Ripe For The Picking: Exposing A Fascist Through The Bar Exam Process

It’s now October and that means successful bar-taker results are being released. These folks have to undergo character, fitness, morals, and other background checks. This is a super opportunity not to miss now or when winter exam test results are released in April. Best of all, this happens every year! Meet Samson Racioppi

SALISBURY AND BOSTON, MA — Most aspiring U.S. lawyers take the bar exam and learn about their July test result by or around Halloween, or their February result around the time annual income taxes are due. Successful applicant names are published as public information by each state’s bar examiners, and a process of exam applicants’ background check review usually begins soon after that. Samson P. Racioppi, of Salisbury, Massachusetts, which is northeast of Boston, is one of those people and he recently announced that he passed the Massachusetts summer 2022 exam. He graduated New England Law School, a private institution generally ranked in the bottom fifth of all ABA-accredited law schools nationally, and 10th out of the 11 law school in the New England region. 

Racioppi is also a noted and remarked-on right wing figure who has organized for Resist Marxism which eventually became Super Happy Fun America, a hate group that attempts to launder their actual ideological thinking and orientation,  and publicly issued violent statements against others.

In the past, Racioppi has been voted down by a marijuana advocacy group’s board and resigned, worked and organized with groups that have included Neo-Nazis and/or other untoward figures and unsuccessfully ran for state legislative office (after a failed congressional effort). And despite all reasonable and court litigated evidence to the contrary, he stated the belief that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and bused people to Washington, D.C.  for what ultimately became the collective violence of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, something he said was “incredible”. He even took lots of front-line photos while in restricted space on the upper levels of the U.S. Capitol.

Now in his 40s and a parent of at least one small child – his marriage status is currently unknown – Racioppi is also former military, having served in the U.S. Army from 2005 to 2008. He also serves on the Salisbury Housing Authority as a board member.

In the typical bar applicant case (e.g., California, New York, almost all of the items above and more will have to be disclosed, or can be examined as part of the review process. The Massachusetts Bar Exam is a bit different with its rather streamlined-appearing application materials and over $800 court petition for admission when timely filed, but this is basically a universal rule involving all bar admission candidates. 

Racioppi, among other things, has to consent to an investigation of his “moral character, professional reputation, and fitness of the practice of law” as part of this process. Further, Racioppi also authorizes “every person” having “any other pertinent data to provide them to the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners.”  These items are not necessarily exclusive, there are also bar examiner policy rules, and relevant court case decisions on these matters. 

Anti-Fascist and activist examining of Fash and Far Right successful bar applicants can thus be an important tool in “deplatforming” on a profound, costly, employment, personal, and legal, level. This examining can be done not only through open source intelligence efforts but also propriety databases such as Lexis-Nexis (which among others, is frequently available to undergrad and grad students via libraries, and directly available to law students, and briefly, law graduates), and the marginal for-fee federal court database, PACER. 

For example, Racioppi’s legislative campaigns could be investigated to see what he spent campaign money on (if any, he was most recently a write-in) and see how he managed it, i.e., was he responsible and frugal, or was he outlandish? 

Another example is Racioppi’s Boston-based federal lawsuit following the Charlottesville Unite The Right demonstration in 2017. Here, in claiming civil and constitutional rights violations over a planned speaking engagement at Boston Common, he not only lost, he blundered along the way and had his head handed to him as if he were a pre-law student. Accordingly he will have to answer for this as part of his Bar Admission process. He’s been a court litigant. Racioppi will also have to answer for a Maine criminal event where he was indicted by a grand jury (i.e. felony territory) for a two-count reckless conduct charge involving a weapon. The court ultimately sentenced him to 72 days in jail, a $500 fine, and likely, other costs. 

But with all that said and with all these informational examples, when bar applicants like him and his related ilk are reviewed with a keen and carefully considered eye towards the process rules and requirements such as the above; when facts are logically and persuasively applied to those rules and requirements; and when such information is synthesized and contextualized for a bar examiner reviewer to receive, appreciate and understand, that can be a powerful argument with lasting procedural and adjudicative impact in the interests of justice, and also, the public interest. 

This is something that Anti-Fascists, activists, and others can do as the current and ever-growing Racioppi example shows us. Moreover, such action (and even more related conduct in this vein) is completely portable and can be applied to other individuals whether or not in different states. That’s the beauty of this.