According to ABC News, President Trump's personal attorney, John Dowd, forwarded a racially controversial email to friends and government officials that suggested Confederate general Robert E. Lee “is no different than” President George Washington.

The email also argued that the BLM movement has been “infiltrated by terrorist groups.”

What is most shocking about this email is that it was actually not authored by Dowd, but by a black man named Jerome Almon.

Almon claimed that he is not a sympathizer of the Confederacy, but that he believes Lee was not necessarily as bad as people think. He even gives Lee credit for saving the country.

Rather than telling troops to never surrender and to engage in a guerrilla vigilante campaign, Almon argues in the email, Lee "ordered the commander to tell his troops to go home, plant crops, and rebuild.”

Almon then goes on to say, "Protesters need to heed General Lee’s advice and go back to the ghettos and do raise their children.”

Say what now?

In the email, Almon continues to praise Lee while taking shots at Black Lives Matter, and mirroring President Trump's language says, “You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington, there literally is no difference between the two men."

So what do we know about Almon?

ABC News reports that he is a conspiracy theorist and a supporter of Trump's policies who firmly believes that BLM is "just as racist as the KKK."

All of this comes after President Trump refused to condemn all Unite the Right attendees, and after another of Trump's lawyers, Michael Cohen, made an attempt to prove that he is not racist by posting pictures of himself next to black people on Twitter.

Though Almon wrote the email, Dowd is taking fire for forwarding it, and is now reportedly receiving "hate calls."

A spokesperson for Dowd stressed that the lawyer was not endorsing the material contained in the email, stating that all Dowd did was share it.

Although Dowd has distanced himself from the email, Almon is taking the opposite tack, telling ABC that he is glad that the contents of the missive are "getting out."

John Dowd

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