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David French

@DavidAFrench

6 Dec 20

I'm getting a lot of good and thoughtful responses to my Sunday essay. I could have written 2,000 more words on the role of staff and boards in enabling abuse, but in lieu of that, here are a few tweets. /1 frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-crisis-o…

In dysfunctional religious celebrity cultures, key staff gain not just their livelihood but also their cultural clout from the proximity to the "great man." They have everything to lose if he falls, so they guard him zealously and often crush internal dissent. /2

As for board members, if they also gain prestige from their association with the "great man," they're often unwilling to hold him accountable. Again, the board member also has something to lose if the leader falls. Their own clout is at stake. /3

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David French

@DavidAFrench

23 Nov 20

I'm not sure if you're noticing, but there's been a recent shift in the anti-anti-Trump defense of Trump's deranged behavior from "these lawsuits might have merit" to "hahahaha this is revenge for the 'Russia hoax' and impeachment." This is absurd, for many reasons. /1

Trump's defenders constantly want to memory-hole his campaign's misconduct, but there were real reasons to investigate his campaign. His son, campaign chair, and son-in-law met with a Russian lawyer in the attempt to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. /2

Trump's campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was in active, clandestine communication with a Russian agent and provided the agent with internal campaign information. The campaign attempted to use Roger Stone to set up a back-channel communication with Wikileaks, a Russian asset. /3

Read 11 tweets

David French

@DavidAFrench

13 Oct 20

@AllianceDefends

So my former colleagues at @AllianceDefends are under fire. A few things:

First, ADF is so "hateful" that it recently joined with the ACLU and NAACP to press for the single-most important civil rights legal reform of our time -- ending qualified immunity. naacpldf.org/wp-content/upl…

Second, it's extraordinarily successful free speech/religious freedom litigation (including a glittering record at SCOTUS) has resulted in concrete civil liberties gains for ALL people, not just Christian believers. My cases at ADF expanded liberty, for example.

Third, at Blackstone and throughout all of ADF's programs (including litigation) there has long been an emphasis on doing the right thing, the right way -- with integrity, civility, and decency.

Read 7 tweets

David French

@DavidAFrench

10 Oct 20

https://twitter.com/ERLC/status/1314933495513468928

This is an excellent development, and the opinion is exactly right. Capitol Hill Baptist's plan -- outdoor services, socially-distanced and masked -- was extremely responsible based on everything we now know about the virus. Yet DC said no, while it said yes to mass protests. /1

https://twitter.com/ERLC/status/1314933495513468928

The key line from the opinion is below. In plain English it means that it's time for courts to stop simply deferring to the judgment of local officials and start applying standard levels of scrutiny to state actions during a pandemic: /2

That doesn't mean that all pandemic measures should be struck down. It means that the time of simple judicial acceptance is over. Mask mandates pass legal review easily. But placing more restrictions on outdoor worship services than outdoor protests or outdoor dining? Nope. /3

Read 5 tweets

David French

@DavidAFrench

23 Sep 20

How can the Breonna Taylor grand jury reach its result? Because the officers who directly returned fire were operating under a series of SCOTUS precedents that made clashes between armed homeowners 1) lawful; 2) inevitable; and 3) unjust (short thread): frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/supreme-cour…

SCOTUS has given police wide latitude to violently enter homes. Castle doctrine gives homeowners wide latitude to defend themselves. Thus, you can have a terrible, violent clash that EMPOWERED by the law, and you will end up with lawful tragedy. /2

There's a difference between officers serving a lawful (though unjustly granted) warrant returning aimed fire and the officer who wantonly fired outside the apartment. The grand jury decision properly reflects that distinction. /3

Read 4 tweets

David French

@DavidAFrench

19 Aug 20

In my newsletter (🔒) I look at the impact of the Senate Intelligence report on two Russia hoaxes. Yep, two. The first is represented by the extravagant claims of the Steele Dossier. It still doesn't hold up. It never did. But what's the second hoax? /1 frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-senate-i…

This one comes from the right, and it's the persistent minimization (especially on this website) of Trump campaign misconduct and the argument that the "real" story is that the campaign was the victim of a deep state smear job and government abuse of power. Wrong. /2

Yes, the Mueller Report should have decisively debunked the "move along" defense of the campaign, but the right waved it off as a partisan witch hunt. But what about the bipartisan Senate conclusions? The Manafort/Kilminick disclosures alone are extraordinary. /3

Read 5 tweets

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