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No matter our intentions, we were complicit. We collectively perpetuated an anti-democratic leader by conforming to his assault on reality. We may have been victims of the system, but we were also its instruments. No matter how much any one of us pushed back from within, we did so as members of a professional class of government lawyers who enabled an assault on our democracy — an assault that nearly ended it.
We owe the country our honesty about that and about what we saw. We owe apologies. I offer mine here.
— Erica Newland, an attorney who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department from 2016-18, in an opinion piece published in the New York Times. Before offering her apology, she notes that if more DOJ attorneys had “refused to participate” in Trump’s agenda, then he’d have been left with lawyers like those who have been carrying out his election litigation: “lawyers who can’t master the basic mechanics of lawyering.” Newland serves as counsel with Protect Democracy.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.