This story surprises me not in the least, as former representative Liz Cheney has the approximate respect for ethics of a wolf spider.
While vice chairwoman of the House committee “investigating” the January 6 Capitol riot (the correct term would be “exploiting”), Cheney used an encrypted phone app to directly communicate with witness Cassidy Hutchinson (above, with Cheney), who later changed her testimony. Cheney did this without alerting or having the permission and participation of Cassidy’s lawyer, a direct and serious violation of both legal ethics rules (Cheney is a member of the D.C. Bar and licensed to practice there) and Congressional rules as well.
Hutchinson was represented by D.C. attorney Stefan Passantino at the time, who says that he did not authorize the contacts with Cheney and was not aware of them until recently.
The D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 4.2 states that “a lawyer shall not communicate or cause another to communicate about the subject of the representation with a person known to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the prior consent of the lawyer representing such other person or is authorized by law or a court order to do so.” Indeed every bar’s rules state this, as do the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. It is one of the oldest and most strictly-observed legal ethics principles there is, pre-dating the first official set of legal ethics rules issued by the American Bar Association in 1908.
[I just added what follows to the previous post, but I want to highlight it. Like Brett Baier, I was slow on the trigger to come up with the proper response to Harris’s dishonest rant about Trump’s alleged reference to “the enemy within,” which occurs toward the end of the interview.]
Harris had some gall going on about Trump’s “enemy within” quote, which she and others, including the New York Times, mischaracterized. Here’s the Times [I think all Harris did is read the Times piece and adopted its spin.]…
[For some reason I can’t unembed the previous version of the video that worked this morning…]
I’m still waiting for a transcript, but if you were lucky enough to miss last night’s Kamala Harris Hail Mary interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, that’s the whole thing above. Harris arrived 10 minutes late for the interview and her staff cut it off early, so instead of the promised 30 minute interview with someone more prone to asking genuine questions than, say, The View’s panel of progressive dolts, Harris struggled through less than that. She is literally trying to run out the clock, perhaps a sound strategy when you’re ahead, but a cowardly when you are behind.
Observations:
Yesterday I opined that Harris has virtually nothing to support her argument for being President other than the irrefutable fact that she isn’t Donald Trump and that women should be able to kill their unborn children at will—and the President has almost no power to assist with the latter. Based on last night’s interview, I was literally correct. I expected Harris to be a little better prepared to issue some substance in the interview; now that I saw it, I don’t know what I was thinking. There literally is no substance to Harris or her candidacy, at least nothing she’s willing or able to express publicly. She really thinks she will get away with this, and that not being that Hitler/dictator/liar/super-villain/monster Trump is enough to win. Fascinating.
Harris did everything she could to avoid answering questions. constantly shifting to “But Trump…” I assume this was the agreed-upon strategy because she and her party think the American public is stupid and can’t recognize desperate deflection and fakery when it is right in front of their eyes. Maybe they are stupid. We shall see.
When Baier asked the obvious question about why Harris kept talking about “change” and “turning the page” when she, her party, and the man whose policies she endorsed without exception or reservations on “The View” have been in the metaphorical driver’s seat since 2021, Harris answered,
“Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country…”
Later she elaborated, sort of, saying “Let me be very clear—My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency. Like every new President that comes into office I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas.”
Then..
Baier: “[M]ore than 70 percent of people tell the country is on the wrong track. They say the country is on the wrong track. If it’s on the wrong track, that track follows three and a half years of you being Vice President and president Biden being President. That is what they’re saying, 79% of them. Why are they saying that? If you are turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.”
Harris: “And Donald Trump has been running for office since …
Baier: “But you’ve been the person holding the office!”
Harris: “Come on, come on!”
Baier: “Madam Vice President.”
Harris: “You and I both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”
Baier: “I actually don’t. What are you talking about?”
Harris: “What I’m talking about is that over the last decade, people have become …”
Baier: “But you have the lever of power!”
Harris: “But, listen, over the last decade, it is clear to me and certainly the Republicans who are on stage with me. The former chief of staff to the President, Donald Trump, former defense secretaries, national security adviser and his Vice President, one that he is unfit to serve that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and nd engaging in personal grievances and it being about him and…”
Baier: “Madam Vice President.”
Harris: “… instead of the American people. People are tired of that.”
Baier: “If that’s the case why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening?”
Harris: “This is an election for president of the United States. It’s not supposed to be easy.”
Baier: “I know, but if it’s as…”
Harris: “It’s not supposed to be a cake walk for anyone.”
Baier: “So are they misguided, the 50%? Are they stupid?”
Harris: “Oh, god, I would never say that about the American people. And, in fact, when you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he is the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He is the one who talks about an enemy within — within — an enemy within — talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”
Here’s another glaring example of how all Harris could do was deflect to Trump rather than discuss her own positions:
Baier: “So, are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates to detained illegal aliens on inmates to transgender?
Harris: “I will follow a law and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with — now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to on a medical necessity basis to people in the federal prison system and I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of, like, throwing, you know, stones when you’re living in a glass house.”
Baier: “The Trump aides say he never advocated for that prison policy and no gender transition surgeries happened during his…”
Harris: Well, you know what? You gotta take responsible for what happened in your administration.
Baier: “He had no surgeries happened in his presidency.”
Harris: “It’s in black and white.”
Baier: “So, would you still advocate for using taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgeries?”
Harris: “I will follow the law, just as I…”
Baier: “But you have a say in…”
Harris: “I think Donald Trump would say he did.”
Baier: “You would have a say as president.”
Harris: “Like I said, I think he spent $20 million on those ads trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people whereas a $20 million on that ad on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issue that effect the American people, it’s really quite remote and, again, his policy was no different. Look at where we are though.”
Oh.
This was Harris’s “But Trump!” deflection when Baier asked when it was that she began to figure out that President Biden was losing marbles at a rapid rate, and why she kept insisting he was as sharp as ever:
“Joe Biden I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people. Brett, Joe Biden’s not on the ballot, and Donald Trump is … I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump.”
I would like to read or hear the reasoning by a Democrat zombie that Harris was effective in this interview. I ban commenters on Ethics Alarms who argue like she did.
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias (or coordination of the news media through Axis High Command)! The memo went out that the official spin to be put on this debacle is that Harris showed she was strong and combative. The official word-of-the- day was “feisty” which—I’m sure it was a coincidence—shows up again and again. Baier, naturally, is being criticized for being “rude” by trying to get Harris to answer his questions. “Kamala Harris Arrived for a Fox Interview. She Got a Debate,” whined the Times, as if the mainstream media hacks haven’t treated every interview with Trump or Vance as an adversarial encounter.
Over at Alhouse’s place, the supposedly “fiercely” objective blogger’s reaction to the interview was “I’ve been waiting for Harris to do a tough, challenging interview, and it was painful to watch the deflection and evasion. The main defense seemed to be to make Bret Baier look bad because he interrupted. Terrible.” In the almost 200 comments to her post so far, only “Inga,” the Democrat troll that Althouse tolerates for some reason, was anything but disgusted with Harris’s performance. Inga wrote in part, “Harris did an excellent job. Much much much better than Trump if he were to have been interviewed by Rachel Maddow or someone on MSNBC or CNN, that’s why he is chickenshit to face a tough interviewer.”
How deluded or dishonest must someone be to call Harris’s performance “an excellent job”?
Baier is getting criticized by Trump supporters because he didn’t ask other questions, such as grilling Harris about the FBI report just released that showed a much higher murder rate in the U.S. under Biden than had been reported before. If Harris had submitted to an hour-ling interview as she should have, Baier would have been able to ask more questions.
ADDED…
Harris had some gall going on about Trump’s “enemy within” quote, which she and others, including the New York Times, mischaracterized. Here’s the Times [I think all Harris did is read the Times piece and adopted its spin.]
With three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he would use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Mr. Trump framed Democrats as a pernicious “enemy from within” that would cause chaos on Election Day that he speculated the National Guard might need to handle.
A day later, he closed his remarks to a crowd at what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a stark message about his political opponents.
“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”
How the Times gets from those comments to “use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him” I don’t know. Do you? He predicted Democrats rioting, and that is exactly what others (including me) have predicted. The National Guard quells riots. If the National Guard is called out on Election Day, it will be the Biden Administration that does it.
Harris said that Trump called “the public” the “enemy within,” which makes no sense and isn’t what he said. He called her party “the enemy within.” That’s what it is, as I have documented here for months and years. Trump is, as usual, sloppy with explaining himself, but if there is anyone who has no standing to criticize him for characterizing her party as “the enemy within,” it is a member of this…
…administration. As for “They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible,” that is true. Beginning with executing an investigation of the President based on false information from the Democratic Presidential campaign, Harris’s party has executed two impeachments that did not conform to Constitutional and established norms, corrupted a Presidential election by loosening ballot security standards, held a partisan star chamber inquiry over a single riot at the Capitol to establish the falsehood that Trump attempted an “insurrection,” and used partisan prosecutors to pursue multiple legal cases against their most formidable political opponent. Then they appointed a Presidential candidate with no participation by the voting public whatsoever, Soviet-style.
Trump’s statement was essentially correct. The Democrats have become a pernicious enemy of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the political process.
My otherwise intelligent and perceptive family member who has been in Stage Five Trump derangement for months has been arguing lately that Trump is senile, is on the same trajectory to dementia as Biden was when he was elected, and is mentally unstable, even more so than while he was President when one of the Axis “Get Trump!” coup schemes was to invoke the 25th Amendment regarding Presidential disability. This seemed so obviously contrived and desperate for someone like her (intelligent, ethical, independent B.T., as in “Before Trump”) that I wondered where it was coming from.
Last weekend, reading various propaganda outlets and listening for five minutes at a time to CNN and MSNBC, I realized that the Harris campaign’s “OMIGOD OUR PHONY CANDIDATE STRATEGY ISN’T WORKING!!! ARRGHHH!!” freakout had entered a new phase. Suddenly there were essays, articles and pundit rants about how Trump was mentally unstable and his “condition” had taken a turn for the worse. This was, like so many other simultaneous eruptions of almost identical rhetoric and arguments from Axis High Command in the past, pretty obviously a coordinated strategy decision. It was also a yet another example of Democrats employing blatant projection: this is the party that deliberately foisted a senile Presidential candidate on the nation, engaged in an almost four year cover-up using a complicit news media, and was finally exposed when Biden’s episodes of “Ready for the Home” became too frequent and alarming to deny.
Oh, I know there are some just as bad; indeed, the pro-abortion ads being run in Maryland against Republican Larry Hogan in the U.S. Senate race are at this despicable level. The Kaine spot, however, reminds me of Mary McCarthy epic take-down playwright Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
Let’s see…
The Supreme Court didn’t “rob” any women of anything. It sent the issue of abortion regulation to the states, where it always belonged.
The issue isn’t a “right to choose.” The issue is how far anyone’s right to kill another human being can or should be acknowledged. There is no right to “choose” to kill those who inconvenience us. Using deceptive phrases that deliberately disguise the rights, parties and stakeholders in a political dispute is deceit, a lie.
Abortion is legal in every Southern state. That it is not is an outright, indefensible lie.
More deceit: “If Republicans take control in Washington and pass a national abortion ban” is like saying, “If Republicans take control in Washington and legalize slavery.” A national abortion ban is not going to happen, can’t happen, and would almost certainly be ruled unconstitutional if by some miracle it did. Legal scholar and ethicist William Hodes made that case powerfully in his article published on the Federalist Society website, pointing out that any such federal legislation would be unconstitutional, as it would exceed the scope of congressional power.
Of course women would have “options.” Finding solutions to the result of their own actions, or the actions of others, that doesn’t involve killing nascent lives is an excellent, ethical option.
“The Republicans won’t stop there” because they’re evil!EVIL!This is shameless demonizing and fear-mongering. They’ll legalize cannibalism! They’ll make everyone wear their underwear on the outside! How can the women in that video look at themselves in the mirror?
Contraception is protected under the Constitution. IVF involves complex biological and ethical issues, but there is no indication that there would be sufficient support in the Republican Party to ban the procedure. Yet this ad states as fact that the GOP would do it.
That’s pretty impressive hysteria and dishonesty for a 30 second ad. And this was the guy Hillary Clinton picked to be her Vice-President.
I don’t see how anyone who has any standards for honesty in our elected officials can vote for some who puts out deliberate falsehood like these and “approves” them. I know, I know, it’s “the ends justifies the means,” the unethical fallacy that has swallowed the whole Democratic Party.
Anything to be able to kill unborn human beings at will.
The basic story is here. Christopher Rufo, the same conservative writer and gadfly who exposed ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s serial plagiarism leading to her resignation, determined that “several passages” in Vice President Kamala Harris’ first book (2009’s “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer” with co-author Joan O’C Hamilton) were taken from Wikipedia and other sources without proper attribution.
“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”
—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party in a Columbus Day address.
Boy, what an idiot.
But to be fair to Kamala, I’m sure she would now say that she loves Columbus, and grew up in a middle class neighborhood.
What the European explorers ushered in was discovery, freedom from religious oppression, innovation, progress, and let’s just to cut to the chase, civilization. Had there been no United States, Harris and her relatives would probably be grease spots or serving as Nazi slaves today. But never mind, why should a basic comprehension of history, science and anthropology get it the way of a candidate for President of the United States vilifying the nation she aspires to lead? When does her campaign start handing out the “Make America Primitive Again” caps?
“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its spherecontracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something betterto do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened bythe Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.
“Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.”
Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today…”
…though we know the answer: Trump isn’t 50 points ahead in the Presidential race, and possibly not ahead at all, because…
He has personally alienated so many voters by his manner, careless rhetoric and unapologetic conduct that they would vote for anyone but him, almost literally.
He has been unethically sabotaged by the mainstream media for almost a decade, creating clinical Trump Derangement coast-to-coast, and
He has been demonized by Democrats in totalitarian fashion, resulting in two near assassinations, a crippling partisan investigation based on a Hillary Clinton hit job; two partisan impeachments, and Big Lies that have been repeatedly refuted but that Democrats and the news media continue to promote.
Unprecedented false casting as a looming proto-Hitler who will, if elected, end democracy.
I was going to mention the attempt by the Axis media to cover for CBS in the epic betrayal of the American public and its journalistic duties it engineered in the Harris “60 Minutes” interview. Now I’m glad I waited. The entire Axis is trying to spin this into what it is not, and what it is is a flaming example of how hard the news media is working to foil democracy and bring down Donald Trump, as it has been since the 2016 election.
First, there were initially headlines describing “accusations” of unethical editing of Harris’s interview, or “Trump complaints about “alleged” editing. Those were lies, of course: this was res ipsa loquitur all the way: “60 Minutes” aired one version of Harris answering a question that showed her in typical incoherent Gabby Johnson mode (“Rarit!”), and another version with the identical video of the question and a completely different response, that is, a relatively coherent one by Harris.” “60 minutes” did this. There’s no “alleged” about it.
Then the news media shifted into a different strategy, because, to be blunt, the American news media is scum.
Part of the strategy is to ignore the story and hope it goes away. The New York Times hasn’t written about the “60 minutes” in-kind contribution to the Harris campaign at all yet, and the story has been out there for four days. At all!
You know what? I’ve had it. Anyone who tries to argue here that the Times isn’t a dangerous, sinister propaganda mouthpiece for Democrats is also scum, and I’m taking the gloves off. A smug asshole who was banned here long ago keeps sending in asinine illicit posts defending the Times and accusing me of bias for pointing out reality. Screw him, and anyone tempted to take a similar road on my ethics site. The New York Times sits on a story that reveals that an iconic name in American news is now little more than a cheap Democratic propaganda agent, and this isn’t news that’s fit to print?
For the Times to bury CBS’s cheat is almost as unethical as the cheat itself.
The Washington Post is taking the other approach. The Post wants to make the story about Donald Trump, who was the victim of the “60 Minutes” Harris trick. We see this deflection device all the time, it’s the “Republicans pounce” cheat. Jim Treacher neatly described it four years ago, and Instapundit has encored hit regularly since:
Low-life Rolling Stone headlined the issue this way: “A Pouty Trump Cancels ’60 Minutes’ Interview, Calls for CBS to Lose Broadcast License.” After what CBS did to bolster Harris, Trump would have been certifiably mad to agree to let “60 Minutes” manipulate his interview. A Presidential candidate is “pouting” when he objects to a major news show deliberately altering an interview video to help his opponent? See above. Scum.
Aside:The Harris campaign is denying that it was involved in the cheat. “We do not control CBS’s production decisions and refer questions to CBS,” a Harris campaign aide told multiple outlets including Fox News and Variety. Hilariously, any response by the Harris campaign in such matters resembles the old puzzle about the two tribes on an island where one tribe always lies and the other always tells the truth. 2024 Democrats, and the Harris campaign particularly, lie constantly. It’s answer regarding whether it was complicit in the “60 Minutes” scam would be identical whether it was or was not conspiring with CBS. You can guess what I think, presumably.Continue reading →
I told you so, not that anyone paying attention couldn’t. Ethics Alarms noted long ago that this would be the most hysterical election season ever from Democrats, and that as the election grew nearer, their desperation and absence of any ethical compass would have them crossing lines of civility, fairness, and decency no previous version of their party had ever crossed. The LBJ’s infamous nuclear war countdown TV ad sliming Barry Goldwater? The 2024 Axis says “Hold my beer!”
The signs are everywhere. Late, late last night, I happened upon CNN, as one of their wild-eyed hosts conducted an alleged news interview as if it was a Kamala Harris rally, going off on her own rant about “Trump’s lies.” The news media isn’t even pretending to be practicing journalism rather than partisan advocacy; “the stakes are too high,” you see.
The stakes are their pals, allies and co-conspirators losing power. Can’t have that.
Ethics Alarms 