“Deans from America’s law schools unveil joint letter in defense of democracy”

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Release:

The ABA Task Force for American Democracy unveiled a letter signed by more than 100 deans from America’s law schools concerning the training necessary for the next generation of lawyers to sustain our constitutional democracy and the rule of law. 

In their letter, this distinct group of educators — charged with training our nation’s lawyers — affirms their commitment to preparing the next generation of legal advocates to uphold democracy and the rule of law. The message articulated by the deans urges students to champion the Constitution and the rule of law through avenues such as clinical work, public education and advocacy as well as makes a commitment on the deans’ part to teach our nation’s law students to disagree respectfully, be open to others’ arguments and engage across partisan and ideological divides.

Read the letter here.

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Must read Katherine Miller: “The System Isn’t Built for Jan. 6, and Neither Are We”

election subversion risk

Katherine Miller NYT column:

The riot at the Capitol was happening and then it wasn’t. Mr. Trump eventually left, but didn’t leave. The House impeached, but the Senate acquitted. Prosecutors brought charges, but the process has spooled out into an in-between place.

Committees aired hearings and released transcripts; people wrote books and filed civil suits; individuals such as Rudy Giuliani have faced punishing financial penalties. And we have learned more and worse details about the inner workings of the Trump White House that melted down into disaster.

But Mr. Trump might still become president again, and he has never let go of the idea that animated Jan. 6 — that the election was stolen from him — and that idea has hardened in regular people.

It’s as if the country had a simultaneous, destabilizing experience, and it’s sitting there under the surface, and it must be doing something to the American psyche.

One of the things that makes Jan. 6 hard to neatly contain in the collective memory is the emotional, sloppy, accidental disaster nature of it. The event unfolded in public, and learning more about the lead-up to it tends to affirm the broad contours of what we knew when it took place. The select committee testimony and hearings, the indictments and civil suits and the many reported books are filled with examples of how ill conceived so much of what led to Jan. 6 was — and yet it eventually became a surreal scene where real people died, the police got beaten with American flags, aides and lawmakers ran and hid, and hundreds of people who believed Mr. Trump got wrapped up in the legal system.

The origin point of that day was Mr. Trump’s inability to accept that he lost, but everything in service of it is hard to wrap your head around. It’s not as if anybody needs a trial to form an opinion about Jan. 6. It’s not even that the criminal justice system absolutely had to be the way to handle this matter; it wasn’t, and charging or convicting Mr. Trump might have unintended consequences.

But a trial was possibly the last remaining avenue for a public re-examination of Jan. 6, certainly before the election, and possibly for years. Everyone has instead lived through an intense period of anticipating that consideration and its potential consequence, without getting it.

What all this lack of resolution can obscure is how fundamental this is to Mr. Trump as a political figure. Jan. 6 and his expansive idea of power being taken from him is something the voter has to embrace or reject or ignore or try to square with the other things the voter might care about. That the election was stolen from him is what Mr. Trump cares about, and that the transfer of power must take place is what the country was founded on, and that Mr. Trump’s endless words can manifest in cataclysmic real-life action is what people fear and the most hard-core supporters love about Mr. Trump….

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“Democracy at a Crossroads: A Q&A About Free and Fair Elections With EAC Chairman Benjamin Hovland”

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Over at CAP:

CAP: Regrettably, even though it has been three years since we last discussed the fact that some political leaders peddled falsehoods about widespread election fraud and other matters designed to reduce faith in elections, this lamentable trend continues. Moreover, we are seeing increased threats of political violence—often aimed at election administrators or workers. What are your latest thoughts on these harmful dynamics and the challenges they pose to our system of free and fair elections? And how have election administrators and workers tried to rise above unnecessary partisanship and carry out their democracy duties, despite constant threats? 

Hovland: In the last several election cycles, there have been unprecedented levels of mis- and disinformation, from both foreign and domestic sources, about the integrity of U.S. elections and election results. These false narratives have led to threats and harassment against election administrators themselves, which is unacceptable. Since the 2020 elections, we have heard distressing stories about the threats and harassment election officials have faced with the increased politicization of election administration. These incidents have affected the individuals involved and the entire elections community, from volunteer poll workers to full-time elected officials.

While this has undoubtedly and understandably contributed to some of the election administrator turnover, I am continually amazed by the public servants who run our elections. Traveling around the country, I’m able to see the similarities and differences in how each state runs its elections. Across the country, the public servants who run our elections are focused on good governance and customer service. They have somehow renewed their already herculean efforts regarding administration of election processes, trainings, and contingency planning to ensure the smooth running of elections, as well as making sure transparency and accountability measures are in place so they can show their work if there are questions about the integrity of the election process or results.

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“How a ‘Committed Partisan Warrior’ Came to Rethink the Political Wars” (New Bob Bauer Book!)

election law biz, political polarization

Peter Baker on Bob Bauer and his new book, in the NYT:

Once, after he executed a particularly tough-minded legal attack on Republicans, Bob Bauer remembers, a conservative magazine called him an “evil genius.” He took it as a compliment. “I was very proud of that,” he said. “I thought, That’s cool.”

For decades, Democrats have turned to him as their lawyer to wage battles against the opposition. Reverse a House race they seemingly lost? Accuse the other side of criminal activity? Go to court to cut off Republican money flows? Find a legal justification for an ethically iffy strategy? Mr. Bauer was their man.

But now Mr. Bauer, the personal attorney for President Biden and previously the White House counsel for President Barack Obama, is looking back and rethinking all that. Maybe, he says, that win-at-all-costs approach to politics is not really conducive to a healthy, functioning democracy. Maybe, in taking the “genius” part to heart, he should have been more concerned about the “evil” part.

In a new book, “The Unraveling: Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis,” to be published on Tuesday, Mr. Bauer takes stock of what he sees as the coarsening of American politics and examines the tension between ethical decisions and the “warrior mentality” that dominates the worlds of government and campaigns today. And in the process of thinking about what went wrong, Mr. Bauer, who calls himself a “committed partisan warrior,” has stopped to wrestle with his own role in the wars…..

r. Bauer has had a role in most of the significant political-legal wars of the last few decades, representing Democratic Party organizations and candidates, advising House and Senate Democratic leaders during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment battle and serving as Mr. Obama’s campaign lawyer and later White House counsel.

In the last few years, though, Mr. Bauer retired from his law firm, Perkins Coie, and increasingly turned his energies to finding ways to fix the system, working with Republicans like Benjamin Ginsberg and Jack L. Goldsmith. Among other projects, he advised lawmakers who revised the Electoral Count Act in 2022 to make clear that no vice president can single-handedly overturn an election, and he guided a bipartisan group that in April recommended changes to the Insurrection Act to limit presidents’ power to deploy troops to American streets.

Mr. Ginsberg, a longtime election lawyer who represented George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, among others, before breaking with the Republican Party over its support for Mr. Trump, said that Mr. Bauer was always “an ethical, principled guy” who managed to zealously represent his clients without crossing lines that should not be crossed.

“We’ve been battling each other for 40 years on stuff, and it’s always important, he knew, to fight fiercely for your candidate,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “But his concept of the rule of law is that the process works best if you have fierce partisans on each side but with an appreciation for the democratic process, institutions and norms.”

Bob’s new book is fabulous, and here is my blurb of it:

With wit, insight, self-awareness, and humility, Bob Bauer reflects on his life as a leading political lawyer, making an urgent plea for a renewed commitment to political ethics. A must-read warning about how our existential politics has led to norm collapse, and how to bring us back from the brink.

— Richard L. Hasen, Author of A Real Right to Vote and Election Meltdown

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“Mystery fundraising firm takes in millions from the Trump campaign”

campaign finance, chicanery

NBC News:

Former President Donald Trump’s political operation has routed more than $3 million so far this year through a Delaware limited liability company whose owners are not publicly disclosed, according to campaign finance records — a strategy that mirrors past efforts to mask exactly how his campaign is spending donor cash.

The money has been paid to Launchpad Strategies LLC, a company that appears to have been incorporated in Delaware in November, according to state business records and lists a Raleigh, North Carolina, post office box as its address in campaign finance filings. Since it was formally incorporated, the company has received $3.1 million in payments from the Trump campaign and an affiliated joint fundraising committee….

Little is known about Launchpad Strategies LLC beyond its existence and the millions of dollars it has taken in from a presidential campaign.

It has never done other political work for state-level or federal candidates, according to federal and state campaign finance disclosure filings. The first payment from the Trump operation was on Dec. 18, just over a month after the company appears to have been incorporated in Delaware.

The company’s website offers no information about services it offers or who runs it. A contact page that offers people a place to reach out and ask questions appears inactive, and multiple requests for comment NBC News tried to send through the site went unanswered.

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