Untrue, Unfair, & Unproductive: The Attacks on Hillary Clinton as Defense Attorney

“Hillary Clinton is an advocate for rapists. Not for women and children.” Those are the closing words of a meme that has been shared millions of times on Facebook since last May. The meme refers to the real case of Thomas Taylor, whom Hillary Clinton represented as court-appointed counsel in 1975 on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl named Kathy Shelton. Shelton recently appeared at Donald Trump’s side in an unorthodox press conference before the second presidential debate. The false narrative that Clinton is somehow more pro-rapist than pro-women is disappointing and problematic within the confines of the 2016 presidential race. But the thought process that sustains this narrative extends much further into the American psychology than just one election. The false dichotomy upon which it relies – that you are either pro-survivor or pro-rapist – only serves to undermine the very ideals upon which America was founded: that everyone is owed due process and a zealous legal defense.

The notion that Hillary Clinton is forever precluded from being a true advocate for women and children because of the 1975 Taylor case is ludicrous. The alt-right can devalue the currency of truthfulness as much as it wants, but the facts remain clear all the same. Clinton was appointed counsel for Taylor and dutifully fulfilled her ethical and legal obligations; at the end of the day, Taylor pled guilty to lesser-included-offenses. Now, by no means is Clinton a perfect feminist; her feminism hasn’t been as inclusive of women of color and LGBTQ folks as it should have been over the years. But despite her shortcomings, Hillary Clinton has nonetheless dedicated her life in public service to fighting for women and children.

Some may dismiss this meme and the attacks on Clinton for defending Taylor as simple partisan politics at the end of a hard-fought election. But the truth is that these false attacks are not just unfair to Clinton as an individual. They also reflect an even greater shortcoming of our society: the de-valuation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the spirit that energizes it – the belief that justice and due process require that the accused always receive a zealous defense, no matter how heinous the charge.

When we think of American constitutional values, people instinctively reach for the First or Second Amendments, unfairly neglecting the Sixth Amendment in the process. John Adams – who later served as the second President of the United States, by the way – represented and won acquittals for six of the eight British redcoats charged for their role in the 1770 Boston Massacre. Even our favorite Founding Father here on the Hill, Alexander Hamilton, made a name for himself in his early legal career defending Loyalists to the Crown against lawsuits from American revolutionaries. So I applaud Adams and Hamilton, and I applaud Hillary Clinton, just as I applaud any other individual with skin thick enough to handle indigent criminal defense work.

I still remain deeply troubled, however, by cases like Thomas Taylor’s. They bring to the surface a conflict that I do not yet know how to resolve: the tension between supporting survivors of sexual assault and simultaneously remaining committed to the due process of law and the right of a zealous defense for all. Perhaps the only people who get a worse shake in the criminal justice system than criminal defendants are the survivors of sexual violence themselves – the very people whom the police and prosecutors are supposed to protect and serve. Coming forward is discouraged; police reports reach dead ends; rape kits get “lost” or destroyed. Sexual violence is a real, credible issue – on this college campus and others, as well as in cities and towns across the nation. So it’s easy, perhaps even natural, to see the world in black and white: you’re either pro-survivor or pro-rapist.

But as Thoreau once wrote, “Nature is hard to overcome, but she must be overcome.” This false dichotomy mistakenly pits principles of feminism against principles of criminal justice reform. It chills support of one movement in an attempt to bolster the other, and it needs to stop. For it is an equally American principle that we do not sacrifice our ideals when they come under pressure. That is when we double down on our principles: when it’s hard, when it’s inconvenient, when it hurts.

We must remember the spirit that John Adams brought to court in the Boston Massacre trials – even, and especially, when dealing with an issue as emotionally fraying and important as curbing sexual violence. I applaud those who fight for the noble and important cause of advocating for survivors of sexual assault. All the same, I applaud those who fight for the cause – one equally noble and important – of advocating for the rights of the accused in all judicial proceedings, including the right to counsel and to due process.

So let’s hope that there comes a day when a constructive alliance can be forged between these two groups of passionate advocates. That day may not be today. It may not be tomorrow either. But one thing, surely, remains clear. When we sling hateful rhetoric, when we peddle unfounded lies and misleading half-truths, and when we denigrate a woman for her commitment to our constitutional rights, we all take two steps backwards.

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Conor O’Shea ’18 is a Philosophy and Government double major, and a registered Independent in the state of New Hampshire. The author’s views are his own and not necessarily the views of any organization for which he currently works, or for which he has worked in the past.

Edward Snowden 2.0

Following the September release of Snowden, a biographical movie about the ex-Central Intelligence Agency employee turned traitor, information surfaced in the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream publications about yet another former government employee stealing classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA).

In early October, authorities released details to the public about a former NSA contractor who, according to the Justice Department (DOJ), amassed millions of pages of government records over the past two decades, including top-secret information about military operations.

Prosecutors arrested and charged Maryland resident Harold “Hal” Martin III with theft of government property and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. A new Department of Justice filing will also likely charge Mr. Martin with violating the Espionage Act, an offense that could result in the death penalty.  

Martin, a former naval officer, most recently worked as a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp., a job that placed him inside some of the government’s most secret programs at the NSA and the Pentagon. According to the DOJ, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Martin’s home and car back in August, they found “thousands of pages of documents and dozens of computers and other storage devices and media containing, conservatively, fifty terabytes of information.” Fifty terabytes is more than enough space to hold up to 500 million pages of stolen information. Additionally, the FBI found that much of the stolen information was stored in plain sight. For instance, documents, including an e-mail chain marked “top secret,” containing “highly sensitive information,” was found in Martin’s car parked outside his home.

Before a recent federal court hearing, the DOJ released a 12-page document detailing new allegations about the scope of Martin’s theft. The document also states that he had become heavily armed, accumulating ten weapons, and had taken sophisticated steps to cover his tracks.

Meanwhile, his attorney, Jim Wyda, maintains that Mr. Martin is a patriotic American who has served his country. Former associates describe Martin as a harmless hoarder who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

His actions, however, raise questions about his motives and suggest that he was capable of sharing U.S. secrets with the nation’s adversaries and may have put American lives at risk. It is not yet clear whether Martin stole the classified information with, or for, another person or country. Nor have authorities uncovered his plans for the stolen information.

In an effort to get Martin released from custody, his legal team has argued that he “is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, and to the extent either of these factors is a concern, they can be sufficiently addressed with specific release conditions.” However, the DOJ is worried that Martin “presents a high risk of flight, a risk to the nation, and to the physical safety of others.” He worked on highly sensitive programs, including those involving an arsenal of cyber tools the government has amassed to use against other countries as well as cyber weapons that were in development.

This case, like Edward Snowden’s which preceded it, brings much needed attention to the dilapidated state of informational security in our government agencies. If those agencies do not find a way to stop hacking and espionage attacks, our enemies will eventually get their hands on classified information that could threaten the very existence of our nation. 

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Americans are in the throes of a national conversation about sexual assault, and yet somehow they are collectively missing the point. Earlier this month, President Obama signed into law a sexual assault survivors’ “Bill of Rights,” meant to formally acknowledge survivors’ rights concerning sexual assault evidence collection kits. This piece of legislation establishes the federal standard that survivors do not have to pay for their sexual assault kits, that they must be notified of any test results from the kits, and that these kits must be preserved for the length of the applicable statute of limitations, whether or not survivors pressed assault charges.

For the first time, sexual assault survivors now have clearly enumerated rights under federal law. Admittedly, this bill does not go very far in the short term. But it establishes a precedent for handling evidence kits that will, hopefully, influence sexual assault laws at state and county levels, thereby effecting concrete change for sexual assault survivors and in the treatment of their evidence kits.

Instead of becoming a national discussion on the future of sexual assault legislation or prevention, the conversation about this historic bill was overtaken by the scandal of a leaked audio clip from 2005 of an Access Hollywood reporter and the future Republican presidential candidate, in which Donald Trump bragged about his ability to sexually assault women due to his celebrity status.

Since the breaking of this audio clip, at least fifteen women have stepped forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault or harassment. Several celebrities and politicians, notably Michelle Obama, Robert De Niro, and Senator Mitch McConnell, have also publicly condemned Trump for his statements and past actions concerning women.

Unfortunately, the majority of discourse about this scandal centers on what it means for the state of American politics or the fate of the Republican Party. Those are serious concerns, of course, but what of the women whom Donald Trump sexually assaulted, who felt silenced by his power, money, and celebrity status? What of other sexual assault survivors across the country, men and women, who are fighting to be believed by their families, by society, and by the law?

Exposing Trump’s repulsive acts and rejecting his “locker room talk” about pursuing women is incredibly important to ensuring that rape culture is not normalized in our society. It is time, however, to shift the spotlight from Donald Trump and instead focus on bringing justice to sexual assault survivors. This scandal could be the opportunity America needs to publicly address its sexual assault problem and offer meaningful solutions and help to survivors of sexual assault.

According to the Department of Justice, 284,000 Americans are sexually assaulted per year. This number does not even account for those crimes that go unreported.

State governments could be diverting more resources into the handling of rape kits, the subject of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, which wait in huge backlogs across the country. The slowness in testing this evidence potentially allows rapists to roam the country free. American schools could also introduce sexual assault prevention education, among other courses of action.

Donald Trump’s disgusting comments and actions should not be just another excuse to talk about him or to bemoan the state of American politics. Instead, Americans should use this opportunity to address their prevailing attitudes about sexual assault and to have open conversations about consent, respect, and prevention. It would be irresponsible to let this moment become just another of the many instances of public outrage over Trump’s actions, which resulted in neither change nor solutions.

Flannery O’Connor Takes Us For A Ride

The percentage of people who say they believe in God, pray, go to religious services, embrace religious practices or find their faith meaningful has declined over the last 50 years. A growing group of Americans do not believe in God or any organized faith whatsoever. In many communities, unbelief is even considered smart: religious conviction is perceived as strange, burdensome and outdated.

This is the context in which American Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor penned her fictional books and short stories, many of which are set in the 1950s and 1960s rural South. O’Connor wrote about the human condition and the state of the weak and the faithless. She wrote about unbelievers, lukewarm souls, narcissists and the spiritually illiterate. She wrote about racists, white trash, busybodies, snobs, fake intellectuals, poor folks, and beaten down and marginalized African Americans. Above all, O’Connor wrote about the unraveling of faith in America.  

O’Connor’s works reveal that she believed America, particularly the South, was haunted by religion, but that its people were experiencing spiritual mediocrity, cynicism and emptiness – a rough-and-tumble nihilism. She argues that people might attend services or preach that their faith matters, but that many are just lying to their neighbors and to themselves. To her, they are just checking the box with a faith bordering on the tepid or the pathetic. God is deemed irrelevant. She suspects that many people would not recognize a theophany, or sign from God, if it slapped them in the face, and that countless souls are existentially lost and fumbling in the dark.

Through her works, O’Connor tries to show people what the world would look like without faith and religion. Nothing would be of real consequence – beauty, truth, sacrifice, love, history, death, honor and sex wouldn’t matter in the least. O’Connor was also determined to show the results of that prevailing attitude in the faces of the despairing, the fallen, the pretenders, the depraved and the lost.

Flannery O’Connor’s method of accomplishing this is not subtle; she knocks her readers over the head and tries to open them up to the frozen depths of their lethargy through comedy, tragedy and sometimes even violence. She writes: “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures.” Throughout her life, O’Connor was bent on making her readers understand the importance of faith by shocking them with outlandish characters, striking scenes and painful revelations, as in her book Wise Blood.

She populates this work with an over-the-top cast of characters: peculiar loners, false preachers, rudderless souls, unabashed skeptics, spiritual zombies, men in gorilla suits, killers, zookeepers, sex addicts, mummified dwarfs, prostitutes and con men – the grotesque, the ignorant, the humorous, the marginalized and the saved, sometimes one and the same. Reading Wise Blood is akin to watching a Mad Hatter with Southern, fundamentalist tendencies hold a revival, or an Alice stand-in slither down the rabbit hole while running an illegal moonshine operation. Her characters are bigger than life, sometimes amusing, sometimes violent, and downright biblical in their ability to fail over and over again in a multitude of ways. Her characters are more than memorable; they are unforgettable.

In Wise Blood, as in all her writing, O’Connor asks her readers to pay attention to their intentions. At the time, religious understanding and conviction were already on the decline and indifference abounded. But O’Connor was staunch in her belief that apathy and nihilism wouldn’t give a person any hope, just a bucket of despair. Wise Blood and the rest of her works were her literary offering to those who found themselves like Dante: “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself astray in a dark wood where the straight road had been lost sight of” (Dante’s Inferno).

Not much has changed since O’Connor passed away in 1964. Religious practices and church attendance are still on the decline. Perhaps there is also now a more virulent strain of atheism or disdain for the demands of belief flowing through American culture. Reading Flannery O’Connor, however, is still wildly popular. She tapped into something, then and now, of the American dissatisfaction with what the culture and the cultural elites have failed to offer – the mysteries and revelation of faith. She remains the “voice crying out in the wilderness.”

GOP: Forget Trump, Save the House & Senate

The greatest reality television show in human history is over. The overwhelming majority of data reveals that Hillary Clinton has virtually secured the presidency. The latest polling data from the Real Clear Politics average shows Clinton leading nationally 48.1 percent to Donald Trump’s 41.4 percent: a gap of 6.7 percent. Just one month ago, Trump had gotten within striking distance and was trailing by only one point.

Additionally, the current Real Clear Politics electoral college map has Clinton solidly with 256 Electoral College votes and only 170 for Trump, while 112 votes remain a toss-up. Pennsylvania and Virginia, two crucial states for Trump, both lean in Clinton’s favor. She leads Trump by 6.7 percent in Virginia and 8.4 percent in Pennsylvania. In order to be competitive, Trump would need to secure victories in Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio; Clinton currently leads by about 2-3 percent in all three states. According to New York Times data from The Upshot, Clinton now has an 89 percent chance of winning compared with just 11 percent for Donald Trump. Unless Wikileaks’ Julian Assange releases further incriminating information or she has another major medical episode, we’ll have a President Clinton in January.

Interestingly, Trump has ceased campaign activity in Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s home state of Virginia. Trump’s former Virginia campaign chairman, Corey Stewart, expressed outrage regarding the decision to concede the state: "I think it's totally premature for the campaign to be pulling out of Virginia after so much work and all the hundreds ... of hours of volunteer time and thousands and thousands of volunteers." Historically, Virginia has been a solidly Republican state for every presidential election from the 1970s until the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. However, changing demographics and urbanization in Northern Virginia have transformed it into a swing state. President Obama won it in 2008, the first time a Democrat won Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964. Obama went on to win there again in 2012.

Following the release of Trump’s 2005 lewd comments about women, a number of prominent Republicans have withdrawn their support for him. His former primary opponents Carly Fiorina and Governor John Kasich no longer endorse him. Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman, and Congressman Jason Chaffetz have all retracted support shortly after the release of the tape. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put out a statement expressing utter disgust with Trump: “Enough! Donald Trump should not be President. He should withdraw. As a Republican, I hope to support someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.”

Let’s be practical: it’s time for the Republican National Committee to stop devoting its precious time, money, and resources to Trump’s hopeless campaign. Instead, top GOP officials should direct all resources to maintaining the Senate majority. The Real Clear Politics polling averages indicate that the Democrats and Republicans each have 46 Senate seats that are safe or not up for election, leaving eight toss-ups, seven of them currently held by the Republicans. It appears Republicans will maintain control over the House of Representatives. 218 seats are needed to secure a majority, and the GOP currently has 231 safe seats. There are 15 toss-up seats, 11 currently controlled by Republicans. It’s unlikely the GOP will lose control of the House, but current polling shows that their majority will weaken.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan recently stated: “The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities.”  It’s also time for more GOP elected officials to publicly denounce Trump in order to salvage the legitimacy of the party going forward.