Before sentencing him to 13 months in prison, a judge in New York excoriated the founder of Students of Trump as a “cold-blooded fraudster” for impersonating a lawyer.

According to The New York Daily News, the group’s founder, John Lambert, pretended to be Eric Pope of Pope & Dunn, a law firm based in Manhattan. Lambert falsely claimed he graduated from New York University Law School with a finance degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed 15 years of experience in corporate and patent law. Of course, since he’s 25 that would mean he started at age 10.

So yes, that’s obviously an untruth.

He’s all baby-faced seeming earnestness, but Lambert, of Tennessee, admitted he ran the swindle from 2016 to 2018, specifically targeting people who didn’t know how to seek legal advice. Victims sought his advice on Upwork, a freelancing website. Indeed, his little scam paid handsomely. He earned at least $46,654 for dispensing legal advice he was unqualified to give out.

Judge Valerie Caproni lambasted him as ” a cold-blooded fraudster who cared not a whit about the victims of his fraud.”

Seems to me like he isn’t all that different than his idol, Donald Trump, who as president, demonstrated little concern for the 400,000 Americans who died of COVID while he was in office. The CDC reports that nearly 580,000 Americans have died of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic and one can surmise Trump’s mishandling of this worldwide crisis spurred this along.

Judge Caproni noted that one of Lambert’s victims had sought him out for help with a credit problem.

“Mr. Lambert took his money and did nothing,” she said. “Mr. Lambert did not even have the common decency to make up an excuse and tell the victim to hire another attorney.”

The victim, whose name was redacted from public court filings, wrote that Lambert seldom responded unless there was a payment processing problem. But that’s not all. The man noted Lambert became enraged if questioned about his legal “work.”

“(Lambert) told me that I was insane for ever questioning him and that I should be ashamed of myself for questioning my integrity. He berated me on the phone and told me that I was irrational for ever questioning such an esteemed attorney from New York and started demanding that I send him a huge amount of money or that he would not do any more work for me,” the victim wrote. “In truth, he had never done one bit of work for me.”

Students for Trump was co-founded by Lambert and classmate Ryan Fournier in 2015, and rose to prominence during the 2016 presidential election. The group’s Twitter account became notable for posting photos of bikini-clad women and pictures of group members at political events.

The investigation was spurred by a separate probe of Centra Tech, a Miami-based cryptocurrency firm that allegedly scammed investors, said assistant U.S. Assistant Attorney Ben Schrier. Lambert popped up on the radar after emails from the lawyer, Eric Pope, whom prosecutors realized was non-existent.

As expected, Lambert is making excuses.

“I lost focus on who I was,” he said in Manhattan Federal Court. “My ignorance was a disrespect to the law and my country, My life will be forever marked by this poor choice at a young age.”

Caproni was not swayed by this; his failure to start paying back his victims wasn’t lost on her. Fournier, his co-conspirator in the fraud has been cooperating with prosecutors, according to the hearing.

Defense attorney Gary Peters claimed Lambert was influenced by the legal drama “Suits,” in which paralegals get ahead by pretending to be lawyers, adding that Lambert “naively” hoped to gain experience by posing as an attorney.

The judge, however, was able to see this as it really was.

“You cannot foist this off on being led astray by your co-defendant,” Caproni said. Referencing Lambert’s numerous media appearances and the founding of the group that became a fixture on scores of campuses, she added “Those are the actions of a leader, not a follower.”

Indeed.