The Devil's Hand on His Shoulder: The Comeuppance of Mark Meadows
What is it in their Faustian bargain that drives those with power from law abiding moral citizens to amoral criminals?
“One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder,” said Albert Speer after finishing up 20 years in prison for war crimes. Speer, one of Hitler’s top lieutenants, was one of the few very senior Nazis not hanged after the Nuremberg trials. His exquisitely fashioned contrition and cooperation with prosecutors saved him from the gallows. Speer, and persons like him, have always fascinated me. How is it that otherwise highly intelligent individuals of good breeding sell their souls to evil? What is it in the Faustian pact they make that pushes them over the edge, from law abiding moral citizens to amoral criminals?
This question has stalked me since January 20, 2017 when Donald Trump disingenuously took the oath of office. And it claws at me today as I follow the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee and its unfolding exposés of those found to have supported the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
It has become increasingly clear that Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows sits front and center in the control room of sedition. He triaged the flood of deranged conspiracy theories and lunatic claims coming at him in the weeks after the election, tasking officials at Justice and other agencies with investigating them — an utter waste of time and resources. Did he actually believe the nonsense thrown at him? Or was Meadows your classic spineless lackey eager to do his boss’s bidding whatever the cost to his reputation, not to mention democracy?
Benjamin Franklin warned us that “a man without courage is a knife without an edge” and that “it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” Meadows certainly fails on both counts.
I distinguish Trump’s officials and abettors according to two categories: the brainless fanatics/criminally insane and the Speers. In the former, I include Steven Miller, Rick Grenell, Steve Bannon, Representatives Gosar, Gohmert, Jordan, et al. In the latter I place Mike Pompeo, Mark Esper, Kayleigh McEnany, Kirstjen Nielsen and Elise Stefanik among others. Meadows falls somewhere between the two. A clever mediocrity, lacking in education and worldliness, Meadows cast his lot with the usual American proto-fascist movements, notably the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus in winning himself a congressional seat and later a top White House position. However, there were lines he would not cross. For example, he walked back his earlier flirtation with Obama birtherism. He’s your Crazy Uncle Mark at Thanksgiving before he’s had one too many.
That said, he would be left in the dust in an IQ exam competition with Albert Speer. Meadows’s bungling of his dealings with the January 6 committee bears this out. First, he dumps 9,000 pages of documentary evidence on the committee, and publishes a plodding, low-selling book on his time in the White House. Then he reverses himself, refusing to testify on grounds of executive privilege after feeling brimstone from his ex-boss. Next step: criminal indictment. Way to go, Mark! Dumber than a box of hammers.
In his autobiography, Speer said his failing was weakness of character combined with overweening ambition. He said he wallowed in the reflected glory of Hitler’s power, hoping “to gather some of his popularity, his glory, his greatness, around myself.” In contrast with the Trumpian true believers, I attribute Meadows’s servility and criminality to a weak man bathing in the fleeting glory of an evil and overbearing potentate. Iago without the brains.
At least Speer had the self-awareness, sincere or otherwise, to confront his failings: “My moral failure is not a matter of this item or that,” he wrote in Inside the Third Reich. “It resides in my active association with the whole course of events.” He added, “Being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences.”
“Responsibility for the consequences.” Following in the steps of Haldeman, Elrichman and Mitchell, will Mark Meadows and his fellow seditionists squarely face their failings as Albert Speer (and Erlichman) did? Or will they forever be in denial, stubborn in living Trump’s lies as they wait in the chow line at a federal penitentiary?
A historian said of Speer, “He knew exactly what he was doing, and he wasn’t duped or anything else. He was a sinner by omission and commission, and he went wading right in. His problem wasn’t blindness. It was blind ambition.”
Which gets us to another group who definitely know better, yet have acted unrestrained ethically and morally in abetting sedition: the lawyers.
Many of us think of lawyers as guns for hire, mercenaries to carry out whatever mission their client pays them for. Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Bailey and Tom Hagen come to mind. But lawyers are expected to comport themselves according to the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Specifically, in the case at hand:
A lawyer's conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer’s business and personal affairs. A lawyer should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers and public officials. While it is a lawyer’s duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer’s duty to uphold legal process.
This professional code has been reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court: an attorney must not assist a client in “conduct that the lawyer knows to be illegal or fraudulent,” and additionally must seek to prevent clients from offering false testimony before a court.
Since the 1/6 insurrection, a move has been underway to disbar those lawyers who have promoted Trump’s Big Lie. Led by attorneys Rudi Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, they filed numerous phony and frivolous lawsuits — including before the Supreme Court — with the purpose “to create a political narrative of a stolen election. They used the courts to perpetuate the false implication of the Big Lie that Trump had actually won. In doing so, the lawyers brazenly abused the judicial system,” according to University of Kentucky law professor, Joshua Douglas.
If “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” these ostensible upholders of the law went many steps further in aiding and abetting the triumph of evil. A test of our rule of law will be whether they indeed are disbarred. Giuliani at least has been “suspended” from practicing law. It’s a start.
Benjamin L. Ginsberg and Bob Bauer are exemplars of lawyers who selflessly labor to uphold and defend democracy and the rule of law. A Republican and a Democrat, respectively, these prestigious attorneys have launched the Election Official Legal Defense Network, which matches pro bono lawyers with election workers who are under threat or intimidation. They had better have a long roster of such attorneys.
In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt said, “Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.” In other words, one’s actions should not be based solely on society’s widely accepted norms, but rather on whether one will be able to live with oneself when contemplating one’s words and deeds. Can you look at yourself in the mirror without shame? What do John Eastman & Gang tell their children of their actions?
Then again, it is said that we all have our price. Perhaps I am being too high-minded. Who’s to say that any of us wouldn’t make the same Faustian bargains that Trump’s loyal minions have made? As P. J. O’Rourke noted, “Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.”
Excellent….with sources like Arendt, etc. Have always been upset with Meadows, his cruel demeanor during the testimony (?) of truly professional state dept. people who were treated like criminals by the R. party….disgraceful, snide, “Trump-like” nastiness.
Excellent….with sources like Arendt, etc. Have always been upset with Meadows, his cruel demeanor during the testimony (?) of truly professional state dept. people who were treated like criminals by the R. party….disgraceful, snide, “Trump-like” nastiness.