The Daily 202: Five Reagan White House lawyers endorse Biden, saying Trump has ‘fomented hatred
James Hohmann
While the surge of new coronavirus cases dominates the closing days of the presidential campaign, five lawyers who worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House want other Republicans who may be torn about how to vote next week to remember what they believe will be President Trump’s enduring legacy.
“Mr. Trump’s lawless, amoral and dishonorable ethos makes a mockery of the democratic accountability that is fostered through respect for law and our constitutional principles,” they write in an open letter today explaining their decision to endorse Joe Biden. “He has overtly refused to honor the independence of the judiciary, failed to acknowledge the authority of Congress and the corresponding constraints imposed on a president by the separation of powers, demonized the free press that speaks truth to power, and undermined due process and the fair administration of justice by relentlessly politicizing the investigation and enforcement of the criminal law.”
The signatories are Peter Keisler, Robert Kruger, Alan Charles Raul and J. Michael Shepherd, who were all appointed by Reagan to be associate White House counsels, as well as Nicholas Rostow, who was the legal adviser to the National Security Council. Raul and Rostow also served under President George H.W. Bush.
“Chanting ‘lock him (or her) up’ or ‘enemy of the people’ are statements we could not have imagined Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush – or any president before this one – uttering about a political opponent or about some of our leading news organizations,” they write. “Those ugly sentiments are the very antithesis of American ideals and echo the authoritarian tyrants that every previous president would have challenged.”
Their letter, shared exclusively with The Daily 202, highlights a few of Trump’s many departures from Reagan’s brand of Republicanism, which some conservatives hope can be reclaimed if the incumbent loses in four days. Among the starkest contrasts that many Reagan veterans see between the 45th and 40th presidents are Trump’s embrace of big government, softness toward a revanchist Russia, peddling of false moral equivalency, destructive trade wars, nativism and isolationism.
“We believe Joe Biden can help reverse the un-American miasma foisted upon the country by Donald Trump,” the Republicans write. “A President Biden could help heal the country’s civic, social and racial divisions by exhorting us all back toward our constitutional ideals and away from the demons that divide us. As President Reagan proposed in his famous Westminster Address, we need our leaders to rededicate themselves ‘to foster the infrastructure of democracy’ that Trump and his enablers have degraded.”
The letter was organized by Republican Voters Against Trump. One of the leaders of the initiative is Bill Kristol, who was chief of staff to Education Secretary Bill Bennett during the Reagan administration. The group has also collected scores of videos in recent months from other registered Republicans criticizing Trump. Among those who have recorded videos are alumni of the Trump administration, including former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor (who outed himself this week as “Anonymous”); Elizabeth Neumann, another DHS alum; and Olivia Troye, Vice President Pence’s former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.
Biden is not an obvious choice for people who worked in the Reagan White House Counsel’s Office to support. In the Senate for all eight years of Reagan’s presidency, the then-senator from Delaware opposed the bulk of Reagan’s legislative agenda and blocked conservative judicial nominees like Robert Bork in ways that still rankle many on the right. “While we may not agree with all policies of a Biden Administration,” they write, “we support Joe Biden with high expectation that he will be a president for all Americans.”
Trump and his “large ego” were viewed warily inside the Reagan White House, according to documents stored in the Reagan Library archives in Simi Valley, Calif. The New York developer even paid to run full-page ads in The Washington Post in 1987 criticizing Reagan’s foreign policy. Trump wrote: “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.”
In 1983, a request came in from a Trump associate for a presidential telegram congratulating Trump on the grand opening of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. A lawyer in the counsel’s office wrote “NO” and added that it would be inappropriate for Reagan to endorse a “commercial” venture. There were several other episodes like this.
To be sure, there are many Reagan administration alumni who back Trump, including Attorney General Bill Barr, the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former attorney general Ed Meese, whom Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year.
Other distinguished alumni of the Reagan White House Counsel’s Office include Chief Justice John Roberts, who was an associate counsel from 1982 to 1986. He is obviously not endorsing anyone in this election, although he has defended the independence of the judicial branch in the face of relentless attacks by the president on various judges.
Several Republicans from the old guard with backgrounds in the law have spoken up in the homestretch of this contest. On Tuesday, 20 former U.S. attorneys — all of them Republicans — called Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country” and supported Biden. The letter was signed by prosecutors appointed by every GOP president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Trump. Dozens of GOP national security experts signed a full-page newspaper ad in August endorsing Biden over Trump.
The Trump campaign brushes aside the various Republican defections as irrelevant and notes that polls show the Republican rank-and-file overwhelmingly back the president. “No one should be surprised establishment elitists are supporting Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley.
Several other former Republican elected officials have also endorsed Biden, including former Arizona senator Jeff Flake and former Ohio governor John Kasich. So has Cindy McCain, the widow of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain. The 2012 GOP nominee for president, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), said this week that he did not vote for Trump. But he declined to tell CNN whether he cast a ballot for Biden or someone else. George W. Bush has not publicly endorsed either candidate, but the New York Times reported in August that the former president and his wife, Laura, would not support Trump’s reelection.
The five Reagan alumni end their open letter by expressing hope that Biden can break what they see as a fever that grips Washington that is different from the virus. “While President Trump has fomented hatred and sowed distrust, we hope a President Biden will evoke Reagan’s shining city on a hill ‘teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace’ and re-connect us with the ‘better angels of our nature,’” they write. “Trump is responsible for breaking our common bonds, and Biden is especially well positioned to restore them.” |
