Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: You have to take me to show according to the
Speaker 2: code of the Order of the person.
Speaker 1: Your return to show was not part of our negotiations
Speaker 1: nor our agreement.
Speaker 2: So I must do nothing.
Speaker 1: And secondly, you must be a pirate for the Pirate's
Speaker 1: code to apply, and you're not. And thirdly, the code
Speaker 1: is more what you're called guidelines sell actual rules. Welcome
Speaker 1: aboard the black perde mis Turner.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court's new ethics code is sort of like
Speaker 2: the Pirate's code, more guidelines than actual rules. For the
Speaker 2: first time in its history, the Supreme Court has adopted
Speaker 2: a code of conduct, responding to pressure from a stream
Speaker 2: of ethics controversies that have undercut its public standing and
Speaker 2: shown a light on the justices friendships and financial dealings.
Speaker 2: But the code won't necessarily mean any changes in the
Speaker 2: way the nine Justices conduct themselves. In fact, the Justices
Speaker 2: basically admit that in the introduction, saying, for the most part,
Speaker 2: these rules and principles are not new. Joining me is
Speaker 2: constitutional law scholar David Souper, a professor at Georgetown Law,
Speaker 2: is anything different for the Justices today than last week
Speaker 2: because of this ethics code.
Speaker 1: This is in astute pr move, that's all it is. Well,
Speaker 1: they've done a number of disclosures of extremely questionable activities
Speaker 1: by several justices, most prominently Justices Thomas and Alito, receiving
Speaker 1: valuable trips other financial favors from rich, ideologically committed donors,
Speaker 1: many of whom had business in front of the Court.
Speaker 1: So the Court, I think, felt that it needed to
Speaker 1: do something. There were justices calling for an ethics code,
Speaker 1: and my assumption is that the compromise they reached between
Speaker 1: no ethics code and an ethics code was something that
Speaker 1: is in name an ethics code, but that has few
Speaker 1: with any of the functions of an ethics code.
Speaker 2: In the statement of the Court that precedes the code,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of griping about this misunderstanding that
Speaker 2: justices regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. Go figure,
Speaker 2: and it says the Court has long had the equivalent
Speaker 2: of common law ethics rules derived from a variety of sources,
Speaker 2: including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other federal judges,
Speaker 2: ethics advisory opinions, and historic practice. Does that statement mean
Speaker 2: that these are the same rules that Justice Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 2: for example, followed in accepting all those luxury trips, the
Speaker 2: underwriting of the RV, etc.
Speaker 1: The fact that he did that and that there has
Speaker 1: been no action about that on the Court suggests that
Speaker 1: this so called common law ethics rules are largely useless.
Speaker 1: If any judge on a lower court had done this,
Speaker 1: they would be facing serious problems.
Speaker 2: There's no enforcement mechanism at all in these rules, so
Speaker 2: the public can file a complaint or a review of
Speaker 2: alleged ethics breaches.
Speaker 1: That's correct. The failure of this code is twofold. One,
Speaker 1: its content is extraordinarily weak, and second, there is no
Speaker 1: procedure for enforcing it. It is certainly true that the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is not and should not be, subject to
Speaker 1: the executive branch or the legislative branch, but it could
Speaker 1: set up its own enforcement mechanism. It could, for example,
Speaker 1: as a process for people to file com plint, have
Speaker 1: an office that investigates those complaints and makes recommendations to
Speaker 1: the court, and a procedure for the Court itself to
Speaker 1: act on these matters. It could also have a procedure
Speaker 1: where a justice's behavior is particularly problematic of referring that
Speaker 1: information to Congress, which does have the power to begin
Speaker 1: impeachment proceedings.
Speaker 2: What happens if a lower court judge or an appellate
Speaker 2: judge violates the Code of Ethics. Someone complains that they
Speaker 2: violate the Code of ethics. What happens? Then?
Speaker 1: There are a number of things that can happen. They
Speaker 1: can be removed from the case that causes the problem
Speaker 1: against their will by the chief judge of their court
Speaker 1: or by other judges on the court if they're themselves
Speaker 1: the chief judge. They can be investigated and potentially sanctioned
Speaker 1: or unethical conduct, and the matter can be referred to
Speaker 1: Congress for impeachment proceedings. In Congress does impeach lower court judges.
Speaker 2: There have been a lot of complaints about the justices
Speaker 2: not recusing themselves in cases where it seems like they should.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to recusals, the Justices include a
Speaker 2: line that's not in the Code of Conduct for United
Speaker 2: States judges. It says, quote, the rule of necessity may
Speaker 2: override the rule of disqualification. Tell us what they mean
Speaker 2: by that.
Speaker 1: What they are basically saying is that even if they
Speaker 1: have a conflict of interest, or some other compelling reason
Speaker 1: why they shouldn't sit on a case, that the desirability
Speaker 1: of having nine justices sit on a case may justify
Speaker 1: disregarding that conflict of interest. The rationale is that while
Speaker 1: we have many lower courts and many lower court judges,
Speaker 1: and most lower courts don't sit as a complete body, Ever,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court or it is unique, and if you
Speaker 1: have a decision rendered by less than all of the justices,
Speaker 1: it may not get five votes for any result, and
Speaker 1: that leaves the state of the law uncertain. That's a
Speaker 1: problem the Supreme Court has dealt with many times over
Speaker 1: the years when justices have properly recused themselves for any
Speaker 1: number of reasons, and occasionally it does create pickups in
Speaker 1: the law or uncertainties. But the same thing can happen
Speaker 1: when all nine justices sit and they can't agree on
Speaker 1: any one resolution to a case. So this is not
Speaker 1: a huge problem, but it does signal a lack of
Speaker 1: seriousness of that ethic.
Speaker 2: Well. Also, better to have a hiccup in a case
Speaker 2: than to have a justice sitting who should be recused. Also,
Speaker 2: while lower court judges are told they quote shall disqualify
Speaker 2: when their impartiality might be questioned. The Justice has changed
Speaker 2: the word shall to should disqualify. So are their rules
Speaker 2: for accusal less stringent than the rules that they set
Speaker 2: out for lower court judges.
Speaker 1: Yes, they are. Indeed, the word shall does not appear
Speaker 1: anywhere in their code. It appears several places in the
Speaker 1: code for lower court judges, but nowhere in this new
Speaker 1: code for the Supreme Court. So they've chosen not to
Speaker 1: live by the standards they impose on lower court judges.
Speaker 1: The standards they impose on lower court judges are appropriate.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to see them loosened. But it's telling
Speaker 1: that they're unwilling to live by the same standards themselves.
Speaker 2: So let's take the major tax code case that's coming
Speaker 2: up where Justice Alito was interviewed a friendly interview for
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal by one of the lawyers. Under
Speaker 2: this code, should Justice Alito recuse himself from that case?
Speaker 1: The code is rather vague. I think as a matter
Speaker 1: of common sense, Justice Alito absolutely should. He was under
Speaker 1: public criticism and this attorney gave him help in defending
Speaker 1: himself against that public criticism, which is a very valuable thing.
Speaker 1: If I was being criticized the way Justice Leader did,
Speaker 1: I would prefer that friendly interview to one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So it is giving a justice something of great value
Speaker 1: as a case that's involving you as going in front
Speaker 1: of the court. It seems obvious he should refuse himself,
Speaker 1: but the code is so vague that it certainly does
Speaker 1: not compel him to do so and provides no means
Speaker 1: for the public to complain if he doesn't do so.
Speaker 2: Individual justices decide whether or not they should recuse themselves.
Speaker 2: Couldn't they have put a mechanism in where at least
Speaker 2: it has to be discussed with the rest of the court.
Speaker 1: They certainly could, and there's a precedent for this in
Speaker 1: Justice William O. Douglas's last years on the court. The
Speaker 1: other justice conclude that his mental capacities had decayed too
Speaker 1: much for him to cast the deciding vote on cases,
Speaker 1: so they all agreed they would not decide a case
Speaker 1: where his vote was crucial. They proceed normally where his
Speaker 1: vote didn't matter, but he would never be allowed to
Speaker 1: be the fifth vote on a case, and that was
Speaker 1: agreed to by the Liberal justices Brennan and Marshall, as
Speaker 1: well as the conservative ones. That same approach could be
Speaker 1: handled here. You could say that if a justice insists
Speaker 1: on sitting on a case where that justice is compromised,
Speaker 1: the other justices can act to reject the case, to
Speaker 1: cancel the court's granted review in the case.
Speaker 2: What does the code say about the acceptance of gifts.
Speaker 1: The code is very vague about that as well. It
Speaker 1: says that the justices shouldn't accept gifts or they should
Speaker 1: not participate in matters where their impartiality would be compromised,
Speaker 1: But it leads them to decide whether their impartiality is compromised.
Speaker 1: I could ask you about the merits of Bloomberg and
Speaker 1: you could say, well, I think I'm not a completely
Speaker 1: unbiased opinion. You could ask me about the merits of
Speaker 1: georgetowne because they will I have a completely unbiased opinion.
Speaker 1: But allowing people to decide that for themselves is contrary
Speaker 1: to the whole purpose of ethics tools.
Speaker 2: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show, I'll continue
Speaker 2: this conversation with Georgetown law professor David Super. Does this
Speaker 2: Code of conduct provide any more transparency into an institution
Speaker 2: that's been shrouded in secrecy? I've been talking to Professor
Speaker 2: David super of Georgetown Law School about how this new
Speaker 2: code of conduct will affect the actions of the justices,
Speaker 2: if at all, would this code have prevented the Conservative
Speaker 2: justices from a ten t that Federalist Society gali last
Speaker 2: week that was headlined by Justice Amy Cony Barrett.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't prevent much of anything, and it certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't prevent that. And a galla like that is raising
Speaker 1: money for an organization that is pursuing a litigation agenda
Speaker 1: before the Court that is directed at the Court, So
Speaker 1: you are helping fund one side of many cases that
Speaker 1: you will be hearing. That would seem to be entirely inappropriate.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't want a judge to be making contributions to
Speaker 1: the lawyers on either side, and being a headliner at
Speaker 1: a gala and boost ticket sales has the same effect transparency.
Speaker 2: So the Court has always been shrouded in secrecy. The
Speaker 2: public doesn't know how it goes about its work really
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, and that's been a critique of the
Speaker 2: Court and this there's no transparency in this either. There's
Speaker 2: no way to tell even whether a justice has violated
Speaker 2: the code. At least until a Pro public A story
Speaker 2: or something comes out about it. So there's just no
Speaker 2: way of knowing still whether they're following this or not
Speaker 2: unless we see, oh they went to the Federalist Society Gala.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this research by Pro Publica and others is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily exhaustive. They're often are going to be gaps in
Speaker 1: the information that they can't possibly fill, and there's no
Speaker 1: official that has any capacity to investigate anything that could
Speaker 1: fill those gaps. So no, this is not at all transparent,
Speaker 1: and this is going to lead to further erosion of
Speaker 1: public confidence in the court. Things of this kind that
Speaker 1: came out in earlier generations and the justice's careers. Justice
Speaker 1: ab Fortis was forced off the court or involvements with
Speaker 1: potential litigants that were far thinner than the ones we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now, and members of both parties and justices
Speaker 1: across the ideological spectrum insisted that he stepped down, and
Speaker 1: he ultimately did. We've completely changed our practices and our
Speaker 1: ethics standards are not keeping up.
Speaker 2: So at the end, it seemed to me like they
Speaker 2: sort of took everything back. We take it back, because
Speaker 2: they had a line from Justice Tom Clark in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine that judges must bear the primary responsibility for
Speaker 2: acquiring appropriate judicial behavior, and then the Court added the
Speaker 2: same is true for justices. So it's up to us.
Speaker 2: So all that we've just said means nothing.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's certainly true that the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: and must be the primary guardian of its ethics, but
Speaker 1: it does not have to be on an individual judge basis.
Speaker 1: If I'm trying a court case in federal district court
Speaker 1: and the judge assigned to my case does something unethical,
Speaker 1: something indicating an improper bias for the other side, I
Speaker 1: can ask that judge to refuse, and if the judge refuses,
Speaker 1: I can go straight to the chief Judge and ask
Speaker 1: them to order that judge to refuse. The way this
Speaker 1: is set up, it's entirely up to the individual justice,
Speaker 1: and there's no procedure for investigation, no procedure for presenting
Speaker 1: the facts to the other justices, no real opportunity for
Speaker 1: the other justices to act collectively to uphold the Court's ethics.
Speaker 1: This is pluding the Supreme Court's ethics at the lowest
Speaker 1: common denominator.
Speaker 2: So this has been years in the making. We've heard
Speaker 2: about they're working on the code. They're working on the code.
Speaker 2: Senate Democrats had open debate in a committee Judiciary committee
Speaker 2: about subpoenas for two allies of the Court's conservative justices
Speaker 2: who funded or arranged for luxury travel for Justices Thomas
Speaker 2: and Alito. Does it seem pretty convenient that this is
Speaker 2: coming out now? Are they hoping to stop with this
Speaker 2: code of ethics any congressional action and should they be
Speaker 2: allowed to well?
Speaker 1: The Court's announcement of this essentially presented as a pr move.
Speaker 1: They say that they've always been bound by ethical standards
Speaker 1: and this isn't changing anything, and that the only thing
Speaker 1: they're concerned with is public views, which they characterize as
Speaker 1: misunderstandings that they are behaving unethically. So I don't think
Speaker 1: we should think of this as changing. This is certainly
Speaker 1: a response to their public relations problems and attempt to
Speaker 1: have off congressional action. I don't see congressional action as
Speaker 1: terribly likely in the short term, because for now most
Speaker 1: Republicans have been rallying around the justices rather than holding
Speaker 1: them to the same standards that they held Justice Douglas
Speaker 1: and Justice Bordis. But this is certainly an effort to
Speaker 1: dislate the momentum of a push for ethics standards.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if this code is worse than no code,
Speaker 2: because it gives the Justices sort of cover the opportunity
Speaker 2: to say, well, we put out an ethics code, so
Speaker 2: Congress stay away and public rest assured that we are
Speaker 2: following ethics rules.
Speaker 1: I think it could go either way. People could be
Speaker 1: confused and thinking that this is a real ethics code.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it puts their beliefs out there
Speaker 1: in public. It makes very clear that they do not
Speaker 1: hold themselves the same standards as lower judges, and if
Speaker 1: that's their position, then we're entitled to debate that and
Speaker 1: decide whether we think that's acceptable.
Speaker 2: Credit Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who has been a vocal critic
Speaker 2: of the justices, said this is a long overdue step
Speaker 2: by the Justices, but a code of ethics is not
Speaker 2: binding unless there's a mechanism to investigate possible violations and
Speaker 2: enforce the rules. The honor system has not worked for
Speaker 2: members of the Roberts Court. You mentioned how if some
Speaker 2: of these scandals had happened in the past, there would
Speaker 2: have been so much pressure on the justices to correct things. Now.
Speaker 2: Pressure has just gotten us this toothless code of conduct.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if it's because there's no pressure from
Speaker 2: Republican lawmakers because they're so happy to have a court
Speaker 2: finally with a super majority of conservatives, and Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 2: might feel the same if the Court had a supermajority
Speaker 2: of liberal justices.
Speaker 1: Liberal justices and justices across the ideological spectrum were all
Speaker 1: in favorite getting read of Justice for us, even though
Speaker 1: he was very liberal and was replaced with a conservative
Speaker 1: by Richard Nixon, and the liberal justices Brennan and Marshall
Speaker 1: pushed Justice Douglas off the court because they thought he
Speaker 1: didn't have his faculties at a proper level. Republican justice
Speaker 1: didn't push Chief Justice Ranquist off the court when he
Speaker 1: was at least as impaired as Justice Douglas was at
Speaker 1: an end, So it's not completely symmetrical. There are good
Speaker 1: government values that have more saliens at the moment with
Speaker 1: Democrats than with republics. There are plenty of ideological Democrats
Speaker 1: that would put anyone up there and not care about
Speaker 1: the ethics at all. But there's a part of the
Speaker 1: Democratic coalition that's willing to be assertive about ethics, and
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing that very much among Republicans today.
Speaker 2: I always appreciate getting your viewpoint on these kinds of issues.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, David. That's Professor David Super of Georgetown Law.
Speaker 2: I'm Juan Gross and you're listening to Bloomberg. I just
Speaker 2: heard loudness almost like thunder tek twitches still on fire.
Speaker 1: We're being thrown in our directly a promise Aster group
Speaker 1: with their shields.
Speaker 2: You heard the sound of metal having Bobby.
Speaker 3: Robbie caught me out of the blue and said, you
Speaker 3: want to see the Nazis with me.
Speaker 1: I've been a.
Speaker 3: Litigator of New York City for more than two decades.
Speaker 1: Charlottesville actually shocked me.
Speaker 2: I wanted the toughest possible people to help expose that
Speaker 2: this was really a conspiracy.
Speaker 3: It wasn't some sort of freak accidents where this car
Speaker 3: ran into people. There was overt planning how to prepare
Speaker 3: for violence and make this appear as if its self defense.
Speaker 2: The HBO documentary No Accident chronicles the civil case filed
Speaker 2: after the deadly Unite the Right rally in August of
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen in Charlottesville. Virginia, who was filed against white
Speaker 2: nationalist leaders and organizations on behalf of plaintiffs who suffered
Speaker 2: injuries while counter protesting. Joining me is the lawyer who
Speaker 2: was co chair of the civil lawsuit that successfully held
Speaker 2: accountable the white supremacists responsible for the violence in Charlottesville.
Speaker 2: Karen Dunn a partnered Paul Weiss. She's written in op
Speaker 2: ed because in observing the protests happening around the US
Speaker 2: today related to the crisis in the Middle East, she
Speaker 2: noticed a disturbing theme. Karen, before we get to your
Speaker 2: op ed and today, to put it into context, tell
Speaker 2: us about the lawsuit over Charlottesville.
Speaker 3: Well, shortly after the events of August eleventh and twelfth,
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was the violence at
Speaker 3: the night Raat rally, we sued twenty four groups and
Speaker 3: individuals who we contended were responsible for planning and executing
Speaker 3: the violence that weekend, and the suit, you know, proceeded
Speaker 3: slowly at times, partially due to the difficulty in collecting
Speaker 3: evidence from defendants who did not always respect the rule
Speaker 3: of law, and partially because of COVID, but ultimately we
Speaker 3: were able to bring the case to trial. We tried
Speaker 3: the case in late twenty twenty one, and it resulted
Speaker 3: in a verdict against each and every one of the
Speaker 3: defendants of liability, and specifically, the verdict was they had
Speaker 3: engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence.
Speaker 2: The jury couldn't reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy
Speaker 2: charges over whether the organizers conspired to commit racially motivated
Speaker 2: violence or whether they had knowledge of it and failed
Speaker 2: to prevent it. Do you have any feel, I assume
Speaker 2: you talk to the jurors after the trial why they
Speaker 2: weren't able to reach a verdict on those counts.
Speaker 3: We actually were not able to talk to the jurors
Speaker 3: after the trials, So we're never going to know the answer.
Speaker 3: You know, our working theory is it was some sort
Speaker 3: of compromised verdict to get out by Thanksgiving, because because
Speaker 3: there was not a heck of a lot of difference
Speaker 3: between the state claims where the jury did find liability
Speaker 3: in the federal claims where they didn't, And so with
Speaker 3: the state claims, they found uh that there had been
Speaker 3: a conspiracy with every one of the defendants to commit
Speaker 3: racially motivated violence, and they awarded compensatory and punitive damages,
Speaker 3: which is very significant. And then they hung on the
Speaker 3: federal counts brought under the KKK Act, and so there's
Speaker 3: not really uh, you know, legally it doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 3: really make sense, but that's that's what they did, so
Speaker 3: there must have been some reasons for it.
Speaker 2: Juries don't always make sense. So, right, what happened as
Speaker 2: far as collecting damages? Did you collect any damages?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So the damages are still being litigated because under the
Speaker 3: Virginia State Statute there's a cap as to uh as
Speaker 3: to damages. So we're still litigating that and that will
Speaker 3: probably take some time to play out.
Speaker 2: One is serving a life sentence for murder. Is there
Speaker 2: money to be had?
Speaker 3: So we don't know, is the short answer to your question.
Speaker 3: You know, the individuals probably do not have very much money.
Speaker 3: The groups is a better question. We sued a number
Speaker 3: of white supremacists and neo Nazi organizations and they, like,
Speaker 3: we do have some money that the individuals wouldn't have.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the goals behind the suit was,
Speaker 3: you know, not just to go after Field, who of course,
Speaker 3: was the individual who drove the car into a group
Speaker 3: of peaceful counter protesters. And killed Heather Higher and injured
Speaker 3: so many other people. It was also to go after
Speaker 3: the leadership of the movement, and so that was the
Speaker 3: very interconnected web of individuals and groups who we.
Speaker 2: Sued forgetting about the money. What impact do you think
Speaker 2: the trial has had. Has it helped to quell white
Speaker 2: supremacy in any way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'll just take this in a couple of parts.
Speaker 3: One is, I think we know that there was a
Speaker 3: deterrent effect of the case. So Charlottesville that everyone's aware
Speaker 3: of was actually called Charlottesville two point zero, and that's
Speaker 3: because there had been a prior event called Charlotte'sville one
Speaker 3: point zero, and the idea was to keep coming back.
Speaker 3: There also had been prior to Charlottesville a different event
Speaker 3: in Berkeley called the Battle of Berkeley, and the white
Speaker 3: supremacist called Charlottesville the Battle of Charlottesville. So the idea
Speaker 3: was to have these battles as one catalyst to an
Speaker 3: eventual race war. That is one of the goals of
Speaker 3: some of these neo Nazi and white supremacist groups. So
Speaker 3: we know that the lawsuit had a deterrent effect because
Speaker 3: there would have been more of these events than they
Speaker 3: just did. Not happen. We also had a deterrent effect
Speaker 3: on the defendants in the case, who were you know,
Speaker 3: really leaders in the movement. That said, I think it's
Speaker 3: pretty clear that these were organizations, many of them still exist,
Speaker 3: and that the movement is you know, continues to exist.
Speaker 3: We didn't you know, wipe it out with this lawsuit, obviously.
Speaker 3: And I think that the movie is called No Accident.
Speaker 3: It was released on HBO on October tenth, so just
Speaker 3: very recently. The movie is a very good tool for
Speaker 3: people to see what are the motivations of these groups
Speaker 3: and also what are the tactics of these groups? And
Speaker 3: I think eventually, you know, the effect of the case
Speaker 3: and the movie will be to raise awareness so that
Speaker 3: people understand that these groups are coordinated, that they are connected,
Speaker 3: and that they're very tactical, and so you know, the
Speaker 3: awareness of that I think will help to reduce the
Speaker 3: amount of extremist violence that we see.
Speaker 2: So, Karen, you recently wrote an opinion piece. You wrote
Speaker 2: that white supremacists and neo Nazi groups are showing up
Speaker 2: at pro Palaced Indian rallies in this country. First of all, how.
Speaker 1: Did you discover that?
Speaker 3: Well, I looked on the Internet, for one, and you know,
Speaker 3: there are white supremacist groups that are really exploiting the
Speaker 3: divisions that have come to the surface following October seventh,
Speaker 3: and so they are showing up at events, and they
Speaker 3: are also you know, sort of celebrating what happened on
Speaker 3: October seventh. And I looked back at what some of
Speaker 3: the defendants in our lawsuits had to say, and you know,
Speaker 3: almost immediately after October seventh, many of them chimed in
Speaker 3: to commend what had happened, and the attacks were portrayed
Speaker 3: by hamas. And so one of the things that we
Speaker 3: learned as we went through the mountain of evidence that
Speaker 3: we unearthed leading to the violence in Charlottesville is how
Speaker 3: motivating to the white supremacist movement anti Smitism. And so
Speaker 3: the recent you know, dramatic uptick and anti semitism, anti
Speaker 3: Semitic incidents are up something like you know, almost four
Speaker 3: hundred percent presents a real opportunity for mobilization of the
Speaker 3: white supremacists and neo Nazi movements in America. One of
Speaker 3: the things that we learned in litigating the case in
Speaker 3: Charlottesville is that anti Semitism is used by white supremacist
Speaker 3: groups and neo Nazi groups tactically, which is to say
Speaker 3: that these groups hate all non white groups and their supporters,
Speaker 3: but they hate to Jews the most. And so there's
Speaker 3: actual guidance put out to white supremacist groups that they
Speaker 3: should use anti semitism to rally the troops to the cause.
Speaker 2: What can be done, what should be done?
Speaker 3: I think the reason to talk about these issues and
Speaker 3: to write about them is to really raise awareness. You know,
Speaker 3: we've obviously seen a historic uptick in anti semitism in
Speaker 3: the United States that resembles something more, you know, out
Speaker 3: of Europe of a different time, and there may be
Speaker 3: a temptation on the part of them to think about
Speaker 3: anti Semitism as a problem for Jewish people and only
Speaker 3: Jewish people. But what we saw in Charlottesville was anti
Speaker 3: Semitism Jewishers, you know, the chance Jews will not replace us,
Speaker 3: the chance of blood and soil to really mobilize a
Speaker 3: movement that is stilled of racial hatred for all non
Speaker 3: white groups, and that resulted in planned violence, extremist violence
Speaker 3: that you did not discriminate between one group or another.
Speaker 3: It was really aimed at all of us, and certainly
Speaker 3: you know, destroyed a lot of lives, injured a lot
Speaker 3: of people, terrorized a college town, and affected our whole country.
Speaker 3: And so the lesson that I think people ought to
Speaker 3: take from this is that this isn't a problem just
Speaker 3: for Jewish people or just for one group. This is
Speaker 3: a problem for everybody, and we have to be aware
Speaker 3: of that because if we're not, and these sentiments are
Speaker 3: allowed to fester and grow and spread, data is going
Speaker 3: to create opportunities for violence that will affect everybody. And
Speaker 3: the key thing that I'm trying to explain is that
Speaker 3: there is a coordinated, connected, and tactical movement of who
Speaker 3: wants to take advantage of those opportunities.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being on the show, Karen. That's Karen Dunn,
Speaker 2: a partner Paul Weiss, and that's it for this edition
Speaker 2: of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get
Speaker 2: the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You
Speaker 2: can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www
Speaker 2: dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law, and remember
Speaker 2: to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at
Speaker 2: ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're
Speaker 2: listening to Bloomberg,