Lanny Davis trivia: 80 unknown facts about the American political operative!

Lanny Davis is and American political operative, lobbyist and many other things! He has also worked as an advisor for Bill Clinton!

Let’s find out some more things about this American political figure!

1. His full name is Lanny Jesse Davis
2. He was born on December 12, 1945
3. He is an American political operative, lawyer, consultant, lobbyist, author, and television commentator
4. He is the co- founder and partner of the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper PLLC
5. And co- founder and partner of the public relations firm Trident DMG
6. From 1996 to 1998, he served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton
7. He was a spokesperson for the President and the White House on matters concerning campaign-finance investigations and other legal issues
8. In July 2018, Lanny Davis was hired by Michael Cohen
9. A former personal attorney to Donald Trump
10. To represent him as co- counsel in the Stormy Daniels- Donald Trump scandal
11. Lanny Davis later represented Cohen when he pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, and violation of campaign finance laws on August 21, 2018
12. Lanny Davis’s clients have included Porton Group, National Women’s History Museum, National Black Chamber of Commerce, eHealth, Sofitel Hotels, Trent Lott, Gene Upshaw, Dan Snyder, Martha Stewart and the Office of the President at Penn State University
13. Davis has been a regular television commentator and political and legal analyst for MSNBC, CNN, CNBC
14. And network television news programs
15. He currently has a column called “Purple Nation” that appears regularly in a variety of publications spanning the political spectrum
16. Including The Hill, The Huffington Post, FoxNews.com and The Daily Caller
17. He is a Yale Law School graduate
18. He won the Thurman Arnold Moot Court prize
19. And served on the Yale Law Journal
20. In 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Davis to serve as the only Democratic member of the five- member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
21. It was created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 2005 Intelligence Reform Act
22. Lanny Davis grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey
23. In a Jewish family
24. His father, Mort, was a dentist in Jersey City
25. His mother worked as the office manager of his father’s dental office
26. He attended Newark Academy in Newark
27. Graduating in 1962
28. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity
29. According to an item in U.S. News & World Report, as part of his initiation into the fraternity, Lanny Davis underwent hazing by, among others, the future President of the United States George W. Bush
30. He also served as chairman of the campus newspaper, the Yale Daily News
31. Lanny Davis went on to receive his J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1970
32. It was there that he first met Hillary Clinton
33. Lanny Davis has four children
34. He now lives in Potomac, Maryland
35. With his second wife, Carolyn Atwell- Davis
36. She is the legislative affairs director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
37. One of his sons, Seth, is a columnist for Sports Illustrated magazine and a college basketball commentator for CBS
38. Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and columnist for Salon, criticized Davis in 2009 for Davis’s perceived failure to disclose his clients
39. Greenwald asserted his clients included dictatorships and opponents of unions and health care reform
40. According to Salon columnist Justin Elliot, Lanny Davis “specializes in lobbying for controversial corporate and foreign clients, particularly those seeking Democratic representation in Washington”
41. He has “built a client list that now includes oligarchic coup supporters in Honduras, a dictator in Equatorial Guinea, for- profit colleges accused of exploiting students, and a company that dominates the manufacture of additives for infant formula”
42. As well as an “Ivory Coast strongman whose claims to that country’s presidency have been condemned by the international community and may even set off a civil war”
43. Among his clients are “Ivory Coast leader and flagrant human rights violator Laurent Gbagbo” and “Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the longtime dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.”
44. “Just as Davis was assuring the American press that his client, Gbagbo, opposed violence, Gbagbo’s forces were in fact mounting a campaign of organized violence against the opposition”
45. The latter representation has earned him criticism from human rights groups
46. They claim that he “appears to be engaged in little more than a whitewashing exercise designed to rehabilitate the image of the Obiang regime on the international stage”
47. Similar criticisms were aired in an acerbic exchange with Jon Lovett in The Atlantic
48. At the time of the events in the Ivory Coast, State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley issued the following a statement
49. “Lanny did open another alternative channel of communications for us, and was providing the right advice to his client
50. President Gbagbo has declined to engage our ambassador, Phillip Carter
51. Absent that avenue, Lanny became another route to encourage President Gbagbo to leave
52. Unfortunately, every indication is that his client wasn’t heeding his advice.”
53. Some of Davis’s emails with Hillary Clinton were released to the public as part of the Hillary Clinton email controversy
54. The flattering emails were characterized by some media members as “cringeworthy.”
55. Currently, Lanny Davis appears weekly on three radio programs
56. America’s Morning News Radio Show with John McCaslin, WMAL’s Mornings on the Mall, and Andy Parks Live
57. He was a participant in the D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity competition in 2011
58. In 2016, at the age of 70, Lanny Davis co-founded the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper
59. With partners Adam Goldberg and Joshua Galper
60. Stating that he needed to continue supporting his family but was too busy to handle his workload by himself
61. In addition to co- founding Davis Goldberg & Galper, Davis started a new PR firm, called TridentDMG
62. In partnership with Eleanor McManus
63. They had worked with Davis since 2010
64. And previously served as a senior producer for CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
65. Lanny Davis encouraged Cohen to reveal that he and Trump had discussed a payment surrounding a different affair with model Karen McDougal
66. Davis later revealed that Cohen had secretly recorded the conversation with Trump
67. He released a tape of the conversation to CNN, which played it on the air
68. On it, Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing how to make a payment for “all of that info regarding our friend David,”
69. Interpreted as meaning David Pecker
70. The head of American Media which publishes the National Enquirer
71. Lanny Davis continued to serve as Cohen’s attorney when Cohen came under federal criminal investigation by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
72. The papers and other materials were seized from Cohen in April 2018 under a subpoena
73. Davis helped Cohen to negotiate a plea bargain under which he agreed to plead guilty to several charges in return for leniency in sentencing
74. On August 21, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges
75. They were five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate or campaign
76. After Cohen’s guilty plea and conviction, Lanny Davis made several public comments
77. Indicating that Cohen is ready to “tell everything about Donald Trump that he knows”
78. Alluding to Cohen’s knowledge which could be used against Trump
79. He later added that he believed Cohen would agree to testify before Congress, even without immunity
80. He also rejected the possibility of a presidential pardon from Trump