First, the most significant bit of news that went under the radar this week
The DOJ charged former FBI official Charles McGonigal with concealing $225,000 in cash that he received from an outside source. McGonigal was also charged with taking money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, who, if you recall, was one of Paul Manafort’s clients and considered a link in the Trump-Russia story.
McGonigal joined the FBI in 1996. In 2006, he became the field supervisor of a counter-espionage squad at the Washington Field Office. From 2017 until 2018 he was the Special Agent in Charge of FBI counterintelligence efforts in the New York Office.
Considering what was going on with Comey and the New York office of the FBI during the 2016 presidential election (the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails) through 2018, and all Deripaska’s connections to Trump’s campaign through Manifort, your mind may be blown.
To connect the dots, I suggest reading Yale professor Timothy Snyder’s substack post (this entry is free). Snyder says “We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.”
A John Eastman Refresher
Before I talk about the latest with John Eastman, you may want a refresher on his role in Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. I wrote this piece for The Washington Post shortly after we learned of the existence of the now-famous Eastman memo. (If you click here, you can get past the paywall; I made the article free through my subscription.)
This week, the State Bar of California has filed eleven disciplinary charges against Eastman. (The document is here.)
State Bar disciplinary actions start when someone files a complaint. The Bar then investigates. Lawyers are expected to abide by the code of professional responsibility for lawyers. (I guess that’s the cue for lawyer jokes 😂). If there is a basis for the complaint (often there isn’t) the Bar first tries to resolve the issue informally. If that isn’t possible, they bring disciplinary charges and refer the case to the State Bar Court for a disciplinary hearing. One possible outcome is disbarment. There is also an appeals process if a person wants to contest an adverse judgment.
Here’s the chronology of Eastman’s complaint:
October 5, 2021: A bipartisan group filed a complaint against Eastman with the California State Bar.
March 2022: The California State Bar announced a John Eastman ethics investigation.
January 26, 2023: The Bar filed charges against Eastman
(I added the chronology because a few people on Mastodon asked me how long these things take. They take a long time.)
Getting disbarred is a big deal. Lawyers facing this possibility generally hire a defense lawyer. This is particularly difficult for someone like Eastman who spent decades building his legal credentials. This is from the Federalist Society website:
A reader on Mastodon asked me this:
Given Eastman’s credentials, why would he align himself with Trump and risk everything?
The likely answer is that he shares Trump’s political views and (like William Barr, Pompeo, and others) believes that Biden and the Democrats are more dangerous than the hard-core Republican views. Federalist Society members hold many libertarian views: They believe much of the federal government is illegitimate and unconstitutional. They think that liberals are destroying America.
People can be extremists, and dangerous, and have genuinely held political views.
No need for evidence beyond a reasonable doubt in disbarment proceedings
It will obviously be easier to disbar Eastman than convict him in a criminal court. The standards of proof in a criminal trial are high because people have a constitutional right to life, liberty, and property. Criminal punishment can deprive people of property (fines), liberty (prison sentences), and maybe even life (capital sentences).
There is (obviously) no Constitutional right to practice law, so the state bar can (and does) use lower evidentiary standards.
Basically, the California Bar allegations against Eastman are that he misled courts and knew or should have known his proposed actions were illegal. The charges include failing to support the laws and constitution, and misrepresentations that arise to the level of “moral turpitude.”
Aside: Don’t you love the phrase “moral turpitude? I realize that I have never used this phrase. What a lost opportunity, right? “Go to your room! You are engaging in acts of moral turpitude!”
Here are the facts given in the state bar charges (which I’ve edited and summarized):
Throughout December Eastman filed various court documents on Trump’s behalf alleging fraud even though he knew (or should have known) the allegations were false.
On or about December 23, 2020, he wrote his two-page memo falsely asserting that Pence had the legal authority to reject electoral votes.
January 2, 2021: He appeared on the “Bannon War Room” radio program with tens of millions of listeners and lied about (nonexistent) election fraud.
January 3, 2021: He wrote and sent a 6-page legal memo to an attorney and strategic advisor to Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign with the intention of providing legal advice. This memo, too, stated that Pence had the legal authority to reject electoral votes. The memo also made false claims about election fraud.
January 4, 2021: Eastman met in the Oval Office with Pence, Pence’s White House Counsel Greg Jacob, and Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short to discuss Eastman’s bogus theory that Pence could “take unilateral action that would result in Trump’s re-election.” Pence pushed back and said he did not have any such authority.
January 5, 2021: Eastman met again with Jacob and Short. During the discussion, Eastman conceded that the positions he was urging Pence to take were contrary to historical practice, violated several provisions of statutory law, and would likely be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.
[Important note: It is acceptable for lawyers to suggest a course of action contrary to established law and historical practice if they believe their theories have a legal basis. This is how lawyers get the Supreme Court to overturn past precedents.]
For example, in 1896, the Supreme Court held racial segregation constitutional if the separate facilities were equal (which they never were). For decades this was the established law. When Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall set out to end segregation in America, they began by filing lawsuits alleging that facilities were unequal. After succeeding with these, they went after segregation itself by claiming that the 1896 case was wrongly decided. They went to the Supreme Court with Brown v. Board of Education. The theory they put forward, that separate can never be equal, was contrary to established law–but they had a good faith belief, which turned out to be correct, that the Supreme Court would agree with them.
This is why the allegations against Eastman are that he knew his theories had no legal basis and were on their face absurd and if that wasn’t enough, the course of action he proposed was based on lies about election fraud.
January 6, 2021: Eastman spoke to the crowd on the Ellipse at the “Stop the Steal” rally and told a bunch of lies. (Lying is legal, unless the lies were “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.”)
January 6, 2021: Throughout the day, Eastman had a running text correspondence with Jacob in which he kept insisting that Congress should not declare Biden the winner but should “send the matter back to the states.”
Eastman Lost his Job
By January 13, 2021, under “increasing scrutiny” over his controversial involvement with Trump’s election claims, Eastman agreed to retire from Chapman University. He also had classes he was scheduled to teach at the University of Colorado Boulder canceled.
In the fall of 2021, The New York Times reported that, in a series of interviews, Eastman said that “he was continuing to investigate reports of election fraud and was writing a book on the subject.” He “insisted that his two-page memo, which he said he hastily wrote while on Christmas vacation with his family in Texas, had been taken out of context, but defended his view that Mr. Pence could have done far more to help Mr. Trump.”
“I won’t be cowed by public opposition to it,” he said.
By the end of the year, he was raising money for his legal defense. He launched a subscription SubStack account. And on the Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo, he raised money for his legal bills, asserting that he’s being persecuted for trying to ensure a free and fair election. When he was reported to the California State Bar for ethical violations, he said that he was being “targeted by hard core leftist activists … seeking to have him disbarred and thereby lose his source of income.”
He was arrogant. He was confident. He claimed he did nothing wrong. That was in 2021. In 2022, it became clear he was the subject of a criminal investigation.
What We Know About The Criminal Investigations
June 22, 2022: federal authorities seized John Eastman’s cell phone.
July 21, 2022: We learned that Marc Short and Greg Jacob, lawyer to Pence, appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.
Eastman himself appeared before the Fulton County grand jury and is reportedly a subject of that investigation as well. Once he understood that he was under investigation, he decided to shut up.
Eastman stands on the Fifth Amendment in Depositions
In a deposition taken on March 2, 2022 in connection with a civil lawsuit brought by Bennie Thompson, Eastman stood on the Fifth in response to every question “on the advice of counsel.”
Similarly, he stood on the Fifth when testifying before the January 6 committee.
The “I Was Stupid” Defense
According to a more recent New York Times piece, the crux of Mr. Eastman’s defense is that he was simply a lawyer offering advice, and that he was acting in good faith, and in fact, he still believes everything he said.
On Thursday a Wall Street Journal writer reported that he would be holding a press conference to defend himself. I was eager for the press conference because nothing would be stupider than offering a press conference and Eastman is not stupid.
Eastman did not, in fact, hold a press conference.
The “I really believed everything I was saying” defense is unlikely to work in a state bar proceeding where the evidentiary standards are lower. “I was stupid” is not a good reason to keep your law license. (Cue more lawyer jokes.)
On the other hand, in a criminal trial, “I really believed my nonsense” has a better chance of working, depending on the mens rea requirement for whatever charges are ultimately brought against Eastman. (I am not saying it will work. I’m saying that the defense has a better chance in criminal court where the evidentiary standards are higher.)
“It’s a Political Witchhunt” Defense
Political prosecution is when the government uses prosecution to (1) frighten potential supporters of a political movement, (2) discredit a political movement, and/or (3) compel its members to spend time, money, and energy avoiding conviction and imprisonment.
Given the language from Eastman’s fundraising pleas, it appears that he will offer a political prosecution defense: He will claim that the legal theories he put forward leading up to January 6, 2021 were informed by his political views, and were perfectly legitimate, and he is being targeted by left-wing activists. He will claim that his political views are aligned with Trump’s and he believed that Trump should remain in office, so he was looking for a loophole in the law to allow it. In other words, he will claim that he was being a zealous advocate for his client (Trump) and people want to prosecute him because he holds federalist society ideals.
Whether he can succeed with a political prosecution defense in court depends on whether or not there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to support any charges.
I expect his defense to work in the Court of Right-Wing Opinion. People who donated to Eastman’s legal fund wrote things like this: “All witch hunt. Mike Pence is BAD. Wish you the very best of everything you do” and “Thank God for patriots like Prof. Eastman.”
This brings me back to a point I often try to make: If the evidence is there, Eastman needs to be prosecuted—but don’t make the mistake of thinking that these prosecutions will end the threat of right-wing extremism in America. This is particularly true because the outcome of a trial is always uncertain. What if Eastman is acquitted? It can happen. Look at the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse.
“Charging decisions are imminent”
This week, Fulton County District Attorney Willis asked a court not to release a grand jury report because “charging decisions are imminent” and releasing the report could interfere with the rights of potential defendants to a fair trial. I expect Trump and Guiliani to be among those indicted in Georgia.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State Law School, who has been watching the Fulton County investigation closely, said this:
It is unlikely that Eastman avoids prosecution if Willis proceeds with conspiracy to commit election fraud charges. That said, this might be one of the harder cases for her to bring without a clear narrative about who was pulling the strings and when.
The question on everyone’s mind: Who will be charged in Fulton, Georgia?
I just want you to know that I hate waiting. I hate suspense. I want to know now.
Keeping an eye on the neighborhood and waiting for his people to get home. (JJ also dislikes suspense.)
Teri Kanefield’s weekly updates are the sole political-opinion pieces I read on a strictly regular basis. I would not miss one. Like many, I find her presentations impressively well-organized, consistently logic-based, and credentialed by a lawyerly resumé, helpful for outlining the actual Legal elements involved.
Years of Social Media (which I initially pursued solely for post-2008-election purposes) have conditioned me to look for some sort of an “upvote” or a “like” button. I don’t necessarily (if tautologically) need to take action in response to each week’s post, but I feel compelled to convey some expression of gratitude for each one.
I’ve now responded in a number of ways, directly and indirectly. I’m writing this particular comment in order to convey the motivations behind my “number of ways.” Pre-Musk, Twitter re-Tweets. Direct emails. Library check-outs of Kanefield books. A donation to the Brennan Center. Etc.
I don’t know that I can bring enough substantive thought of my own, to justify crafting a new “Comment” here, week after week after week. (Maybe I just lack the necessary turpitude, moral or otherwise.)
I by no means seek to intrude or to impose, or anything of the like. I’m just looking for constructive—and less-publicly sycophantic—ways, every week, to offer sincere expressions of elevated gratitude, in these Dark Times, for all of Teri Kanefield’s pro-democratic work:
Thank you.
Regards,
(($; -)}™
This was lovely. thanks you.
You’re welcome.
(($; -)}™
Teri, when you discuss mens rea, you say that Eastman’s best defence in the criminal case is that he truly believed that his arguments were right. However, you don’t mention the reported (J6 committee) conversation in which he said “With this Supreme Court, we lose 7-2. OK, maybe 8-1”. (I hate to think what’s behind “this Supreme Court”, given how extreme it already is. Also, I’d like to know whether his hypothetical “1” was Thomas or Alito…)
Given that he knew that it would lose in the Supreme Court, can he really have a claim to good faith belief in the legality of his arguments? I think he went on to say that the point was just to delay so they could (paraphrasing) further pressure State legislatures.
Why do you reference Rittenhouse as an example of a case wrongfully decided? I watched almost all of the trial and all of the video evidence I could find and I came to the opposite conclusion. What am I missing?
I intended it as a warning that indictments do not always result in convictions.
People calling for “indictments” seem to think that an indictment = conviction.
You have indicated that you believe he should have been found guilty in the past though.
https://mstdn.social/@Teri_Kanefield/109303421924053943
I think it’s horrible that he killed person after person and wasn’t in enough danger to kill people to protect himself but I wasn’t at the end of their beatings so I wouldn’t know.
I also felt that they indicted him in a hurry because of the pressure from public opinion and thought the prosecutors were sort of flailing desperately during the trial. I think I wouldn’t have said any differently even if I were part of that jury, despite how I feel about what happened.
Is it that you feel that he’s morally guilty, as I do, or do you have reasons to think he shouldn’t have been acquitted? Or am I jumping to conclusions from a single sentence you posted?
Even LeCarre couldn’t dream up a spy novel like this one. As Eva Gabor said on Green Acres, “Ruth is stranger than friction”. There must be literally hundreds of people either compromised or on the payroll or both that a thorough investigation may well destroy people’s faith completely. Wasn’t that the reason LBJ did not go after Nixon for treason?
Hi Teri. I am at a loss to understand what Eastman and these other supposedly intelligent people where trying to do with this scheme. Yes, sending the electoral votes back to the States would, I guess, cause a constitutional crises and place the 2020 election results into question, but how would that accomplish the goal of keeping Trump in office? Did they think an unprecedented constitutional crisis would be resolved in the 2 weeks before January 20? That seems ludicrous. On 1/20 if either Biden or Trump were not inaugurated, we would have the inauguration of President Pelosi. The constitution makes that clear. I don’t understand the rationale that these people used to put their careers and their reputations in jeopardy in advancement of this scheme. I just don’t see a path where Trump would be able to remain in power without the military escorting him out of the Oval Office under the orders of President Pelosi.
I don’t think we ever get President Pelosi. If there is a deadlock in the Electoral College, with no candidate getting a majority, then the Presidential election gets thrown to the House among the top three vote-getters in the EC. The House votes by state delegations, with each state getting 1 vote, which means Trump would win in this scenario (Republicans controlled more state delegations, even though Democrats had more Representatives overall). If the House can’t determine a winner by Inauguration Day, the Senate will meanwhile have chosen a VP-elect by simple majority vote from the top 2 candidates, and that person will get sworn in as President on Inauguration Day.
But that’s all assuming that no one got a majority in the EC vote. In actual fact, the EC met on the designated day, and Joe Biden got a clear majority of the votes cast. While there are provisions allowing Congress to decide between competing slates of electors if there is a genuine dispute (this came up in the 1876 election, where there were also disputes about who constituted the legitimate state government in some of the Reconstruction states), there is no Constitutional provision for “EC provided a clear result and Congress just refused to accept it.” Nor is there a provision for “The current VP sends the election back to the states and asks them to certify a different slate of electors.” Those don’t seem to be possibilities the Founders considered.
In actual practice, if Congress had tried such shenanigans, I would expect Joe Biden to go ahead and take the oath of office at noon on January 20th, possibly televised from a secure location, and the military leadership to then say “our oath is to the Constitution, not the specific individual serving as President, and we believe Joe Biden has satisfied the Constitutional procedure to be elected and inaugurated and is now our Commander in Chief. We will follow his orders.” (It helps that Trump had pissed off a lot of the top brass, and was an obvious loose cannon as commander, but the Constitutional forms are also important. A more competent authoritarian would have spent the previous four years maneuvering his supporters into key positions in the military before attempting his coup, but Trump thankfully didn’t do that.)
“I just want you to know that I hate waiting. I hate suspense. I want to know now.”
I thought JJ usually waited for the UPS driver.
Anyway, nice closer & thanks again for your post!
“There is (obviously) no Constitutional right to practice law, so the state bar can (and does) use lower evidentiary standards.”
So, there is also obviously no Constitutional right to hold public office, yet all the methods proposed for dealing with sworn-in insurrectionists seems to go through a criminal process. From the peanut gallery, a few folks were suggesting various preponderance-of-the-evidence (more likely than not) level procedures, e.g. a Congressional resolution-of-finding. None of these took hold. It always went back to a criminal finding of seditious conspiracy — beyond a reasonable doubt.
SO:
Given that before the adoption of the 14th amendment, rejoining states were required to pass laws to enforce section 3 and afterwards they were not required to do so, it seems clear that the expectation was that the 14th amendment was sufficient for the purpose.
My question (for which you likely have no answer): why isn’t it sufficient?
Do we need implementing law(s)? If so, we know R’s will filibuster it ‘cuz they clearly do not want to be held to account.
“(I added the chronology because a few people on Mastodon asked me how long these things take. They take a long time.)”
But still faster than the DoJ. 😉
But a lot simpler. Compare: Look at whether Eastman behaved unethically v. solving the most complex crime and the most far-reaching conspiracy in history.
The question should be: What is taking the California bar so long?
Excruciating care, with emphasis on “excruciating”!
“I just want you to know that I hate waiting. I hate suspense. I want to know now.”
Me, too.
Thanks Teri, excellent information.
I do have a question:
“Lying is legal, unless the lies were “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.””
Of course that’s true. But isn’t it the case that otherwise legal (or in any case ‘not illegal’) actions can be overt actions in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy? In this case conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding-the certification of the election by Congress. If stopping the certification by any means necessary was the goal, it wouldn’t be necessary that the lies be incitement to riot, but rather just motivating the crowd to intimidate and delay the certification. (There was at least one theory among those guys that if the certification didn’t happen on January 6 or if Congress adjourned, the certification couldn’t happen at all).
Wouldn’t the fact that he was lying and knew he was lying contribute to the prosecution’s case if they could demonstrate the conspiracy to delay the vote existed?
Yes, but in that case, the lie becomes evidence of another crime instead of the crime itself.
Hiding behind a tree isn’t a crime, but if you are hiding behind a tree because you are evading a police officer after you hit a pedestrian with your car, then you are committing a crime when you hide behind a tree even though by itself, hiding behind a tree isn’t a crime.
Marcy Wheeler, over at Emptywheel, thinks Snyder may have got some key details incorrect. Read it here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/01/24/no-charles-mcgonigal-likely-isnt-responsible-for-that-part-of-the-russian-investigation-you-hate/
He also fails to mention that the DOJ (the government) made the arrest.
Thanks for so clearly dissecting the Eastman case(s). I wonder if he’d get a more favorable Bar Court outcome were it in some other state besides California. Or is it really as slam-dunk as it appears (I know anything can happen, but at least on the merits of the facts and standard for evidence, I naively believe they’ll rule against him). I’m relieved that the group filing the complaint is about as bi-partisan and as blue ribbon as you can get – hard for Eastman to claim persecution by leftist extremists.
Thank God for Tim Snyder. I remember Comey’s bewildering Hillary’s email announcement two weeks before the 2016 election, and its sudden close soon after – one more thing out of the blue that made your head spin – if it wasn’t already spinning in the turbulence of that particular November. He links to
Snyder’s article (thanks for linking) makes the tragic point that Adam Schiff, who’s one of the best experts in this matter, and who until recently was in a good position to open a formal investigation, will be sidelined by (the disgustingly political) Kevin McCarthy. I’m starting to believe the claims of the scholar Snyder cites, Kathleen Jamieson (Univ of Penn) that Russia gave Trump the election. Formerly I agreed they influenced it, but now I can believe how they were masterful in shifting public opinion at the right moments.
So good thank you for all your work
Thank you very much for your continuing explanations. One silver lining to come out of the 2016-2020 era (and particularly 2020 onwards) is the newsletters written by well informed and articulate people such as yourself to help others understand what is happening.
ps I believe the past participle of the verb ‘to mislead’ is spelt, and pronounced as, misled.
Moral turpitude… this phrase is, today, unjustly uncommon. The efforts of a third of our nation present “… unjust departure from ordinary social standards…”, planned “…such that it would shock a community” formed by two-thirds of our nation. I think I’ll work it in to my vocabulary more often. Sorta rolls nicely off the tongue, too. Thanks for all you do, Teri!
Eastman is a fascist and losing his law license is the least thing that should happen to him. I wonder if the song Georgia on My Mind keeps playing in his head?
I really appreciate that Teri educates us to the fact that there is a very real intellectual battle happening ( that *has* been happening throughout our history) re interpreting the Constitution and the role of government and that the reading supported by the CATO Institute and the Federalist Society is more akin to Alito than it is to Marshall and that things aren’t as cut and dried as we tend to believe in our liberal bubble. I apologize for the length of that sentence
Thanks so much for this cogent, clear and helpful explanation of the week, and the link to the professor’s article. The waiting is hard, but I hope it will all amount to something; and you’re right, “moral turpitude” is a doozy, and isn’t used enough!
I expect that Eastman’s various defense needs will be quite expensive, and far exceed his net worth believed about 1.5 million but rather than beg for money from saps one would think that Leonard Leo and the Federalist society could find him some dark money to pay his bills…oh wait, they probably are but fleecing the sheep is just a thing they can’t help themselves from doing.
Excellent and insightful as usual. You have the gift of making complicated topics easy to understand.
Thanks, Teri. Trying to be patient but ready to “get the show on the road”. I feel like I’m holding my breath waiting for an avalanche of legal proceedings. I guess JJ and I have something in common.
GULP. Now if someone can connect all the dots between what Timothy Snyder has connected, what the NYT revealed about Barr-Durham and Trump running again, we have a real spy novel in the making.
John Eastman has been living here in New Mexico. I suppose he has to live somewhere, but I’d like him to be a lot farther away.
It’s hard to imagine that someone would throw away such a stellar career for a lowlife like TFG. Teri must be correct, that Eastman truly believes in T’s kind of political views.
Teri – once again, thanks for this, cogent and comprehensive.
However, the RW propaganda unit works in sound bites, to make it easy for the base. One of the reasons they succeed so well is that it’s almost impossible to explain what the realities of any given situation are in very, very short and simple terms. By the time you have got two minutes in, the eyes are glazing and they are focussed only on the “Political witch hunt! Hoax! Satanists!” theme. It’s one of the biggest problems the Democrats have – their base is ready (and able) to read and learn – the GOP base is not. They would sooner accept Jewish space lasers than connections with Russia. Any thoughts on how we break the reality into more digestible pieces?
Unfortunately, a great many Democrats and other non-right-wing persons are very ready to think simplistically and condemn quickly. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen or personally heard that, I could fully fund massive voter registration in several states.
As for messaging, the Democrats have some newer leaders who are very good at it. We already knew about AOC and Buttigieg. Add Hakeem Jeffries: https://newyorktheater.me/2023/01/07/rep-hakeem-jeffries-abc-of-american-values-the-constitution-over-the-cult-freedom-over-fascism-maturity-over-mar-a-lago/
Thank you Teri, for another calm and clear dissection of stuff that matters.
Disbarment in California will make no difference. Some Southern state bar will admit him. He will wear the disbarment like a badge of honor and say he was “persecuted”. Praying Georgia files the criminal charges we need here.
Regarding McGonigal – I’m wondering if there aren’t more payments to be revealed.
So far he seems to have gone relatively cheap. He also doesn’t seem to have realized that those aren’t Sex Utility Vehicles that GSA provides.
Moral turpitude rings my jingle bells!
I wanna know and I wanna know now.
Belly up to the dis-bar, O!
Thanks, Teri. I agree that the waiting is hard, but despite that I’m very glad that the DOJ and the state prosecutors are getting it right. Yes, the Kyle Wittenhouse verdict was a shocker, but with respect to the January 6th trials, they’ve really had bulletproof cases once they indicted as evidenced by the convictions and guilty pleas so far. I’m confident in their work on this.
What I don’t like even more than the suspense surrounding the ongoing investigations and trials is that it’s happening at all. The hard-right threat is all too real. We watch the results of it every single day, and we can’t stop working to save our democracy. The alternative if we eventually lose it completely is too horrific to contemplate.