FOCUS: Jeffrey Toobin | How Donald Trump's Unlikely Legal Team Will Try to Defend Him

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FOCUS: Jeffrey Toobin | How Donald Trump's Unlikely Legal Team Will Try to Defend Him

Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
Toobin writes: "President Trump's insight into what captivates the American people, and what draws the attention of the news media, remains remarkable. Consider, for example, how he cast - that seems the right word - the defense team for his impeachment trial, which begins Tuesday, in the United States Senate."

 There are not many legal celebrities in the United States, but Trump now has two of them: Kenneth Starr, the erstwhile pursuer of Hillary and Bill Clinton as the independent counsel during the Whitewater (and more) matter, and Alan Dershowitz, defender of O.J. Simpson, other famous clients, and, lately, his own conduct. How can we not wonder how Starr, who inveighed against what he called the dishonesty of the Clintons, will contrive to defend this President? What will Dershowitz, a onetime liberal and a civil libertarian, say about his new client, who is openly hostile to the values enshrined in the Bill of Rights? And how did Trump manage to find not one but two famous lawyers who had previously joined forces to defend Jeffrey Epstein, who was a friend of Trump’s?

Five of the President’s eight lawyers have appeared frequently on Fox News, and they’ve been hired to put on an entertaining show for the Senate. (Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, Jane Raskin, a member of Trump’s legal defense team, and Eric Herschmann are the exceptions.) But the showmanship that’s likely to be on display should not obscure what’s really going on here. The outcome of the trial is not in doubt; there is no way that sixty-seven senators will vote to remove Trump from office. But there is a real question about whether the trial will involve any fact-finding—that is, the presentation of witnesses and new documentary evidence. Trump’s real priority, and that of the Republican leadership in the Senate, is to make sure that never happens.

Dershowitz is likely to be the crucial figure on the Senate floor. He is currently trying to portray himself as more of a neutral constitutional expert, rather than as a full-fledged member of Trump’s defense team. That semantic dodge is meant to elevate his core argument: that the two articles of impeachment, even if they accurately describe the President’s conduct, are not impeachable offenses. It’s worth addressing that argument, because it’s likely to be crucial to the Senate trial, not just on the merits but on the issue of whether the seven House managers named by Nancy Pelosi last week will be allowed to call witnesses.

The first article charges Trump with abuse of his constitutional powers, through his dealings with the government of Ukraine. The claim is a familiar one by now. Trump withheld congressionally authorized funds, and also personal Presidential attention, from Ukraine in an effort to force the announcement of an investigation of former Vice-President Joe Biden, Trump’s putative 2020 opponent, and Biden’s son Hunter. The second article charges Trump with obstructing Congress, by refusing all demands for witnesses and documents in the Ukraine investigation. Dershowitz says, and all of Trump’s lawyers will argue, that neither article charges conduct that is a high crime and misdemeanor, the standard for impeachment established in the Constitution.

Dershowitz does not say exactly that a President must commit a crime—an actual criminal offense—to commit a high crime and misdemeanor, but that’s what his position comes down to in the real world. He is worried, rightly, about Congress trying to evict a President simply because of policy differences. But neither of the articles refers to any good-faith dispute over Trump’s performance in office. Rather, both charge core violations of Presidential duties. What Dershowitz’s position misses is that impeachment is designed specifically to police Presidential conduct—to make sure that a President does not abuse the powers which that office alone possesses under our system of governance. This is why Bill Clinton’s conduct should not have been impeachable. Lying under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky was likely a crime—perjury—but it was not an abuse of Presidential power, and thus not a high crime and misdemeanor.

What makes Dershowitz’s argument so important in the context of Trump’s case is that it gives Republican senators an excuse to vote against witnesses. If his view is adopted, it means that Republicans can accept the truth of factual assertions from the House managers, for the sake of argument, and still vote to exclude new witnesses. By this reasoning, the witnesses would not offer anything of value because they would only testify to conduct that is not impeachable, anyway. That’s the real point, and the real danger, of Dershowitz’s argument; it gives Republicans cover to cut short the Senate trial.

Trump and his followers (and his enablers, such as Dershowitz) surely recognize that the facts in this case will show how much the President abused his power through his dealings with Ukraine. (The Government Accountability Office just added to those facts by finding that the withholding of funds for Ukraine was illegal.) If the House managers are allowed to call witnesses, those witnesses will likely make the case against Trump even stronger. At some level, the President’s defenders must know that Trump’s conduct is impeachable. That’s why Trump has taken every opportunity to block the facts from coming out. On Tuesday, the President’s lawyers reveal their true agenda: to persuade the Senate to preserve Trump’s incriminating secrets.

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FOCUS: Bob Bauer | The Trump Impeachment and the Question of Precedent, Part II: The Trouble With Alan Dershowitz's 'Constitutional Argument'

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FOCUS: Bob Bauer | The Trump Impeachment and the Question of Precedent, Part II: The Trouble With Alan Dershowitz's 'Constitutional Argument'

Bob Bauer, Lawfare
Bauer writes: "Mitch McConnell has argued for broadly restrictive conditions on impeachment. His objective, as he described it, is to avert the setting of 'toxic' and 'nightmarish' constitutional precedent."

enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has argued for broadly restrictive conditions on impeachment. His objective, as he described it, is to avert the setting of “toxic” and “nightmarish” constitutional precedent. Now President Trump has appointed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz to his legal team to drive this point home. Dershowitz will appear to make the case that the president’s conduct and motives are irrelevant because the House articles of impeachment do not allege impeachable offenses and therefore fail to supply the Senate with both factual matters to develop or consider and a constitutionally permissible basis on which to convict. In a series of interviews on Jan. 17, the day his role was announced, Dershowitz defined his task as “arguing for the Constitution” and not as a “full-fledged member of the legal team” for the president in an attorney-client relationship.

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of a Senate acquittal on the theory that Dershowitz will be advancing. McConnell has conceded that the Constitution does not “strictly” limit impeachable offenses to an “actual crime” but believes that the limitation should be at least a norm, needed as a safeguard against “subjective, political impeachments.” Dershowitz gives no ground on this issue. While he was somewhat unclear in his CNN interview, responding to Jeffery Toobin that impeachable offenses must at least “criminal-like,” he left no doubt in his book on impeachment, “The Case Against Impeaching Trump”: “It is difficult to argue reasonably from the text [of the Constitution] that … a person can be impeached for anything less than a crime.” Moreover, he argues, the impeachable crime must be similar in nature to treason or bribery.

Dershowitz does not stop there in attempting to confine impeachable misconduct to a narrow class of criminal offenses. Once a criminal offense is established, it must also constitute “a violation of a public trust and injury to society.” An abuse of presidential power failing to satisfy these conditions is not impeachable. He believes it “100 percent wrong” to put weight on Hamilton’s position in Federalist 65 that impeachment is available to address broadly an “abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Under the Dershowitz view, a president who murdered her spouse would not have committed an impeachable offense. We would have in that instance a crime, and a very serious one, but just not the right type for purposes of impeachment or removal from office. The president would have to answer to the legal system, as would any murderer. Fortunately for the chief executive, the Office of Legal Counsel has opined that the accounting would be deferred to the end of her presidency when she once again joined the ranks of private citizens.

The “only crimes” limitation that Dershowitz finds in the impeachment clause would also protect a president who announced to the nation that, believing them inferior, he would not appoint women to executive branch positions or consider legislation to remedy pay and other gender-based equities, or who used Oval Office addresses to express support for white supremacists. To use an example supplied by Cass Sunstein in his book on impeachment, the president operating within this exclusion could safely, without constitutional consequence, declare that he would not enforce civil rights laws, or decide to take a year’s vacation in Rome. In an updated edition of the Charles Black handbook on impeachment, Philip Bobbitt pronounces as “absurd” the claim Dershowitz embraces about the scope of impeachable offenses. It is not, he writes, “remotely possible that this interpretation is right.” Dershowitz has an additional problem in arguing this case while also disclaiming that he is not defending the president on the particulars. He actually is staking out a position in the fashion of a defense counsel rather than a constitutional expert purportedly having no attorney-client relationship with the president. The House Judiciary Committee crafted the “abuse of power” article without a reference to criminal conduct but issued a report expressing the committee majority’s conclusion, adopted by the House, that the constitutional offense did include criminal behavior: bribery and honest services fraud.

In his Jan. 19 interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC, Dershowitz dismissed the House’s report as having no importance. As far he is concerned, the House report does not matter, only the impeachment articles read without further consideration of the report’s formal elaboration of their scope. Dershowitz can make this argument, but it seems more of an argument in defense of the president than an open-and-shut constitutional position tendered by a neutral expert. Why would the Senate not consider that the House articles are to be read in conjunction with the House report?

Perhaps also reflecting his history and orientation as a defense counsel, Dershowitz made a clear misstep in his ABC interview. Stephanopolous asked him whether he deemed it acceptable for the president to “solicit foreign interference in our elections.” He declined to respond with his “personal views” but then added that “I think that conduct does not rise to the level of impeachable offense.” His move here was subtle but not to be missed: He shifted from arguing that the articles themselves do not allege a crime, hence an impeachable offense, to his own legal judgment of “that conduct.”

Presumably, this is because Dershowitz does not believe that soliciting a foreign national’s assistance with a U.S. election is a crime. He is mistaken. The federal campaign finance law bars soliciting anything of “value” from a foreign national to influence a federal, state and local election. Whether the solicitation was made and “value” received depends on the facts—facts with which Dershowitz claims he has no intention of engaging. Yet he pronounced on the question nonetheless and, to the president’s benefit, passed over the facts and erred on the law. It certainly had the familiar characteristics of a defense counsel’s argument.

Yet, returning to the position that Dershowitz as a constitutional expert is endeavoring to vindicate, it is striking how far, and how untenably, he would take the legalization of impeachment. In his book, he argues that the Constitution’s designation of the chief justice as the presiding officer of the trial underscores that it is a fully legal, not political, process. In this role, the chief justice “is bound to apply the Constitution to any act of the legislature.” He “should also rule on the admissibility of evidence and other procedural issues, but also [make] a legal determination as to whether the constitutional criteria [for impeachment] have been met.” It would fall to the chief justice to rule on a “motion to dismiss.” It is in this exceedingly peculiar fashion that Dershowitz would construe the constitutional command that the Senate possesses “the sole power to try” impeachments.” It seems that, as Dershowitz reads the Constitution, the Senate shares this “sole power to try” with the chief justice.

This is not all. Dershowitz has argued that the president may appeal a Senate conviction to the Supreme Court and refuse to leave office until the case is heard and decided. This is an extreme conclusion he draws from his view that impeachment is a fully legal process. Keith Whittington has previously explained on Lawfare all the absurdities entailed by this position.

What is driving this line of reasoning, which Dershowitz will soon present on behalf of the president—or, as he would have it, on behalf of the Constitution—on the floor of the Senate? Dershowitz argues two predominant concerns. First, he insists that, as a civil libertarian, he is concerned with individual rights. Like McConnell, he sees the president as having an entitlement to “due process” that only his extreme constitutional reading would protect. But Dershowitz also fears that the standard reading of the criteria for impeachment, which would allow removal for noncriminal but serious “abuse of power,” would lead to the “weaponization of politics.”

The first of these concerns, focusing on the president’s individual rights, fundamentally misapprehends the structure of constitutional powers and interests at play in impeachment. A president facing impeachment or Senate trial may and will argue for procedural fairness, which in practice would result in “rights” comparable to those individuals are guaranteed in the criminal or civil legal process. Congress has afforded these types of rights over time, creating precedents to which presidents may appeal in demanding representation by counsel, etc. Congress provides these procedural accommodations to the president as president, not as an individual alleging enforceable “due process” guarantees, and it answers to the electorate for the degree of fairness it exhibits.

Dershowitz’s framing of the president's “civil liberties” interests leads away from Congress and the political process into the courts and the legal process, in a way that would radically reshape the nature of constitutional impeachment. As Bobbitt has pointed out, “[W]e have to divest ourselves of the common misconception that constitutionality is discussable or determinable only in the courts.” Congress bears the “responsibility to preserve the forms and precepts of the Constitution … when the judicial forum is unavailable, as it sometimes must be.”

Dershowitz’s second concern, the “weaponization of politics,” is different from and in some tension with his focus on civil liberties. His worry on this score is that, if impeachment is not subject to tight constraints enforceable in the courts, partisans will run wild with the impeachment process to hobble or destroy their adversaries. Here Dershowitz’s emphasis is on the danger to the health of the polity, not to individual rights (though he may well see a cost there). But the answer to the “weaponization” problem is not narrowing in extreme ways a president’s accountability for egregious abuses of power. Under the guise of defending against weaponized politics, Dershowitz would weaponize the presidency. A civil libertarian would be hard-pressed to take comfort in this outcome.

Dershowitz is not responsible for what McConnell has offered as his own view of impeachment, but the positions they have taken are mutually reinforcing a move toward a questionable constitutional direction. McConnell speaks, though not at the same length, to the importance (if, in his view, not strict necessity) of limiting impeachable offenses to crimes. Dershowitz is harder-core and still more absolutist on this question. McConnell would also bring the courts into a key role, if in less extreme terms than Dershowitz would: The senator would have them arbiter privilege and evidentiary disputes. The Republican leader also pushes for an expansive view of what constitutes a “policy disagreement” that is not properly subject to impeachment, and he would effectively allow the fact of a party’s staunch defense of its president to tar the other, opposition party’s pursuit of impeachment, whatever the merits, as impermissibly “partisan.”

The politics of Dershowitz’s appointment seems clear. The president can only be pleased with the sweep of Dershowitz’s argument and provided for his book on impeachment a blurb to “encourage all people” to read it. And because Dershowitz will make this case as the “liberal Democrat” that he has stressed he is, his defense of the president will bolster McConnell’s attack on the House impeachment as the action of “one part of one faction” of “angry partisans.” Dershowitz will be portrayed as the responsible bipartisan resistance to the making of what he has called “terrible,” and McConnell has denounced as “toxic,” precedent. Indeed, Dershowitz has declared that he will be delivering a “nonpartisan view” of a “highly partisan impeachment and removal.”

In the coming Senate trial, McConnell and Dershowitz are helping each other set a very different precedent of their own, one in which, as a matter of norms (McConnell) or constitutional law (Dershowitz), there is no room for removing a president for the serious abuse, or repetitive abuses, of the power of his office. And, under Dershowitz’s view, a president who is a murderer, a white supremacist, or a virulent misogynist, or who takes off for a year’s vacation in Rome, would also be free to serve out his or her term, or take into a reelection campaign the “vindication” supplied by a Senate acquittal.

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Charles Pierce | Of Course Trump's Impeachment Defense Features Alan Dershowitz and ... Ken Starr

21 January 20 Value I continue to read, enjoy and learn from RSN articles and cannot believe that so many people utilize this great value and do not support it. I contribute periodically and admittedly they are small amounts but it is what I can afford and just about everyone can afford "something". Please don't take and not give back or RSN won't be available to you in the future. Sandra, RSN Reader-Supporter Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611

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Charles Pierce | Of Course Trump's Impeachment Defense Features Alan Dershowitz and ... Ken Starr

Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "This team is something to behold."
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A striking Atlanta sanitation worker kneels at the grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after a rally by Southern Christian Leadership Conference supporting the strike in Atlanta on April 4, 1970. (photo: AP)

Dr. King Understood the Power of Unions
Lee Saunders, The Root
Saunders writes: "There is an often-overlooked aspect of his work: Dr. King was one of his era's most fearsome champions of working people coming together to organize, build power and improve their lives."
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Sen. Chuck Schumer. (photo: Getty Images)

Schumer on Senate Impeachment Trial: 'We Will Force Votes' on Witnesses and Documents
Paul LeBlanc, CNN
LeBlanc writes: "Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday night he is prepared to 'force votes for witnesses and documents' in the Senate impeachment trial if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not call for it in his proposal."
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Gitmo. (photo: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum)

Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel | How This Became a Gitmo World
Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, TomDispatch
Excerpt: "Here are eight ways in which the toxic policies of that offshore facility have contaminated American institutions, as well as our laws and customs, in the years since 2002."
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The Stewart Detention Center is seen through the front gate, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in Lumpkin, Ga. The rural town is about 140 miles southwest of Atlanta and next to the Georgia-Alabama state line. (photo: David Goldman/AP)

Journalists Visited Immigration Courts Across US and Found Nonstop Chaos
Associated Press
Excerpt: "In a locked, guarded courtroom in a compound surrounded by razor wire, Immigration Judge Jerome Rothschild waits - and stalls."
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A rally in Colombia. (photo: Reuters)

One More Social Leader Killed in Colombia, 21 So Far in 2020
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The Cordobexia Social Foundation denounced Saturday the assassination of social leader Luis Dario Rodriguez, the second activist killed in the northwestern department of Cordoba this week and the 21st so far in Colombia this year."
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A Chinese labourer sorting out plastic bottles on the outskirt of Beijing. (photo: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)

China Moves to Phase Out Single-Use Plastics
Reuters
Excerpt: "China is stepping up restrictions on the production, sale and use of single-use plastic products, according to the state planner, as it seeks to tackle one of the country's biggest environmental problems."

Plastic bags to be banned in all major cities by end of 2020, says state planner

hina is stepping up restrictions on the production, sale and use of single-use plastic products, according to the state planner, as it seeks to tackle one of the country’s biggest environmental problems.

Vast amounts of untreated plastic waste are buried in landfills or dumped in rivers. The United Nations has identified single-use plastics as one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges.

The national development and reform commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, which issued the policy, said plastic bags would be banned in all of China’s major cities by the end of 2020 and banned in all cities and towns in 2022. Markets selling fresh produce will be exempt from the ban until 2025.

Other items such as plastic utensils from takeaway food outlets and plastic courier packages will also be phased out.

By end of this year, the restaurant industry will be banned from using single-use straws. By 2025, towns and cities across China must reduce the consumption of single-use plastic items in the restaurant industry by 30%.

Some regions and sectors will also face restrictions on the production and sale of plastic products, although it is not yet clear which geographical areas.

China also banned the import of all plastic waste, and the use of medical plastic waste in the production of plastic.

The production and sale of plastic bags less than 0.025mm thick will be banned, as will plastic film less than 0.01mm thick for agricultural use.

China is already boosting recycling rates and is building dozens of “comprehensive resource utilisation” bases to ensure more products are reused as part of its war on waste. 

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View this email in your browser ABC’s Epstein Story Didn’t Kill Itself by Alan MacLeod New York (10/28/02) hyped Jeffrey Epstein as a "relentless brain" with a "keen eye for the ladies." Multimillionaire predator Jeffrey Epstein died in suspicious circumstances at a Manhattan correctional facility on August 10. The wealthy and powerful New York financier, a convicted sex offender, stands accused by dozens of women and girls of trafficking, rape and sexual abuse. He was an enormously influential and well-connected man who counted as friends billionaire business owners, Hollywood stars, British royals, and even top media figures like Katie Couric and Charlie Rose—with some of his associates falling under suspicion of condoning or even participating in a pedophile ring. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” said fellow tycoon Donald Trump (New York, 10/28/02), adding: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Former President Bill Clinton was also close with Epstein. Epstein’s crimes shocked the public, and his arrest, trial and mysterious death were major stories for much of 2019. But last month, leaked footage emerged showing that corporate media knew much about these crimes years previously. Discussing one of his accusers, ABC News anchor Amy Robach was caught on camera lambasting executives at her network for killing her investigations into the sex offender because of Epstein’s connections. The clip was originally leaked to infamous right-wing troll James O’Keefe, who has a long history of producing bogus stories (FAIR.org, 4/1/10, 3/14/11, 12/12/15, 10/21/16), but ABC employees, including Robach herself, have confirmed its authenticity. In the video, Robach complains: Amy Robach: "I've had the [Epstein] story for three years." I've had the story for three years. I've had this interview with [Epstein complainant] Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air. First of all I was told, “Who is Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.” Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew, and threatened us in a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will that it also quashed the story. And then Alan Dershowitz was also implicated in it because of the planes. “The planes” is a reference to the celebrity attorney’s frequent trips on Epstein’s infamous private jet, which he used for trafficking. A visibly exasperated Robach continued, revealing the level of detail of her investigation: She told me everything, she had pictures, everything. She was in hiding for 12 years. We convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us. It was unbelievable what we had; Clinton, we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail, and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations, and I freaking had all of it!... What we had was unreal. Robach’s comments about being pressured into killing the story by powerful people ABC relied upon are a perfect example of the perils of access journalism. In their influential book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky identified “sourcing” and “flak” as two of the five key filters that dictate what makes the news and what does not. By sourcing, Herman and Chomsky are referring to corporate media’s reliance on powerful official sources (like politicians, celebrities and corporations) to essentially subsidize them by providing them with free content, such as interviews, soundbites, statistics and pictures. Journalists are therefore caught up in a symbiotic relationship with the powerful, where elite sources grant “scoops” in exchange for preferential treatment. The royal family, Robach claims, successfully used the influence it had, quashing the story by threatening to cut off access. It is also particularly easy for the powerful to generate flak—negative responses to media content. Flak can take the form of boycotts, angry phone calls, lawsuits, smear campaigns and more. One particularly alarming form of "flak" was the 2018 US mail bombing attempt, where a Trump supporter sent a bomb to CNN headquarters in response to its negative coverage of the president. Robach brought up Dershowitz, a famously litigious lawyer, as a reason for her silencing. But ABC could reasonably expect great resistance from many of those connected to Epstein, one more example of how stories scrutinizing the powerful are discouraged in the modern media landscape. ABC News would later claim that they never nixed the story, stating that at the time of Robach’s comments, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story.  Ever since we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it. That work has led to a two-hour documentary and six-part podcast that will air in the new year. Former producer Ashley Bianco (MK, 11/8/19), who denies sharing the Robach tape with anyone outside ABC News. After the video went viral, CBS News fired its producer Ashley Bianco after ABC contacted them, asserting (possibly incorrectly) that she had leaked the tape during her time working on Robach’s show. Top executives at ABC are reportedly “freaking out” over the anonymous employee’s identity, spending far more energy and resources trying to find the leaker than in investigating why it enabled a serial sexual predator to continue offending. Perhaps even more worryingly, corporate media rivals have largely not touched the story. Neither Robach’s revelation nor Bianco’s termination have been reported on by MSNBC, CNN, CBS or the New York Times, nearly a month after the video first leaked. Thus the story of a major media outlet covering up the crimes of a monster, with the only person to face any sanction being the alleged whistleblower,  whom two outlets combined to punish, appears not to qualify as a newsworthy event to much of the press. Indeed, Epstein’s team managed to convince many supposedly reputable outlets, including the Huffington Post (11/17/17), Forbes (10/2/13) and the National Review (7/10/13) to publish puff pieces about him (New York Times, 7/21/19). (Epstein pled guilty to charges connected to sexual abuse of minors in 2008.) Forbes  described him as “one of the largest backers of cutting-edge science around the world,” making no mention of his criminal past. The stated writer was paid $600 by a PR firm to attach his name to the pre-fab article and run it on the site, perhaps the most blatantly unethical sponsorship practice there could be. ABC’s decision to spike the Epstein exposé in order not to embarrass or implicate his powerful associates, thereby effectively enabling his crimes, is a perfect example of the danger of access journalism. Robach predicted, “There will come a day where we will realize Jeffrey Epstein was the most prolific pedophile this country has ever known.” Thanks to our corporate media system, that day was delayed by at least three years. You can send messages to ABC News here (or via Twitter: @ABC). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread. © 2018 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Our mailing address is: FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 FAIR's Website FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today.