By Lanny Davis – 5/6/22

Here are two questions that Senate and House Democratic campaign committees should demand — through well-financed national and state ad campaigns, on broadcast network, cable news channels and social media — that Republicans answer, yes or no: 

1. Will you repudiate publicly Donald Trump’s praise of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? 

2. Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision allowing states to make it a crime for a woman to have an abortion if they become pregnant as a result of rape or incest? 

Just “yes” or “no” to both. 

The exact wording of these questions is key. Democrats should simply state the indisputably truthful facts (Trump did praise Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “savvy”) and the content of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft Supreme Court decision (it would allow states to ban all abortions, even from the moment of conception and including after rape or incest). 

Most important is the wording of national, state and local ad campaigns. The ads must state these truthful words on what Trump and Justice Alito said and must require a yes-or-no answer. It should be the media’s responsibility to do the same, but so far they haven’t done so. 

I have seen most interviews on mainstream media — including CNN, MSNBC and Fox — in which a politician will not give a “yes” or “no” answer and the reporter does not follow up to ensure that the viewer understands that the politician is refusing to answer. 

One example of this was what happened when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) held a press conference after the Alito draft decision was leaked. He was asked about his reaction to the substance of the decision, and he immediately changed the subject to wanting to talk about the “leak” of that decision. I did not hear a single reporter interrupt him to insist that he please answer the question and stop changing the subject. 

Nor did a single reporter ask McConnell, flat out, “Do you support allowing states to prohibit women from having abortions after they became pregnant due to rape or incest, which is what the Alito opinion specifically would allow states to do — yes or no?” 

Why didn’t the assembled media do this? I am talking about liberal-oriented media as well as conservative. There were a lot of reporters in that press gaggle, many whom I know and respect — but why didn’t they? 

More important, why haven’t the Democrats’ Senate and House campaign committees already gotten on the air with national and local and social media ads that ask these two questions? Why are we Democrats always too little too late on messaging, as compared to the GOP, which sets the national message early and often? 

I hope the response to this column is that readers who disagree with Trump’s support of Putin, as well as the Republican Party’s support for allowing state legislatures to declare abortion illegal — indeed, in many states, to make it a crime to have an abortion immediately after conception by defining the fertilized egg within a second of fertilization as a “person” — will immediately demand better public messages from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and from the Senate and House campaign committees. 

Why not start ad campaigns on these two issues and not stop until all Republicans running in 2022 for Senate and House seats are forced to answer, yes-or-no, to the two questions — or are continually embarrassed on local and national TV for refusing to answer the question and trying to change the subject.

Most U.S. polling, whether by conservative or liberal pollsters, has shown that more than 70 percent of all voters across the parties are opposed to Trump’s support for Putin and opposed to Alito’s and the national GOP’s willingness to allow state prohibition of abortions after rape and incest. 

The continued silence and the absence of a national message by the DNC and the Democrats’ Senate and House campaign committees are an enigma. I hope this column stirs them to change and to take the lead, and to insist on simple, direct answers to these two questions. 

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # #

Lanny Davis served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton in 1996-98 and on a privacy and civil liberties panel post-9/11 which advised President George W. Bush. He is a co-founder of the Washington law firm Davis Goldberg Galper PLLC, specializing in crisis management in support of litigation and other legal issues.

The post Democrats can win the 2022 midterms by asking Republicans to answer two questions first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on Democrats can win the 2022 midterms by asking Republicans to answer two questions

By Lanny Davis – 1/13/22

Note to reader:

In case you haven’t noticed I have suspended for the last year my regular column in “The Hill” (going back more than a dozen years) while I am writing my autobiography aimed primarily at an audience called “Family” — my wife of 37 years and my four children and six grandchildren. My book will recount my early years that shaped my political views — encountering during seven years in the 1960s at Yale two future successive presidents of the U.S., three U.S. senators, two secretaries of State, and many other future national political and judicial officials whose experiences were shaped in the 1960s.

The key political influence in my life back then — the late, former Rep. Allard Lowenstein (D-N.Y.) (to whom I devote a separate chapter in my draft autobiography) taught me and an entire generation of progressive activists in the 1960s involved in the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements the phrase “pragmatic liberalism.” For Lowenstein, the only way to achieve progressive change is to reach out to the center — and to compromise to get something, rather than nothing, done. That is the core subject of this column — the lessons to be learned from Democratic state Sen. Chloe Maxmin, elected to represent a rural, pro-Trump district of Maine.

All Democrats, especially the House Democratic Progressive Caucus, should read today’s Washington Post column, written by the brilliant progressive writer Katrina vanden Heuvel. The headline: “What a progressive champion from rural Maine can teach Democrats about winning.” There are three important takeaways for Democratic progressives:

First, see vanden Heuvel’s reference to Maine’s state Sen. Chloe Maxmin’s approach to getting a more limited version of the “Clean New Deal”/climate-change bill enacted by the Maine legislature. Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote: “And though the bill was scaled back, it ultimately passed by a large margin.” 

Compare this “scaled back” approach to what I believe, respectfully, is the opposite strategy of House progressives regarding the “Build Back Better” legislation that could have been enacted, along with the infrastructure bill, before the November 2021 elections. The progressives could have gone to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) right away and asked them a simple question: What version of BBB can you vote for? Whatever the answer, progressives could have supported that bill, and gotten it enacted. (Of course, the BBB legislation would still have to be budget-related in order to use reconciliation to pass with 50 votes and avoid the filibuster). Had they used this strategy and gotten BBB passed before November, it is almost certain Democrat Terry McAullife would be the Virginia governor and Joe Biden’s approval ratings would have been much higher then and now. After all, even without passage of BBB, McAullife lost by less than two percent.

Second, on the voting protection rights bill: This legislation is crucial to our democracy to prevent the country from returning to the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow legislation that obstructed African American voters. Many Republican and independent voters agree on the need to override these race-targeted new state laws and prevent partisans to be in charge of counting the vote.

However, Democratic progressives must stop blaming Joe Biden for the failure of this legislation. There is no way that Joe Biden can force — require — Sens. Manchin and Sinema to support a filibuster carve out even just for this voter rights legislation, even if the bill is scaled back to the minimum that both senators would support. Only hard work and persuasion at the grassroots in their home states — West Virginia and Arizona — will do that. The failure of civil rights leaders to appear with President Biden in Georgia this week, including Stacey Abrams, was both counter-productive and disappointing.

And third, read what a rural (probably Trump) voter told the state Senate candidate Maxmin when she walked down a “dirt road leading to a nondescript trailer.” The man who answered the door told her: “You’re the first person to listen to me. Everyone judges what my house looks like. They don’t bother to knock. I’m grateful that you came. I’m going to vote for you.”

To the national Democratic Party/DNC, to the House and Senate Democratic Campaign Committees, to all Democratic officials at the state and local level — especially in Trump/Red State rural areas: Please read these words and put into place the strategy used by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean when he served as DNC chair from 2005-09: A 50-state strategy that did not write off most of the “Red State” country.

Let’s follow the example of Maine’s state Sen. Chloe Maxmin. Let’s ask for her advice. Let’s go to rural voters and show them we care. Let’s talk about the issues they care about. Let’s get over being overly politically correct and show greater sensitivity and a willingness to show up and listen to Trump voters who disagree with us on cultural and social issues — but don’t buy Trump’s Big Lie and his lack of humane values and a moral compass too often when he served as president.

Let’s do it — now, for the future, from now on.

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # #

Lanny Davis is a co-founder of the Washington D.C. law firm Davis Goldberg Galper and crisis management communications firm, “Trident DMG.” He is a former Special Counsel to President Bill Clinton and a privacy and civil liberties advisor to President George W. Bush.

The post To progressive Democrats: Follow the lesson of Maine state Sen. Chloe Maxmin first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on To progressive Democrats: Follow the lesson of Maine state Sen. Chloe Maxmin

By Lanny Davis – 4/2/21

The scene was surreal: It was in the early 1990s, and I was playing the piano in our living room for a room full of people after dinner and dessert.

Standing next to me, singing, was a person whom, in the post-Watergate years of the 1970s and ’80s, I considered to be evil incarnate, a criminal without remorse who committed crimes and dirty tricks to reelect Richard Nixon as president. It was G. Gordon Liddy, who died Tuesday after a long illness at the age of 90. 

I was playing the song, “If I Loved You,” the beautiful ballad from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic 1950s Broadway musical, “Carousel.” Liddy shocked me and everyone in the room with a deep, mellifluous vibrato voice. At the end of the song, my wife joined in and provided harmony for the song’s dramatic ending. The reaction was an immediate standing ovation, all from a bunch of liberal Democrats who not too long before had thought they hated Liddy and what he did for Nixon. 

If anyone had told me 20 years earlier that Gordon Liddy would be in my living room one day, singing “If I Loved You,” with my wife harmonizing and me playing the piano before joining in a standing ovation, I would have been, let us say, dubious. So how did this happen? 

In the late 1980s, I was introduced to Liddy by his tax accountant (also mine) over lunch. Afterward, Liddy invited me to come on his new radio talk show to debate him on the issues. His show had quickly become popular and nationally syndicated, heard by millions. I made weekly appearances for the next 10 years in his Vienna, Va., studio, where we would debate the issues of the day.

I quickly realized the major positive impact our debates had on so many in his national audience. When I traveled on business, cab drivers in cities across the country would hear my voice, turn and say: “Are you Lanny Davis? I love listening to you and Liddy debate on the radio.” 

We always had serious, respectful debates. But there was also good humor. After a year or so of doing these appearances, Liddy began one show by playing a song one of his listeners had written, recorded and sent to him. It began, I think, with the lyric: “Lanny … Lanny … the liberal’s liberal.” Then he would introduce me as “my good friend, Lanny Davis, the liberal’s liberal, defending the indefensible.” And off we would go each week — vigorously, strongly disagreeing most of the time, especially about guns (he was a strong NRA supporter), but never interrupting each other. Always respectful. No personal attacks.

It was this experience over many years with Liddy which taught me the truth of a comment that former President Bill Clinton made to then-President George W. Bush during a White House ceremony to unveil the official portraits of Mr. Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton. Clinton thanked Bush from the podium in the East Room for his gracious welcome. Then Clinton looked down at Bush and said that he wished everyone referred to “right vs. wrong” instead of “good vs. evil” when describing those with whom we disagree. Bush nodded in agreement, and the two did a virtual fist-pump.

When I heard about the passing of G. Gordon Liddy earlier this week, I remembered that bipartisan moment between Clinton and Bush, and all the similar moments between Liddy and me when we debated on-air. What Liddy proved about the ability to disagree agreeably could not be more important in the wake of Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency. 

Liddy did a lot of bad things for Nixon. But he taught me that the politics of civil discourse and disagreement is still possible in this country. Joe Biden has already taught us that in the early days of his presidency. I suspect that Gordon Liddy, in his final years, would agree that Biden’s way is the better way.

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # #

Lanny Davis is a partner and founder of the Washington law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper and the strategic media firm of Trident DMG. He is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and a member of President George W. Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is the author of several books on history, politics and crisis management.

The post What G. Gordon Liddy taught me about civil disagreement first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on What G. Gordon Liddy taught me about civil disagreement

By Lanny Davis – 2/12/21

Most of the media understandably is focused on the number 67 — a vote by two-thirds of the 100 U.S. senators required to convict and remove an impeached president under the U.S. Constitution.

The more important number, however, is whether Donald Trump is repudiated by a majority of the U.S. Senate, meaning that some members of his own Republican Party have voted to convict him and then, potentially, to bar him forevermore from running again for president or any other public office. Since the Framers correctly regarded impeachment and conviction as a political decision, not a legal one, that makes sense: We are a democracy, and “majority” is the key word and principle in a democracy, not two-thirds.

We know that a majority of Republicans are committed to avoid voting on whether or not the president committed incitement to insurrection. If this vote were done by secret ballot, it seems likely a larger number of Republican senators would vote to convict the former president. Instead, they have used a change-the-subject argument that the Senate does not have jurisdiction to vote for impeachment once a president leaves office. No one can reasonably doubt that this is an excuse for many of these senators to avoid voting what is undeniable — that, but for Trump, there would have been no mob insurrection or deaths at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Yet, if a majority of the Senate — some Republicans as well as all Democrats — finds that Trump incited an insurrection against the U.S. government to prevent ratification of the Electoral College’s 2020 election results on Jan. 6, then that is a significant political fact.

Here are three other facts that ought to be given primary attention by the media and by the American people as a way of assessing the results of the Senate’s vote on impeachment:

1. In 1999, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives presented two impeachment counts against then-President Clinton for a verdict by the Senate, the Senate had a majority of 55 Republicans. Then-Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a key House impeachment manager, failed to convince even 51 of the 55 Republican senators — a Senate majority — to vote “guilty” on either of the two House counts of impeachment against Clinton. Five Republican senators voted “no” on perjury, leaving the vote 50-50 and, thus, no majority. And ten Republican senators voted “no” on obstruction, or against the House Republicans’ impeachment. Graham, now a U.S. senator, and his fellow House managers were humiliated then (and must still be embarrassed now). Their case was so weak that they couldn’t get a majority, even starting out with 55 fellow Republicans in the Senate.
2. Most Americans in many polls today believe Trump is guilty of incitement of insurrection and should be barred from holding public office ever again. Never was there a majority of Americans in any major poll who supported convicting Clinton in 1999.
3. When (almost certainly not “if”) a majority of the Senate votes to convict Trump — which, by definition, means at last some Republicans will vote against a former president from their own party — then that will contrast with House Republicans’ humiliating failure in 1999 to win an impeachment majority within their own party. If Trump is found guilty by a majority vote of the Senate, maybe as high as 56-44, that would represent an indelible shame for the rest of his life — an indelible, historic stain for all time.

If that happens, then it will be fact that a majority of the Senate, including members from his own party, have concluded that Donald Trump is:

• Guilty of lying about fraud in the election.
• Guilty of inciting mob violence resulting in five deaths which, if not for his lies and incitement, would not have occurred.
• Guilty of inciting insurrection.

That is a shame which Trump cannot escape in the pages of U.S. history.

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # #

Lanny Davis is a partner and founder of the Washington law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper and the strategic media firm of Trident DMG. He is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and a member of President George W. Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is the author of several books on history, politics and crisis management.

The post The key word is ‘majority’ on Trump impeachment vote first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on The key word is ‘majority’ on Trump impeachment vote

By Lanny Davis – 1/11/21

There are serious concerns about moving forward with an impeachment vote this week in the House. 

First, it could detract from President-elect Biden’s most important message at his inauguration – a time to bring the country together and to heal. He needs unity in the country to confront the three greatest challenges he faces on Day 1: the pandemic, the economy and the need for economic emergency relief for suffering Americans. 

Second, an impeachment effort could allow the shameless Republican senators and House members who were complicit in this mob-led insurrection to try to change the subject by attacking Democratic partisanship. We cannot allow that to happen. The list of members of congress who share culpability for the attempted coup and the deaths of five people starts with Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), without whom there likely would have been no Senate vote and thus no delay at all. And don’t forget the responsibility of House leaders Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Steve Scalise (R-La.), and more than 125 other GOP House members, who insisted on proceeding with the bogus debate on certifying electoral votes. 

Most of these names can be found here. Don’t forget them. Those who were enablers of President Trump must be held almost as accountable as the perpetrator himself. We cannot allow them to change the subject away from their own responsibility. 

Third, because of the inevitable partisanship of the vote for impeachment in the House, we may divert attention from the historic, powerful anti-Trump statements made by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), calling on Mr. Trump to resign, and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), accusing President Trump of illegal, unconstitutional incitement of an insurrectionist mob. We also cannot forget the profile in courage shown by House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), whose statements (see here and here) calling out Mr. Trump led to his inevitable public attack on her and her vilification by his fanatical followers on social media and in the mob.  

The courage shown by these Republicans cannot be obscured by the fact of an impeachment vote. They and others like them hold the key to marginalizing the racist, bigoted “Trump Party” and reclaiming the true, responsible Republican Party. I am a progressive and a loyal Democrat — but this country needs two viable political parties who together unite against the lies, hate and racism of Trump’s party. 

Finally, there appears to be little chance of winning a two-thirds vote in the Senate, so some may wonder if it is worth the disadvantages to proceed with a House impeachment vote.

One issue lessening the diversion of the House impeachment vote is the apparent decision — as articulated by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday — that the House can take its time to walk over the House impeachment resolution to the Senate to initiate a Senate trial, just as it did when President Trump was impeached in December 2019. This would give President Biden perhaps one or more months to get his new administration grounded, his Cabinet secretaries confirmed and his top priorities enacted. 

Still, given the concerns about allowing Republicans to attack Democrats for partisanship at a time like this, is it still worth proceeding with the House impeachment resolution this week? 

The answer is, yes – explainable by four words: Our children and grandchildren. We must do it for them. We must teach them the lesson of accountability.  

Mr. Trump is on videotape with words convicting himself of incitement to insurrection, a clear violation of the constitutional prohibition on a president committing treason and violating his oath of office to uphold the Constitution. 

Mr. Trump told the mob at the rally near the White House, just before it marched to the Capitol, that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” 

Guilty as charged: If this isn’t an impeachable offense for any president, then what would be, ever?  

As to Mr. Trump, our children and grandchildren will read his name indelibly written into U.S. history books from now on: the double shame of being the only president of the United States to be impeached for inciting insurrection, as a traitor to our country, and the only president to be impeached twice, in one four-year term. 

This is the ultimate lesson of accountability for Mr. Trump that we want our children and grandchildren to learn. Let the impeachment process proceed.

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # #

Lanny Davis is a partner and founder of the Washington law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper and the strategic media firm of Trident DMG. He is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and a member of President George W. Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is the author of several books on history, politics and crisis management. He was also the attorney for Michael Cohen.

The post Impeaching Trump: Four reasons not to, and one reason why we must first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on Impeaching Trump: Four reasons not to, and one reason why we must

By Lanny Davis – 12/31/20

On Nov. 6, 1968, Richard Nixon declared victory in a narrow win over then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with a margin of less than 1 percent and little more than 500,000 votes out of 85 million cast. The nation seemed irreparably divided — ideologically, culturally, generationally. 

During his victory speech that night, Nixon recalled seeing a hand-scrawled sign — “Bring us together” — during an early-evening rally in the small town of Deshler, Ohio. Nixon later invited the youngster who held that sign, 13-year-old Vicki Lynn Cole, to attend his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1969, and to ride on a special float in the inaugural parade.

Unfortunately, Nixon quickly returned to his default position, didn’t refer to the sign in his inauguration speech, and governed as president much as Donald Trump has, by exacerbating America’s divisions rather than healing them.

And now comes President-elect Biden, facing perhaps worse divisions than Nixon, fueled by a chasm of red state/blue state voters with hate on both sides. Can he possibly bring us together? The answer is, “Yes.”

I have known Joe Biden since early 1973, his first months as Delaware’s then new U.S. senator. I know he can do so not by reinventing himself but by being Joe Biden.  

For 36 years, before he became vice president, Biden represented a state made up of large numbers of conservative, rural, working-class voters. When he was a kid, he lived in Scranton, Pa., with mostly white, non-college-educated working-class neighbors, many of whom voted for Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.

Biden can govern by reminding us of the four issues he campaigned on that can bridge the gap — not by ignoring the differences among people with deep feelings but by reminding them that they can act in their self-interest, in common with those with different political views.

First, the pandemic: Biden must immediately nullify the false Trumpian choice of denying science and ignoring the COVID-19 pandemic vs. opening up the economy and putting people back to work. Biden can show us the third way. He can prove that we can both follow the science (e.g., masking, social-distancing and massively distributing vaccines) while still reopening our economy and our schools safely, step by step.

Second, Biden can prove that the fight to address climate change and save our planet is also about creating tens of millions of new jobs in energy renewal industries — in solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric generation and other technologies. These will be new jobs not only for college-educated Biden Democrats but for working families in Appalachian coal country, in farm country and rural America, and in Midwestern rust-belt communities where old-industry manufacturing jobs are disappearing and the sense of being left behind is pervasive. 

Third, Biden should propose a national “Marshall Plan” for infrastructure. He can use public-private sector partnerships to do so, such as a national infrastructure bank financed by private capital and public subsidies. He can prove that private enterprise partnering with government can do good and do well at the same time — just as Robert Kennedy, Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan all proved in previous decades with private enterprise zones in inner-city neighborhoods. And as part of this new infrastructure Marshall Plan, Biden can reinvent national public service programs for young people to work on these projects and for seniors to tutor students in rural and inner-city schools — in other words, Biden’s own version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on the environment and Works Progress Administration (WPA) on public works, LBJ’s VISTA and Job Corps programs, and Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Biden needs to stand for guaranteed, affordable national health care. Most polls show remarkable majority support for exactly what Biden proposed in his campaign: a step-by-step approach. On ObamaCare, provide a public option and then fix it. On Medicaid, expand it, as many Trump-leaning rural Americans need and want. On Medicare, expand it, as progressives want, with a goal of “Medicare for All,” similar to every Western democracy in the world except for the U.S. And all of this can be done without necessarily abolishing individual choice for Americans, if they wish to use their own doctors or continue with their private insurance plans.

It doesn’t have to be Trump’s politics of division. It doesn’t have to be Washington’s too-common partisan gridlock. There is a third choice: Joe Biden’s way. In the final analysis, Biden should remind us that the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) had it exactly right when he declared, “We are better than this.” Or, in the words of his friend, President Obama, whom he served so well as vice president: “Yes we can.”

To read the column on The Hill, click here

# # # #

Lanny Davis is co-founder of both the Washington law firm Davis Goldberg Galper PLLC and of Trident DMG, a strategic media firm specializing in crisis management. He served as special counsel to President Clinton in 1996-98 and as a member of President Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created by the 9/11 Commission. He is the author of “The Unmaking of the President 2016: How FBI Director James Comey Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency” (2018). This column first appeared in The Hill on December 31, 2020.

The post Trump and Progressives have a lot in common – and Biden can unite them first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on Trump and Progressives have a lot in common – and Biden can unite them

By Lanny Davis and Michael Cohen – 12/23/20

There is a reason Donald Trump seems so desperate to hang on to his position as president of the United States. Over the weekend he reportedly talked with attorney Sidney Powell and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn about trying to impose martial law in states he lost in order to hold new elections in the hopes that he could remain president. (Fortunately, the U.S. Army issued a statement publicly challenging the commander-in-chief.)

The reason for Trump’s seemingly erratic behavior is obvious, at least to us: Donald Trump knows that he may be arrested not long after Joe Biden is sworn in at about noon on Jan. 20, 2021.

Even if Trump attempts to pardon himself for any federal crimes, which is not clearly allowed under the Constitution, that won’t save him from criminal prosecution under New York state laws. Recent news reports indicate that the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (pictured) has a grand jury investigating Trump and perhaps others in the Trump Organization. 

The two us, both lawyers, worked together to be sure the Manhattan DA had all the documents that informed Michael Cohen’s Feb. 27, 2019, public testimony and opening statement before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Tens of millions of Americans and millions more abroad saw those documents on TV during the testimony.

Below are the five categories of Donald Trump’s criminal activities, any one of which could lead to his arrest for related individual state crimes:

1 Bank fraud and (2) Property tax fraud – Exhibits 1(a), (b), and (c), as shown on TV during the hearing, of Trump’s personal financial statements put him in jeopardy. These exhibits show that when it was to Trump’s advantage (so he could reduce the amount of property taxes he owed), he artificially depressed the value of an asset, such as his golf course in Westchester, N.Y. (See Exhibit 2, also posted on TV). But when it was to his advantage, he artificially inflated his assets — sometimes on the same financial statement. “Artificially” is another word for fraud. And fraud is a crime, whether the purpose of the deception is to secure a bank loan or dupe Westchester County tax accessors to reduce his property taxes. 

3 Income tax fraud – Another example of a tax crime is inventing deductible expenses to save paying income taxes to the state. There is a probability that Trump declared as tax-deductible business expenses the hush-money payments he reimbursed me for paying off, upon Trump’s direction, an adult film star a few days before the 2016 election. Such tax deductions, if he or his organization made them, could be criminal. Moreover, Trump repaid me with six checks from his personal account for $35,000, and those checks, signed while president of the U.S., could be evidence of crimes under New York state law as part of a coverup and state tax fraud scheme. 

4 Commercial fraud – When Trump used an individual in July 2013 to make an inflated bid for his own portrait at a charity auction in the Hamptons, it’s possible that he committed a crime under New York state law. I know Trump did this because I was the one who set up a friend to go to the auction and bid $60,000 for the portrait. I also know records of this individual being subsequently secretly reimbursed for this amount by the Trump Foundation, which is also illegal (see Exhibit 3). We also know about this because Trump tweeted about it (knowing it was a fraud and the Tweet was – surprise! — a lie): “Just found out that at a charity auction of celebrity portraits in E. Hampton, my portrait by artist William Quigley topped list at $60K.” This was also found in Exhibit 3.

5 The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1962, primarily to give the federal government a better ability to prosecute organized crime as “criminal enterprises.” But many states enacted their own versions of the federal RICO statutes. New York did so in 1986. In our view, there is little doubt that the many crimes committed by Donald Trump and associates in his “enterprise” called the Trump Organization could constitute a “Corrupt Racketeering Organization” under New York’s statute. 

In the recently published book “Disloyal,” I (Michael Cohen) characterized the Trump company as closely resembling a mob organization, with “Mr. Trump,” as he insists on being called, demanding blind reverence and loyalty. I also described it as a criminal enterprise conspiracy, with Trump acting much like the “Godfather” in his own mob family. 

So, if anyone is shocked at his increasing signs of paranoia, fear, and panic, it’s not just another day in the presidency of Donald J. Trump. It is the pattern of someone who is terrified of arrest, criminal conviction, and imprisonment. 

Certainly, incarcerating a former president would not bring this nation together, which is President-elect Biden’s self-described mission. Our own hope is that if Donald Trump is ever prosecuted and found guilty, a New York trial judge would devise a probation formula that would require substantial public service as well as transparency in any future business endeavors. In any event, we are convinced that along with his inability to ever admit failure, Trump’s fear of answering for his frauds in a criminal court of law is driving his divisive and dangerous delusions that he actually won the 2020 election. 

# # #

To read the column on Real Clear Politics, click here

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, served as Mr. Cohen’s attorney before and after the Feb. 27, 2019, House Oversight Committee hearing.

The post Why Trump is so Desperate to Stay in The White House first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on Why Trump is so Desperate to Stay in The White House

By Lanny Davis – 11/2/20

I know some people who are voting for Donald Trump. Some of them are friends. So, as we approach election day on Tuesday, I want to try one more time to see if they will change their minds about voting for Trump. I have five questions. They can be answered “yes” or “no.” No “buts” are needed.

1. Do you agree with Donald Trump’s criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci as a “disaster” and calling him an “idiot”?
2. Do you agree with Donald Trump’s mocking of those who wear masks to protect themselves and others from infection by coronavirus — including mocking Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham for wearing a mask and being “politically correct.”
3. Do you agree with Donald Trump when he admitted privately in a taped conversation with author and journalist Bob Woodward that the COVID was “dangerous” but then, shortly after, lying to the public to avoid “panic” and downplaying the risk — predicting the virus would “disappear” like “miracle”? And Mr. Trump‘s denials continue to this day — while he holds rallies with most people crowded together and not wearing mask, risking their lives and those who may be infected with COVID by them after the rallies?
4. Do you agree with President Trump, after he heard public reports that the Russians paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. forces in Afghanistan, when he failed to criticize the Russians publicly — and never once asked Putin publicly whether this was true?
5. Do you think that Donald Trump did enough to find the parents of the 545 children separated from them at the border in 2018 — and still the parents have not been located two years later — thanks to Mr. Trump’s admitted own “zero tolerance” policy, resulting in those separations?

To repeat: Each of these questions are based on facts that are indisputably true, all a matter of public record. The question is: How could your answer be anything but “No.” My second question is: If your answers are no, how can you possibly vote for Donald Trump for reelection?

# # # #

To read the column on The Hill, click here

Davis served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton (1996-98) and served as a member of President Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is co-founder of the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper and the strategic media and crisis management firm Trident DMG. He authored “Crisis Tales: Five Rules for Coping with Crises in Business, Politics and Life” (Scribner Threshold 2013).

The post 5 Questions for Trump Voters first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on 5 Questions for Trump Voters

By Lanny Davis – 10/22/20

As we wait for tonight’s debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, most of the nation and the mainstream media are depicting the outcome as mainly dependent on whether President Trump exhibits his rudeness and abnormal behavior again, as he did in the last debate. The result of that last debate was a setback for Mr. Trump by at least two to three points in the polls, which is a lot by historical standards.

But tonight, I expect that even if Mr. Trump repeats this self-destructive behavior – and there are many, including myself, who believe he will try to listen to his advisors but just won’t be able to help himself – the overriding historical forces at work regarding the nation’s overall mood will be more important than what happens at the debate itself.

My premise is that the election will turn on which of these two men best fit the mood of the American people. There are three historical examples where a presidential candidate and the nation’s mood were perfectly aligned on the need for two attributes in the candidates: 1) decency in the next president; and 2) a return to normalcy in the nation – a plan to end the COVID pandemic based on science, not lies; economic recovery that flows from the latter; and maybe most important, a return to civility in our public discourse.

The first historical moment in American history where these two elements were important occurred in the election of the next president was in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was elected president in the House of Representatives after he and Aaron Burr were tied in the Electoral College. This moment occurred actually after Jefferson’s election.

The venom and personal attacks of the partisan years under the second president, John Adams, from 1796-1800, were as bad if not worse than today. Lest we forget, the partisanship was so bad between the “Federalists” and the “Jeffersonian Republicans” that even the moderate President John Adams signed legislation (the “Alien and Sedition Acts”) that the “High Federalists” pushed through making it a crime to criticize the president or members of Congress!

While the new president was known as a leader of the anti-federalist Republicans, he lanced the boil of the previous extreme partisan divisions in his March 1801 Inaugural speech when he said: “We are all federalists, we are all Republicans.” The national sigh of relief must have been evident to all.

Then in 1920, another similar national moment occurred when the presidential candidate and the national mood coincided almost perfectly. World War I was over, the nation was drained and fatigued, and now it saw deep divisions between the incumbent second-term president, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and a harsh partisan Republican Senate, blocking and rejecting Wilson’s stubborn campaign to force the Senate to approve U.S. entry into the “League of Nations.”

So, the nation welcomed the GOP presidential candidate, A former editor of a rural newspaper from Marion, Ohio, who was then a U.S. senator, named Warren G. Harding. He won in a landslide in the November 1920 elections. He campaigned from his back porch, and was criticized for not being a more aggressive campaigner. The overwhelming issue for him was a perfect summation of the national mood: a “return to normalcy.”

The third instance was in 1976, when Jimmy Carter, a heretofore largely unknown former governor from Georgia and a peanut farmer, surprised everyone by winning the Democratic Party nomination and the presidency. His campaign occurred in the aftermath of the August 1974 resignation of Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate scandal, in which Nixon and “his men” repeatedly lied to the American people and thought they could get away with it. (A must read on Carter is Jonathan Alter’s brilliantly written and insightful recent biography on Carter, “His Very Best”). Carter used a sentence in the early days of his campaign for the nomination all the way through the general election that came to be seen as critical to his authentic identity and to his election as the nation’s 39th president: “I will never lie to you.”

Now, 12 days from election day Nov. 3, we see once again the national mood, at least a significant majority just might be perfectly aligned with the Democratic candidate and who he truly is: Joe Biden. He has said that his campaign is fundamentally about battling for the “soul of the nation.” With a nation more divided and partisan than ever for many generations, this seems to be the moment when most Americans yearn for change – an end to bitter presidential rhetoric and divisive leadership – a president who can return us to bipartisanship (Jefferson), normalcy (Harding) and a president who believes he must tell the truth and know the difference between facts and lies (Carter).

So tonight at the debate, as I have written before on these pages before the first debate on Sept. 29, Joe Biden simply has to be himself. He can’t fake it if he tried. He is a decent, kind, and empathetic leader. All his years in the Senate, since 1973, he showed he could act with civility and civil discourse even with conservative Republicans with whom he strongly disagreed.

Meanwhile, I believe that despite advice from his advisors to the contrary, Donald Trump will be … Donald Trump. He can’t help himself – he will lie, and not care that we know he is lying. He will attack and be rude. That is who he is.

So tonight, Biden will be himself. Whether he wins or not on Nov. 3, I still do not know. But I do know that if he wins, it’s because he is who he is – and the right person for the right moment in this crucial time in U.S. history.

# # # #

To read the column on The Hill, click here

Davis served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton (1996-98) and served as a member of President Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is co-founder of the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper and the strategic media and crisis management firm Trident DMG. He authored “Crisis Tales: Five Rules for Coping with Crises in Business, Politics and Life” (Scribner Threshold 2013).

The post On Eve of Tonight’s Debate – We’ve Seen This Moment in History Before first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on On Eve of Tonight’s Debate – We’ve Seen This Moment in History Before

By Lanny Davis – 10/9/20

This article outlines the best practices for companies who must delivery bad news to their customers. When giving bad news, natural human instincts can result in a company trying to sugarcoat a crisis, postpone telling customers of the crisis, or omit facts from what it tells the public about the crisis. Each of these instincts, while easy to understand, can make the crisis worse, and runs counter to the best practices for delivering bad news. The piece explains why a company with bad news to give is best served by telling the truth early, telling it all, and telling it themself.When it comes to giving bad news to customers, the best results will come from telling it early, telling it all, and telling it yourself. 

How to Tell Customers Bad News

When managing a crisis, communication skills are often contradicted by the human instinct to put the best light on bad news. Specifically, there are three natural, human reactions that frequently guide how companies and organizations deliver bad news to customers. The first is that, instead of speaking in plain language, they will try to sugarcoat the bad news. Another natural human instinct is to postpone telling customers what the bad news is, hoping that maybe it will go away on its own. The third human reaction when delivering bad news is to selectively reveal details of the matter, so as to minimize the public impact of the crisis. 

Each of these instincts, while understandable from a human’s perspective, can all too often make bad news worse. Over the course of our careers in crisis management, we have learned that all of these instincts are counter to the three best practices for delivering bad news. Those rules can be summarized by the mantra regarding the truth, however tough the bad news is: Tell it early, tell it all, and tell it yourself.

Tell It Early

The first step after receiving bad news that customers must be alerted to, is to gather all of the facts about what the bad news is. A company with bad news to give must anticipate every question it will receive from the media and all stakeholders: e.g., customers, employees, investors, suppliers, banks, or if the company is a listed public company, shareholders. Thus, the company must gather all the facts, including the bad ones, and formulate accurate responses to the questions about what happened, why, and especially, what the company intends to do to solve the problem.  

For example, suppose a company realizes one of its major products has serious defects and must be recalled. Think of all the different components of announcing that bad news. What is the defect? How did it occur? Why did it happen? What should consumers do? How immediate is the potential danger, if any? And most important, the company must find the underlying facts as to why the defect occurred and explain, credibly, why it won’t happen again. Without answers to each of these questions – and more – the company will be incapable of restoring consumer confidence. Or worse, if it waits too long to provide this information, some other potentially adverse entity, such as a competitor, will, and the company will lose control of the narrative to its detriment.

A second example might be a company suffering a major data breach. The company will have to develop a plan most importantly to inform all customers whose personal and private data might have been breached: gather information regarding how the breach occurred; what data was impacted; how the breach affects customers; whether privacy rights were violated; and how it plans on securing customers’ data. Each crisis brings its own set of facts, and a company announcing bad news must be sure it understands all of them.

Telling it early means that a company or organization in crisis must preemptively get their message out first. If it doesn’t, the company runs the risk of having the bad news leaked to the media or some other party. Should this happen, the news can get twisted and contorted to make its impact significantly more damaging. Though telling it early runs counter to the natural human instinct to delay delivering bad news as long as possible, the damage done by that news leaking can be severe and is a risk that must be avoided.

After gathering all of the facts, the question for crisis managers then becomes how bad news should be communicated. One critical step is for the crisis manager is to coordinate with the company delivering the news to write messaging that both parties are comfortable with. This is the message that will be shared with all of a company’s stakeholders, including customers, investors, and ultimately, the media. We almost always recommend issuing a press release and public statement, even though it seems counter to some who argue that bad news should not be announced yourself. But that argument is based on the assumption that bad news will not eventually get out.

Our experience is that if it is bad enough, it will – but will often get out drip, drip, drip rather than all at once to get it over with. One device we have used is to contact one or two trusted reporters to see if they would be interested in writing one comprehensive story, telling the full narrative, all the facts, good and bad.  We call this a “predicate” story – meaning, once all is included, then we can direct other reporters to go to that story to get most of their questions answered. This further reduces the possibility the crisis will be depicted as worse than it is. One way or the other, bad news that impacts major companies or a large number of people will almost always get out. As a result of this, the company should tell it early and mitigate the possibility of the news being twisted by a third party.

Tell It All

Telling it all is another way of saying that when a company is giving bad news, it must inform the public of all the relevant facts, and not just the favorable ones. A crisis manager must comprehensively probe their client to understand all of the harmful risks they might not want to talk about. Inevitably, this will lead to a conversation with that client’s lawyer. Lawyers, usually, will say that should their client make bad news public, it could provoke a lawsuit, which would do even more damage. Therefore, telling it all will frequently come down to a debate between lawyers concerned about adverse legal consequences of volunteering bad facts, which is an understandable concern, versus the reputational harm to the company if the bad news is leaked out and distorted and made worse.  

If the risk is too substantial, lawyers will often prevail and, at least for a while, the company will be reduced to a general statement explaining the crisis without too many facts. The worst choice of all, however, is simply to “decline to comment” – which to many people is tantamount to pleading guilty. If the comment Is only “decline to comment,” then if and when – usually when—the bad news is made public, the company has two problems on its hands. First, the crisis still exists in the first place. And second, if certain harmful facts are omitted from the public disclosure, the company will appear as if it is engaging in a cover-up. 

None of this is to say that legal risk should not be accounted for, there are of course exceptions to this rule. Should the penalty for telling the whole truth be as severe as a jail sentence for an employee, a different consideration must be made. That said, if the risk is that severe, the company will have to look for the support of criminal lawyers. 

Some lawyers are unaccustomed to being challenged when they say there’s a legal risk for their clients. In most companies, once the outside counsel says no, that’s the end of the discussion. They will make conservative decisions, for instance, omitting damaging facts from the public narrative, arguing that their company must do everything in its power to prevent a lawsuit. While it’s easy to understand why a company would strictly adhere to the advice of counsel, it’s not always the correct decision. 

Simply put, the debate must be more full-throated than a lawyer dictating to a company what should be done. Other parties must be in the room to argue the merit of the legal risk that would result from all of the facts of a crisis being made public. Under the almost universal system, especially in the case of a major outside law firm warning a client about risk, a company’s CEO will be incapable of standing up to that law firm. The law firm will make the decision, have the ability to veto decisions it disagrees with, and ultimately, control the future of the company. It is for this reason why it’s so important to have multiple voices contributing to the crisis decision-making process and the debate of legal risks versus media risks. These voices should include the CEO, management, lawyers, communications employees, and investor relations managers. Once the debate is had, the CEO and management will make the most informed decision possible. 

There is natural tension between lawyers and the legal risks they work to defend clients from and crisis managers and the reputational risks they work to defend clients against. Frequently, when pushing for a conservative crisis management strategy, lawyers follow the natural human instinct to be selective about what bad news gets revealed. This defensive judgment, however, can lead to severe consequences should it result in a company being accused of hiding information. As a result of this, in times of crisis, companies are best served by comprehensively debating the legal risks, and afterward, revealing all of the facts of the matter.

Tell It Yourself

The question of who should be delivering a company’s bad news to the public is also a critical one. The most important voice in this sort of matter will always be the company itself. This implies that the company must not hide from the crisis, but rather, it must be direct and address bad news head-on. There is no excuse for refusing to answer a reporter’s question, and the phrase, “we can’t comment on that because the matter is under investigation,” should never be uttered. In fact, anyone who suggests such a response should be let go. 

If a company can’t comment on an issue because it is the subject of litigation, it should explain that it first has to gather all of the facts, precisely because it’s in litigation. The fundamental reason why, is that hiding behind an investigation or some other excuse amounts only to kicking down the road and prevents the company in question from delivering the news itself. It also reopens the risk of a third party delivering the news and twisting and contorting it to serve its own agenda. 

This process of telling bad news ones’ self runs counter to the human desire to sugarcoat it. Companies, like everyone else, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ultimately, doing so is in their best interest. Another reason why a company can’t hide behind an investigation is that inevitably, the public will not believe it can’t comment on the matter. And if the public won’t believe what a company is saying, it shouldn’t bother saying it all.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

At the end of the day, when a company is handling a crisis, honesty is the best policy. Honesty, however, goes beyond just issuing a statement acknowledging the existence of a crisis and then moving forward. It means that the company has a responsibility to tell its own story, including all relevant facts, and that it has to do it quickly. 

Conclusion

As a set of rules, telling the bad news early, telling it all, and telling it yourself is not intuitive. Further, it is not difficult to understand why one might think that breaking these rules might serve them better in the long run. The fact of the matter, though, is that it seldom does. Trying to skirt these rules, while natural and human, results in a company losing control of its narrative, or having the crisis spiral out of control. The only way for a company to be sure it knows how bad news will be reported is if it directly confronts the crisis before anyone else can and without leaving any details off the table.

# # # #

To read the column on The Impact Lawyers, click here

The post How to Tell Customers Bad News first appeared on Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly.

Comments Off on How to Tell Customers Bad News