When the first thing someone tells you about themselves is false, what follows should surprise no one.

Francesca Albanese—the now-sanctioned current United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories—introduces herself to the world with a conspicuous, self-conferred credential: “Int’l Lawyer.”

It’s the very first line of her X (formerly Twitter) bio.

It appears in her official UN résumé.

It’s emblazoned on her Georgetown University profile, where she’s still described as “an international lawyer and researcher.”

Albanese’s purported expertise in international law underpins every press appearance, UN report, legal opinion, and diplomatic accusation she delivers.

It confers legitimacy, cloaks her claims in legal gravitas, and gives her ideological warfare the appearance of lawful judgment.

It’s not true. And she knows it.

She’s been called out before—but the title remains on her public-facing bios. Not walked back. Not quietly amended. Still there, bold as ever.

In fact, she’s doubled down.

I previously wrote about Albanese following her unprecedented sanction by the U.S. State Department—an action taken under Executive Order 14203 and announced this week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Citing her “illegitimate and shameful efforts” to prompt International Criminal Court prosecutions against American and Israeli officials, Rubio accused Albanese of spewing “unabashed antisemitism,” endorsing terrorism, and displaying “open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”

Her recent UN report read less like a human rights brief than a political hit list—targeting Amazon, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and others as complicit in genocide, laundering propaganda from Hamas and Iran, and pressuring multinational corporations to cut ties with Israel or face prosecution of their executives.

The sanctions marked the first time a sitting UN rapporteur was formally barred from U.S. territory, including the UN’s headquarters in New York.

The progressive left and legacy media have rushed to cast this action as a sinister attempt to silence dissent. Naturally, they’re glossing over—or outright ignoring—Albanese’s track record of disinformation, radicalization, and the ideological laundering that defines her campaign against Israel and the United States.

Despite her repeated public claims, Albanese is no lawyer in any meaningful sense of the word—let alone an “international lawyer,” a title that suggests licensure across multiple jurisdictions. There is no global bar association. No international licensing body. The term is a fiction—unless you’re licensed to practice law somewhere.

Francesca Albanese is not.

She is not an attorney in Italy. Not in the United States. Not anywhere. She has never passed a bar exam, never held a law license. Never been admitted to practice in any jurisdiction.

And this controversy isn’t new.

In July 2024, she gave the game away. In an interview with Vanity Fair Italia, Albanese confessed:

I didn’t take the exam to become a lawyer, because I’m not a lawyer, and I never wanted to do it.

One might expect that admission to trigger some modest cleanup—perhaps a quiet revision of her online profiles, a retraction of the misleading title. But no.

She left the falsehood in place. And in doing so, doubled down on the deception.

For years, Albanese publicly claimed to be exactly what she now admits she is not.

She introduced herself in legal forums and human rights panels as a “human rights lawyer.” Her UN application described her as a lawyer “by training and call.” In one especially revealing moment, she even declared:

As a lawyer, I am obliged to be precise and scientific.

Apparently, that obligation didn’t extend to her professional credentials.

And as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories—where one’s authority is used to accuse nations of genocide, press for ICC indictments, and call for global sanctions against American companies—presenting oneself as an “international lawyer” with elevated legal expertise is anything but a harmless exaggeration. 

It’s a distinction that matters.

As UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer put it:

Albanese has now admitted she never took a bar exam. Yet for years, she publicly referred to herself as an ‘international lawyer,’ a title that implies license and authority to practice law. In most jurisdictions, including Italy, calling yourself a lawyer without bar admission is misleading at best—and unlawful at worst.

Georgetown University, which continues to host her institutional biography under the “international lawyer” banner, may wish to revisit how its vetting process allowed an unlicensed claimant to use its name as a form of professional whitewash.

And the United Nations, which gave Albanese the global megaphone of legal legitimacy, must answer the obvious: Did no one verify her credentials?

Or did they know—and simply not care?

Setting aside the considerable issues with Albanese’s credentials and integrity, she has proven her fealty to the Hamas-aligned, anti-Israel, anti-American, and anti-Western narrative—using her perch and supposed legal cachet as a cudgel to batter anyone who fails to embrace her agenda. And that ideological zealotry extends to her most recent professional actions.

Her final report to the UN—From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide—accuses Israel of weaponized starvation, environmental warfare, and “settler-colonial capitalism.”

She demanded that U.S. corporate executives be prosecuted for war crimes. She separately urged countries to deny airspace to Israeli leaders targeted by the International Criminal Court. She even named Amazon, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir as corporate accomplices to genocide.

This wasn’t international law. It was political theater of the highest order—staged atop a false credential.

And when cornered, her defense was as brazen as it was revealing: “I never lie.”

Seriously.

That may be the most damning statement of all. Does she genuinely believe she didn’t mislead anyone—not in this instance, not ever? The sanctimony is staggering. It doesn’t just obscure the deception; it amplifies it.

A reasonable person could conclude that, given the issues surrounding Albanese’s biography, her credibility and reporting are fundamentally compromised. Yet time and again, the media has glossed over—or ignored altogether—her professional misrepresentations.

In that sense, Albanese is a symbol of something larger: the global elite’s casual disregard for truth. Credentials become constructs. Titles are ornamental. Integrity is optional. Everything is a performance on the world stage.

Truth? Just another colonialist contrivance.

Except—it isn’t.

So, what do you conclude when the first thing someone tells you is false?

When they insist they “never lie”—even while admitting they misrepresented themselves—what could they possibly say that you’d believe?

In Albanese’s case: nothing.

Not her qualifications.

Not her judgment.

Not her truth.

Francesca Albanese continues to mislead on a global scale—and has forfeited any claim to authority in international legal affairs.

That’s how the curtain should fall on her career.

It won’t.

And that tells you everything you need to know about her mission—and her minders at the soi-disant United Nations Human Rights Council.

Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. His commentary has been featured in American Thinker and linked across multiple RealClear platforms, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearWorld, RealClearDefense, RealClearHistory, and RealClearPolicy. X: @CharltonAllenNC

Image: Esquerda.net, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.