The New York Times’ New Low

When Hillary Clinton ran for the presidency, one accusation thrown at her was that, as a lawyer, she defended a rapist. “She was a rapist lawyer!” shrieked the fools. Even worse, she wasn’t doing so as a public defender, compelled by her position to take on such a horrible client, but she chose to do so. What did it prove about Hillary? That she was a lawyer.

The New York Times published a news story, a distinction that’s growing less meaningful by the minute, about the lawyer who would be so scummy, so awful, as to defend “Infowars” Alex Jones. Who would be such a disgusting horrifying lawyer?

Lawyers for Neo-Nazi to Defend Alex Jones in Sandy Hook Case

The lawyers have names: Marc Randazza and his associate, Jay Wolman. If Marco’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been written about here numerous times. He’s my friend. He’s my lawyer. He’s also Andrew Anglin’s lawyer. He’s represented the “sort of” people the New York Times would deign to call “good people.” He’s represented people the Times crowd despises. Just like Hillary representing a rapist. Just like me representing murderers and drug dealers. This is what lawyers do, represent the people in need of representation.

But we chose these clients? A rationalization has appeared to distinguish the virtuous public defender-types, who have no choice in the horrible people they defend, from those of us who do so out of choice. It’s a lie, and the downtrodden public defender-types are as guilty of perpetrating this lie as is the New York Times.

We would all be thrilled to defend the Pope from drug charges, but he doesn’t get indicted too often. On the other hand, the people who do get indicted have a right to counsel too. Defending the Constitution, and putting the government to its burden of proof, is what we do. For Marco, defending the First Amendment is what he does.

As with the people accused of a crime, First Amendment challenges are raised most frequently with people whose speech isn’t widely beloved, as least by the New York Times. So it involves a Neo-Nazi like Anglin? Of course, just as the old ACLU defended the Neo-Nazis at Skokie in 1979. Only a blithering idiot would conflate defense of First Amendment rights with the embrace of the client’s ideology. Elizabeth Williamson is such an idiot.

Marc Randazza and Jay Wolman of the Las Vegas-based Randazza Legal Group are defending Mr. Jones in Connecticut. The lawyers also represent Andrew Anglin, the co-founder of the Daily Stormer, who is being sued for harassment by a Montana woman after Daily Stormer followers subjected her to a torrent of anti-Semitic slurs and threats. Mr. Anglin has cited Mr. Jones as an early influence.

Anglin has absolutely nothing to do with Jones. But, you whimper, if he chooses to represent white supremacists, it “tells” you something.

If they choose to commonly represent white supremacists and insane trolls, well that was their choice. It would be a disservice to NOT have it noted that these lawyers have no qualms with defending the scum of society if they get paid for it.

But so what if some random non-lawyer demonstrates that he is incapable of grasping the concept that lawyers represent the people in need of representation? Holding idiotic opinions is not only the American way, but the very thing Randazza defends. Certainly someone with a double-Harvard-educated brain will set the clueless groundlings straight.

I get that Nazis need good lawyers, but good lawyers don’t have to like it.

That’s from Elie Mystal at Above The Law.

Full disclosure time: I know Marc Randazza. I’ve done podcasts with Marc Randazza. Marc Randazza has defended this website.

Not just “this website,” but Elie personally. Maybe not quite full disclosure?

And I respect what he’s doing. No, I don’t agree. I don’t think he should be doing it. Just because Nazis deserve a legal defense doesn’t mean you’re a good person for defending them.

Elie’s a smart guy, far smarter than anything he’s written for clicks in the past two years would suggest. But to burn a friend, someone who has been there for him when needed, to push a lie is disgraceful, no matter how many clicks it gets at that vacuous cesspool of Social Justice.

Randazza does his Nazi dance in court, and he doesn’t cry when decent people shun him.

Threading the Dersh needle doesn’t make language like “Nazi dance” disappear.

But you can defend deplorable people without adopting and promoting their deplorable logic. There’s a difference. The legal community does not talk about that difference very much: lawyers shun deplorable lawyers, and deplorable lawyers put their heads so far up their own ass that they think any suggestion of restraint smells bad.

This is where real lawyers see that Elie isn’t a real lawyer and doesn’t have a clue about what real lawyers do. Faux lawyers see lawyers who defend people they despise as “deplorable lawyers.” They shun them. Real lawyers don’t. Real lawyers defend those who need defending, and do everything they can to zealously represent their clients. The only difference here is that Elie is either happy to lie, whether for cause or clicks, or just doesn’t have the a clue what he’s writing about.

Hillary Clinton was no rapist lawyer, no rapist apologist, no rapist sympathizer. She was just a lawyer doing her duty to her client. Randazza is doing the same for his, just as he defended, and won, for me and, yes, Elie.

To the extent the groundlings believe in such moronic crap, people like Elie, the woke prawfs who will lie about anything for their cause, and the New York Times propagate it. Shameless disingenuousness for a cause is bad enough, but burning the guy who defends the First Amendment is inexcusable. Elie enjoyed Marco’s “Nazi dance” when it was his butt on the line, and the New York Times survives with the crap it publishes only because of the First Amendment. Yet, they are willing to throw it away for a cheap smear. And this probably isn’t as low as it will go.

24 thoughts on “The New York Times’ New Low

  1. wilbur

    Is he still affiliated with Randazzo’s restaurant in Coral Gables?

    Have a good Fourth.

  2. Richard Kopf

    SHG,

    I am definitely not a fan of Elie Mystal. But his post was slightly more nuanced than your description of it. Even so, it is still wrong.

    What set off Mystal was this comment by Mr. Randazza quoted in the NYT article: “‘We are going to be mounting a strong First Amendment defense and look forward to this being resolved in a civil and collegial manner,’ [Randazza] said, asserting that Mr. Jones has “a great deal of compassion for these parents.”

    Mr. Mystal said the comment about compassion was a lie. If I understand correctly, Mystal believes that Mr. Randazza should just shut up when interviewed by the Times and make his case solely in court. In other words, Mystal draws a distinction between representing a creep and publically shilling for a creep. OK, I get Mr. Mystal’s point.

    Sadly, however, Mystal’s overly simplistic distinction shows his inexperience as a practicing lawyer. Defending one’s client both in court and in the court of public opinion is what real lawyers must do even if it appears to woke virgins like Mystal as an endorsement of the client’s views.

    On matters such as this Mr. Mystall has no street cred. Until and unless he gets more experience, he should STFU when it comes to attacking practicing lawyers.

    All the best.

    RGK

    1. SHG Post author

      I recognized the “nuance” of Elie’s issue with the “compassion” statement. What I also recognized was that Elie could have raised this nuance without saying his friend and lawyer was doing a “Nazi dance.” I’m friends with both Elie and Marco, and have plenty of disagreements with Marco about the law, but that doesn’t compel me to falsely attack him as a Nazi sympathizer in the process.

      Indeed, I have plenty of disagreements with Elie, but always attribute good faith to him, no matter how over the top he goes. I can’t do so this time.

      1. Richard Kopf

        SHG,

        I understand.

        Once, before I was a judge, I was said by many to have danced on the grave of a beloved Nebraska Attorney General. I lost a dear friend in the process.

        All the best.

        RGK

        1. SHG Post author

          I recall that story. Sometimes duty is unpleasant, but it remains a duty. To do so gratuitously, or worse, for something as trivial as clicks, finds no justification whatsoever.

  3. Jim Tyre

    Marco has a knack for driving people crazy. But to me, he’s a major badass. And how can anyone not love a badass who once wrote portions of an amicus brief in Klingon?

  4. Scott Jacobs

    Marc Randazza has defended this website.

    Hell, that’s more damning than defending Nazis…

  5. Nemo

    Makes me wonder how that old saying is interpreted, these days, ‘First, they came for the Jews, but society knew that they were privileged and oppressed the defenseless, so I spoke out against those who defended them…’.

    Not gonna lay that at anyone’s feet, because it’s a very common understanding, these days. I know that the regs here know I’m not saying that Jews = Nazis with the above, but for groundlings like me, I’ll gertrude a bit: Jews, immediately prior to the Nazis, were viewed like that, and /not just by Nazis/, but by a lot of people in all the Western nations. The Nazis didn’t create that bigotry, they just used what was already all over the place in Europe, and in the USA, as well.

    Also, if you always wait to defend a right until it’s being taken away from “nice people”, you will always be too late to save it.

    Regards,

    Nemo.

    1. SHG Post author

      When people asked why I did this, I used to say because I couldn’t make women’s dresses.

    1. SHG Post author

      Of all the messages to murder in the name of political correctness, this may well be the greatest loss.

  6. Pingback: Marc Randazza, Freedom Fighter - Windypundit

  7. John Rew

    Well I guess giving a Neo Nazi a heart by pass or help at the scene of an accident also makes you a Nazi. Perhaps we could make all the people we don’t like wear swastikas so that they can be shunned by all of society and refused their basic rights.

  8. Tmitsss

    I remember the objections in my hometown when the Red Cross asked for blood for a bank robber shot as he was leaving the bank. I was ok with that and didn’t understand the objections

  9. Catherine

    What I found abhorrent about Hillary Clinton’s very first foray into being a “lawyer” was how virulent her attack was against Kathy Shelton.

    Then, as she laughed about it later in life; trying to awkwardly explain away the why, etc. etc. “I did it as a ‘favor’ for this judge…”

    What woman, literally, what woman would do that to a child? Especially one who claimed she was so “pro woman and children?” She didn’t have to go balls to the wall against Kathy Shelton but she did. And she never wanted to discuss her “defense” which was “the little 13 year old girl WANTED IT and she’s has MENTAL PROBLEMS oh and because the panties were returned without the evidence….” And funny how she was never asked about that during her supposed campaign (really, massive fund raiser) for President of the USA.

    God help you if you think Hillary Clinton was just being a good lawyer and this is your idea of equivalency or trying to excuse her and what she did to young girl brutally raped. That’s good lawyering to you?

    1. SHG Post author

      Hillary’s excuses and “laughing” about it decades later had nothing to do with her representation, but you bet your ass winning her client’s case was “just being a good lawyer.” That’s exactly what a good lawyer must do, everything possible to zealously represent her client.

      1. Leeada Johnson

        It’s one thing to defend a Nazi by defending a First Amendment Right, and quite another to defend your Nazi client, by trying to show the Jews deserve it and are really guilty of all the opprobrium and blood libel your Nazi defendant throws upon them publicly. After all, anything not strictly illegal is fine…
        Because the latter seems to be your sense of it.
        In the famous Hillary Rape Case (casting fuzzy aspersions to paint the other in a bad light is fair in legal practice ??… No?)
        There were 3 men at the rape that night, and the youngest male (15 yo) stated that the rape had taken place, and that the 12 year old girl was plied with liquor through the night, and had loudly protested being raped, and she went to the Hospital that night after her assault and rape.
        There were 2 people stating the rape had taken place, one of them a co-perpetrator, and the other the victim, making all the Hillary assaults assailing the truthfulness and character of the victim a travesty of decency.
        No, there is nothing good about trying to win your case by any means possible, when it damages innocent people.
        There’s a reason why lawyers are hated, so many stretch the law and decency, prosecutors and defense attorneys included. Winning is all that matters it seems, and Justice is just a silly word.
        It’s obvious that cognitive dissonance has muddled your understanding of Ethical behaviour, which is not contained in the manual of permissable lawyer’s tactics.
        I wonder what you would think of the lawyer of the man who raped your 12 year old daughter, whose defense strategy attacked her as being delusional, unstable, dishonest, wanting it, sex crazy and chasing older men, and brought in a Psychologist who had never even spoken to your daughter to state it was highly likely that she was imagining and exaggerating her rape and assault.
        Uh-huh

        1. SHG Post author

          You have a very typical non-lawyer grasp of what “the manual of permissible lawyer’s tactics” allow. You’re wrong. The rules aren’t whatever delusions pop into your mushy head.

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