Minor schedule change: I’ll be publishing mailbag responses on Friday instead of today (which means there’s still time to get questions in). I hope everyone has a restful and reflective Juneteenth.
I had the opportunity on Wednesday to chat live with Andrew Weissmann, the former federal prosecutor and legal-affairs commentator, whose new book Liar’s Kingdom proposes ideas, inspired by foreign democracies, for amending our own laws to impose civil or criminal consequences on political candidates who tell Trump-like lies about elections.
Andrew crafted his proposals carefully to pass muster under our Constitution. They are thus meant to serve both as actionable responses to Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign of post-2020 lies, and as realistic prescriptions for discouraging copycats in the future. But the book hit the shelves just a couple weeks before Republicans in California and across the country asserted new false claims of fraud, in the vain hope of overturning the results of the Los Angeles mayoral primary, and installing a defeated GOP candidate on the general election ballot.
I was reading Liar’s Kingdom as that happened, and borrowed from it heavily in writing this piece, which argues California Democrats should pass a law that would effectively disqualify these election liars from seeking office in the state on future ballots.
So I wanted to both run my idea by Andrew, and stress test his more considered ones, which would, of course, be challenged and exploited by the very people we both seek to deter.
Some highlights:
Andrew explains why we shouldn’t simply assume that bad-faith actors would exploit election truth-in-advertising laws, either to disqualify innocent opponents, or tie them up in court. (20:11)
What can we do about softer forms of election denialism, which may not entail telling black-and-white lies, but can be just as corrosive to democracy? (31:26)
Would a civil disqualification penalty for telling election lies wipe out all the Republican officeholders in Congress who’ve echoed Trump? Or would this new framework be purely prospective? (39:42)
Why Brian has a musculoskeletal anatomy poster behind him. (51:10)
How the law and democracy together can work in tandem to make American politics much more honest than they are. (51:39)
It was a wonderful discussion, and I hope you’ll watch or listen, here or on your favorite podcast app.
