bundy’s 2014 armed standoff with federal officers. That time, he was dinged, or dung, for not being entirely candid with a federal court about his prior disciplinary history, but he had a good reason for that, because those findings were totally biased against him, just like nearly every other judge or court official who has ruled against him.
Which reminds me that the first time I ever heard of Larry Klayman was in 2013, when I was still a bright-eyed freelancer at Wonkette and Klayman objected in a libel lawsuit that several outlets had acted maliciously against him by failing to point out that the judge in his divorce case was Jewish, and therefore biased against Klayman for being Jewish but also believing in the divinity of Jebus.
We wonder if Klayman will be mad that several of the US Supremes are Catholics, and therefore biased against Christians who are also Jewish?
Klayman made the virtual pages of Wonkette more times than we can count, for legal misadventures ranging from subpoenaing Bill Clinton’s weenus; to trying to sue Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Al Sharpton, the Black Panthers, and others for starting a “race war”; to calling for all the “evil forces of the left” to be “thrown in prison” for opposing Donald Trump; and even putting together a “citizens’ jury” that indicted Barack Obama for not really being president, because birth certificate. (Obama didn’t surrender himself to be arrested.)
Yr Wonkette finally ended up in Klayman’s sue-errebody sights in 2020, when he accused us of libelslander for all sorts of mean things we said, like saying he seemed like a big racist white supremacist, and even worse, calling him a bad lawyer and saying “THIS GUY IS FUCKING BATSHIT” among other defamatory mean things. Oh, and he also accused us of having an “insidious business model” that consists of perpetrating “actual malice in defaming people with whom Rebecca Schoenkopf has a political difference of opinion for ‘fun and profit.’”
Yeah, his dumb lawsuit got tossed out because in America, people can make jokes and do opinion, even when it’s rude. Let us once more quote our favorite paragraph in the decision:
Here, the Court finds that statements made by the Defendants are pure opinion, based on facts set forth in the article or otherwise known to the public, that were conveyed in a tone and manner that is clearly rhetorical hyperbole. Defendants' insinuation that sexual harassment is a “favorite hobby” of Plaintiff, or that he sued all members of a race and subpoenaed a former president's genitals, are obvious exaggerations intended for comedic effect. No reasonable reader would believe these statements factually true within the context of both the article and Wonkette as a publication. Defendants' references to Plaintiff as “Batshit”, a “grifter” and a “bigot”, are the types of “vigorous epithets” the Supreme Court characterizes as rhetorical hyperbole. Greenbelt Co-op. Pub. Ass'n v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6, 14 (1970). See also Raible v. Newsweek, Inc. 341 F. Supp. 804, 806-07 (W.D. Pa. 1972) (“To call a person a bigot or other appropriate name descriptive of his political, racial, religious, economic, or sociological philosophies gives no rise to an action for libel”)[.]
Yup, that’s our emphasis again.
In conclusion, Larry Klayman is very bad at his job, and at this rate we won’t be surprised if the schmuck is eventually disbarred even from playing the American adaptation of the 2001 videogame Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
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ALSO TOO: Yr Fall Wonkette Book Club has just one more meeting to go, but it’s not too late to hop in! We’re reading Bill McKibben’s 2025 bestseller Here Comes the Sun (Wonkette affiliate link), all about how the clean energy revolution can get us out of our climate fix and even improve society somewhat (if we do it fast and do it right.)
After a great first meeting and a superlative second outing, we’ll wrap up this coming Sunday (November 15) by reading Section Three, “Let’s Do This!”
On top of the usual discussion in the comments, we’ll also hold a live video book chat so you can Zoom with Doktor Zoom. If you’d like to take part, email me at doktorzoom at wonkette dot com with subject line “book chat,” and include a discussion question about the book and/or clean energy. More here!
Harry says you can put the treats right here.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-383718276?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
Jr has a boyfriend. I’m so happy for him. College isn’t just linear algebra and molecular biology, it’s having first real intimate relationships.