News & Politics

Scandal: How “Gotcha” Politics Is Destroying America, Lanny Davis

Bill Clinton spinmeister Lanny Davis, now a partner in the DC office of a San Francisco law firm, has a new book, Scandal: How “Gotcha” Politics Is Destroying America .

Lanny, He Who Is Without Sin . . .

There is some irony in such a Democratic partisan pontificating about the need for more civil discourse. “That’s the point of the book,” Davis says, “for those of us who were part of the problem to own up to our responsibilities in creating a monster.”

But as a lawyer is Davis practicing what he preaches? In Portland, Oregon, Davis has been hired by Andrew Wiederhorn, who last November got out of prison after serving 15 months for looting a financial company. Davis’s mission is to convince the public that Wiederhorn was unjustly prosecuted.

Locals complain that Davis’s strategy has been to personally attack Wiederhorn’s prosecutor. Forbes says Davis’s role is “to peddle Wiederhorn’s claim of being wrongly victimized.”

Davis claims that prosecutor Lance Caldwell was on a personal vendetta and behaved unethically. Critics of Davis claim that the author who says we need more civil discourse is making money by defaming Caldwell.

Davis says his attacks on the prosecutor are justified. “Now you are talking about law-firm work,” he notes.

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