If you want to feel optimistic, I suggest you read the full article in politico — it isn’t very long. Some highlights follow.
Eric Schneiderman is New York’s Attorney General and lead the suit against Trump University and forces Trump to settle that case for $25 million — despite Trump’s pledges not to settle it. He also launched an investigation into the Trump Foundation — and when Trump won the election and attempted to dissolve the Foundation, Schneiderman ordered him not to.
Schneiderman has experience dealing with Trump’s smear tactics:
Schneiderman had seen dirty pool in his years as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, but his fight with the Trump Organization was, he says, “on the outer edge of normal.”
[...] Trump himself retaliated by filing a complaint against the AG with the New York State board of ethics. He alleged that Schneiderman and his aides several times approached [Trump & co] for a contribution [...] Schneiderman also promised several times to make sure that the messy investigation into Trump University went away, according to the complaint.
Trump’s complain was dismissed. However, Schneiderman was also targeted by a hit piece published by the New York Observer (owned by Jared Kushner).
Just after Trump won the electoral vote without winning the popular vote, Schneiderman called in his staff and started to plan a defense:
Another mission was to prepare rearguard actions to protect New Yorkers against whatever onslaught might come from Washington, including laying out new sanctuary city guidelines, and possible responses if the administration defunded Planned Parenthood or the EPA. They also began to lay the groundwork to fill in as regulators in areas where the federal government might stop enforcing laws already on the books, from labor laws, to securities regulation, to clean water and clear air enforcement. And he began to free up staff for what the attorney general’s office refers to internally as “Bet The House Litigation”—the kind of thing that would require a massive redeployment of the office’s resources, such as fighting a Muslim registry, or blocking an executive order to reinstitute some kind of stop-and-frisk program.
Eric Schneiderman is also leading the charge to investigate Trump’s potential criminal dealings. Some hope, Schneiderman may turn up something that may lead to impeachment. But Schneiderman says
“There are a lot of reports of egregious acts he’s taken in the course of his business: his sexual assaults and other things—that’s all fair game,” he added. “We’re not—you know, we’re not out to get Mr. Trump. We’re just out to enforce the law. And if he’s broken New York law, we will enforce the law.”
He’s setting himself up as, not a witch hunter, rather an enforcer of the law.
Also, he’s a leader of State AG’s — well the Democrats. He’s advising sanctuary cities and State AG’s in defending against Trump’s EO’s.
the New York attorney general’s office was able to jump out quickly last week with a statement co-signed by 15 other state AGs when Trump’s Muslim ban went into effect at the airports. Schneiderman’s office had been preparing for just such a moment—it was why Schneiderman offered guidance to “sanctuary cities” after the election on how to handle any moves by the new administration—and worked through the weekend with AGs around the country on how to react. In the letter, which called the measure unconstitutional and un-American, Schneiderman demanded that the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Enforcement release the names of anyone being held.
He also advocates Democratic Voters hold Democratic Politicians accountable:
“We have to be a lot tougher. We have to be as demanding of our elected officials as conservatives are of theirs,” Schneiderman told an audience in the weeks after the election. “Nice words are not enough anymore. You have to deliver rewards. If you can’t deliver rewards on climate, on human rights, on protecting immigrants, on unwinding our failed experiment in mass incarceration, well, we love you and we will help you find another job, but right now, we have to find someone else that can do the job.”
Read that previous paragraph again! Then read this next passage:
“We are facing a crisis, not over conservative or liberal, but a crisis over whether or not the rule of law is respected or not, over whether the Constitution is respected or not, and whether the central American notion of equal justice under the law and that everyone be treated with dignity and equality and fairness—all that is at issue now,” he told the crowd.
But don’t despair, he hastened to add. “There is good news, too: Those who were asleep,” he said, “are now awake.”
