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@ProtctDemocracy Counsel Erica Newland has a powerful op-ed in today’s @nytopinion. It’s generated some necessary debate -- which was its intent -- and also some commentary that I think is misinformed. So a short thread. /1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/opinion/trump-justice-department-lawyer.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Let’s start with an important premise on which Erica’s piece and professional choices rests: one of our Founders’ most important innovations was creating a government in which public officials are loyal not to an individual, but to an idea: our Constitution. /2
As a former government lawyer myself, wrestling with how to uphold this oath, how to follow the direction of one’s superiors, while knowing one’s ultimate obligation is to the American public and that oath is an issue all government lawyers contemplate -- or should. /3
As Erica writes in the piece, this is the lens through which she tried to assess whether to stay and serve that oath, or resign. /4
In 2018, she resigned. And she did not do so quietly. She spoke out powerfully at the time in this @WashingtonPost piece explaining her reasoning, in the hope it would cause others still serving to reflect on their obligations to their oaths. /5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-worked-in-the-justice-department-i-hope-its-lawyers-wont-give-trump-an-alibi/2019/01/10/9b53c662-1501-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html
Last winter, she talked to George Packer @theatlantic about the challenges and moral dilemmas of working at @TheJusticeDept during the Trump Admin. If you want to understand the nuances of her decision making, you should spend time with that piece. /6 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-destroy-a-government/606793/
Upon leaving government, she joined our staff @protctdemocracy in order to do from outside government what she had sought to do from within it: protect, uphold and defend the Constitution. /7
For the past two years, she has fought every day to @protctdemocracy. She has contributed in countless ways to the fact that our democracy just survived a near death experience. /8
Erica has pointed out that we all bear responsibility for what happens in our democracy. In her reflections on her work at DOJ, and in her work @protctdemocracy, she applies her sense of justice and obligation to herself and not just others. /9
People are rightfully angry about those abdicating their oaths in government to enable Trump’s attacks on our democracy. Trust me, I am too. /10
We @protctdemocracy just released a report on accountability for Trump-era transgressions. /11 https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20432741-towards-non-recurrence_protect-democracy_dec-2020#section-1
For those who did not stand up for our Constitution over the past four years, we need a reckoning -- a lawful and ethical one, and not for retribution’s sake, but as the report explains, to avoid recurrence. /12
For those who abandoned their oaths, and stayed til the very end and only now may find the voice to speak up in order to whitewash their complicity for posterity, I agree, that’s too little too late. Theirs is a long, hard road to redemption. /13
For those who saw the worst from the inside and left earlier but stayed silent, they too bear responsibility. John Kelly, Kirstjen Nielson, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, Rod Rosenstein. The list is long. /14
But for those who tried to uphold their oaths from within, who left when they were unable to do so, and who spoke out publicly upon doing so, and have poured everything they have into fighting to protect our democracy from without, I’m not sure what else we could ask of them. /15
And what’s more, for those who in hindsight think they stayed too long and have the courage to offer a public apology, in addition to backing it up with the evidence of their day to day work to make it right, should that not be the model? /16
Some people on this site have suggested Erica only wrote this after Trump lost in order to launder herself and get a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. /17
Erica has had a job @protctdemocracy for nearly two years (since shortly after she left government). She spoke out forcefully then, as she is today. /18 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-worked-in-the-justice-department-i-hope-its-lawyers-wont-give-trump-an-alibi/2019/01/10/9b53c662-1501-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html
What prompted this new piece was not Trump losing, but rather the rare opportunity to observe a counterfactual reality. /19
As Erica wrote, seeing what a failure Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results have been in the hands of incompetent lawyers showed her what his term might have looked like if talented lawyers had refused to make his attacks on democracy more acceptable to the courts. /20
Erica doesn’t need a job nor a laundering of her reputation. What she wants more than anything is a government staffed by principled public officials able to carry the burden the founders entrusted them with: to uphold the oath of office and protect our Constitution. /21
Her piece is an effort to get all of us -- government lawyers especially -- to reflect on what we need to do to get there. /22
I could not be prouder than to have her @protctdemocracy. /end
