An alt-lawyer for the alt-right

The Washington Post profiles the eccentric Elmer Woodard, a Virginia lawyer who  represents the most deplorable of deplorables:

Woodard, 57, lives about two hours south of Charlottesville, in the tiny town of Blairs, Va., where he has his own law practice, according to public records. His email address, a nod to his past when he filed lawsuits against used-car dealerships, begins with “isuecrooks.”

When he has a case in Charlottesville, he is easy to spot. A driver drops him off in front of the courthouse. Dressed some days in a beige or light-blue seersucker suit, Woodard always dons his signature straw boater hat, encircled with a navy and red ribbon. Most of the time, as he walks past the gantlet of local reporters, he’ll tip his hat and wave a courtly hello. But the press-averse attorney rarely stops for interviews, usually shuffling straight into the courthouse with his cane and black Velcro-strap shoes.

But on his way out of a hearing in May, Woodard agreed to field a few questions from a Washington Post reporter. Asked numerous times whether he regarded himself as a white supremacist, ­Woodard repeatedly said: “I consider myself an attorney.”

Pressed to elaborate, Woodard said: “Just because I represent a pervert doesn’t mean I support perversion. I represent murderers, drug dealers and perverts. Miraculously, I’m not one of them. If you know any, send them my way — only the rich ones.”

Even neo-Nazi scumbags are entitled to legal representation, and as a sole practitioner myself, I can’t really blame Woodard for finding his niche and exploiting it.  Gotta keep the lights on (and straw boater hats on the rack), after all.

But if it makes you feel better, he kind of sucks at his job:

Although prosecutors didn’t raise during the trial Goodwin’s public denial of the Holocaust or his alliance with an Arkansas white nationalist group, ­Woodard made race an issue during his closing arguments. “They want you to convict this man because he’s white, and DeAndre is a black man,” Woodard declared to the jury, which included two African Americans.