Additional Audience Questions from My First “Fireside Chat”

I held my first “Fireside Chat” over Facebook Live last night, and unsurprisingly in the 45 minutes I had allotted for this, I only got through about half of the pre-submitted questions. So today, I’m going rapid-fire with responses to some of the rest. Here goes!

Tim Young writes, “Would love to hear your thoughts on the Durham Investigation.”

To date, I have not spent a lot of time on the Durham investigation, largely because I believe it is a sideshow, and those pushing it want nothing more than to see it elevated in our discourse. John Durham was appointed two years ago as a special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigations into claims of Russian election interference in 2016. This appointment began during the Trump administration, and its clear purpose is to discredit the Mueller investigation and report.

Durham is a non-serious man with serious authority who is using his power to throw red meat to the MAGA base. His focus so far has been on the Steele Dossier, the file that got leaked by Buzzfeed some four years ago containing disturbing and salacious allegations about how the former president was compromised by the Russians. Durham’s obsession with the Steele Dossier is misplaced, however, because Mueller did not rely upon it in launching or conducting his investigation. 

Nevertheless, the investigation has netted a couple of indictments for “lying to the FBI” but it isn’t at all clear these were the kinds of statements that were made with intent to deceive rather than simply getting recalled facts wrong. To my mind, this is a way to try and “both-sides” the issue and make it murkier in the minds of the GOP base. Sure, lots of Trump’s cohorts and aides were arrested and convicted for crimes, but look at these two guys! This is a special counsel in search of a scandal, hoping that by probing Benghazi-like into the FBI investigation he can unearth a scandal similar to Hillary’s emails, which as we know wasn’t a scandal at all but was easily pumped into one.

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King Keeley asks, “Amongst all the litigation and court actions against Trump and his organization, which single thread do you think has the most potential to cause actual damage (hopefully jail time) and/or which one brings fruits first?”

In my view, the farthest along is the Manhattan DA’s investigation, which already has resulted in indictments of Trump’s CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization itself on charges of tax evasion. (Their scheme, carried out for years with full knowledge of all involved, was to pay certain high-level employees using perks like free apartments and school tuition while not disclosing these as income to the IRS, meaning both the employee and the employer were cheating the government out of significant tax revenue.)

A second jury has now been convened in Manhattan to look at the separate question of whether Trump and his company made misrepresentations about the valuations of his properties in order to mislead tax authorities, banks and insurance companies. 

The nice thing about these financial crime cases is that, while Trump can complain that the impetus for the investigation is partisan, he cannot evade the pesky facts of the cases, which all transpired prior to him becoming president. That means no viable claims of executive privilege—the armor that has shielded Trump so far from having certain people testify against him before Congress. In the mind of the public, also, there isn’t the defense of “I was acting as a patriot to save the country from electoral fraud”—a spurious defense that we are likely to hear from the former president if he is ever charged with any crimes related to January 6 such as seditious conspiracy. These financial crimes simply boast much cleaner sets of facts and law.

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Janet Ryder notes, “When I read the JFK Jr./Trump story … I found the politics of the situation more shocking than the resurrection of JFK Jr. I know they have the big flags printed so they truly believe in [a Trump/JFK, Jr. Ticket], but don’t you find a wee bit of humor in their ignorance of the Kennedy’s Democratic tradition?”

It certainly is funny in the moment that QAnoners sincerely believe the JFK, Jr. is still alive and has become a Republican and lined streets in Dallas to see him emerge (he didn’t). We can have a much-needed laugh at the absurdity of it all. But underlying the QAnon and other conspiracies is a worrisome trend: Republicans are increasingly living in a false reality.

That has now proven very deadly during the pandemic. Because so many did not believe the threat from the virus was real, they refused to take common-sense precautions like wearing masks and not gathering indoors in groups. Now many are refusing vaccinations based on the same misinformation, which is piped to them daily by right-wing news and social media echo chambers.

From a strategic standpoint, this gives us an opening. The GOP is good at dividing our country and using fear to drive their voters to the polls. But we can do the same when it comes to voting out the crazy QAnoners, which now number more than 40 in the upcoming GOP primaries.

Take the case of Clallam County, Washington. That place is a bellwether for the nation, having picked the winner of the presidential race every time since 1980. This year, Clallam was rocked by a scandal: Members of its City Council, working with their QAnon-subscribing mayor, started to forbid mask mandates and push other extreme conservative views. But a group of concerned citizens organized a rival slate of candidates, and in this election the kooks were voted out—by a 2 to 1 margin.

This is the kind of pushback we need to see nationwide. It has real resonance, and it is effective in bringing out the voters.

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Deborah Dodds asks, “My question surrounds the Republican talking point of States Rights. It appeared to me that States Rights was settled by the Civil War loss by the seceding states and subsequent Amendments, especially the 14th as well as Supreme Court rulings through the years. The very Constitution supports federal regulation of elections.”

“States’ Rights” is a highly loaded term, as the questioner makes clear. But I like to ask, “States’ rights…to do what exactly?” A state doesn’t have the right to abrogate a constitutionally protected right, such as the right not to be a slave, the right to vote, or the right to an abortion before fetal viability. Yet we find ourselves fighting on their turf on two of these three questions presently, when we shouldn’t even be close to battling on this ground.

That all may be intentional. There are harder questions over states’ rights that are making headlines today, so pushing states’ rights over abortion restrictions and voter suppression makes these other issues less controversial by comparison. But they are still important and include, for example, matters of health policy that are traditionally left to the states. In times of pandemic, though, the federal government does have an interest in a coherent national policy to fight a communicable disease. The question of vaccine mandates seems settled by SCOTUS long ago, but this week a three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit blocked the federal mandate nationwide. States rights!

We’re facing the same question on gun ownership and concealed carry licenses, too. The Second Amendment makes gun ownership, at least in your home for self-defense, a constitutional right. But guns are regulated by the states differently because they have different public safety concerns and different population densities. In the recent challenge before SCOTUS to the state of New York’s licensing requirements for concealed weapons, Justice Sotomayor made a states’ rights argument in favor of keeping the regime in place. This shows states’ rights are not just the province of the right.

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There are a few more questions I didn’t get a chance to answer which I will address in a future post. Thanks for all who tuned in, and look for future live Q & A sessions later this fall and winter!