Today I Learned

Today I learned,

In 1931, an exceptionally talented young Berlin attorney named Hans Litten summoned Adolf Hitler to testify in a criminal case. Litten represented four victims of a brutal assault perpetrated by members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or SA, on a dance hall frequented by leftist workers; by the time the assault ended, three people were dead. At trial, the defense sought to portray the SA as a disciplined political organization, under orders from Hitler to use force only as self-defense.

In his three-hour cross-examination of the head of the Nazi party, Litten managed what precious few dared to attempt. Hitler had expected the young lawyer to be intimidated; instead, Litten aggressively and skillfully dissected him under oath, reducing the supposedly gifted orator to a stammering rage. In trapping Hitler in contradictions and exposing him as an inveterate liar, Litten also made clear the Nazis’ goal of destroying the Weimar Republic. Hitler left the witness stand rattled and humiliated, henceforth forbidding Litten’s name to be uttered in his presence.

Hitler’s revenge came two years later, barely a month after he had been installed in power. In the wake of the Reichstag fire – an arson attack on the parliament building – and relying on a hastily drafted emergency decree for the “protection of people and state”, Hitler ordered the arrest and “protective custody” of numerous perceived political enemies, including Litten. Over the next five years, as he was shuttled from concentration camp to concentration camp, Litten was repeatedly beaten and tortured. In 1938, with no prospect of release, he took his own life. His crime: trying to protect the role of law and a constitutional democracy from a would-be authoritarian.

The United States in 2025 is not Germany in 1933. That said, Litten’s experience has a disturbingly familiar ring. Last week, the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia (EDVA) announced that the former FBI director James Comey had been indicted for allegedly lying under oath to a congressional committee. The case against Comey is so flimsy that Erik Siebert, Trump’s hand-picked chief federal prosecutor for the post, balked at filing charges. Siebert’s fair assessment predictably earned him the ire of the president. “I want him out,” Trump fumed, and so Siebert resigned before he could be fired, vacating the position he had occupied for barely eight months