Neal
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Monday, January 27, 2020
8:00pm 
 
Neal Katyal
in conversation with Rob Reiner

discussing his book,
Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump

Dynasty Typewriter at The Hayworth (Parking info)
2511 Wilshire Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90057

PURCHASE TICKETS
$30 General Admission seating + Book

$40 Reserved Section seating + Book
$20 General Admission (on sale Jan 13, 10am)

Neal Katyal is a law professor at Georgetown University and a partner at a law firm where he leads one of the largest U.S. Supreme Court practices in the nation. He previously served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States. He has argued more Supreme Court cases in U.S. history than has any minority attorney (over 40), recently breaking the record held by Thurgood Marshall. American Lawyer magazine recently named him the very top litigator of the year nationwide and the Justice Department awarded him the Edmund Randolph Award, the highest award the department can give a civilian. A frequent contributor to MSNBC and the New York Times, he has been named one of GQ’s Men of the Year and has appeared on virtually every major American news program, as well as House of Cards, where he played himself.

Co-author of  Katyal’s book is Sam Koppleman,  a senior speechwriter at Fenway Strategies, where he’s written for public officials, philanthropists, business leaders, and organizations working to make the world a better place. He has also been a speechwriter to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and has written under his own name for publications including The Boston Globe and Harper’s Magazine. Koppelman holds a B.A. in government from Harvard College, where he was named a John Harvard Scholar and worked as Op-Eds Editor for The Harvard Crimson

Rob Reiner first came to fame as a two-time Emmy Award winning actor on the landmark television series All In the Family.  He went on to become an acclaimed director of some of the most popular and influential motion pictures. His work ranges from the satire This Is Spinal Tap to dramas like Stand By Me, Misery, A Few Good Men, and Ghosts of Mississippi to romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally,to the enduring uncharacteristic The American President, to The Princess Bride. His now 20 films also include ThBucket List, Flipped, LBJ starring Woody Harrelson and most recently Shock and Awe, about the run up to the war in Iraq which stars Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, James Marsden, and Reiner himself. Reiner is also a dedicated political activist. In California in 1998 he passed a tobacco tax initiative to fund early childhood development.  And for seven years he chaired California’s First Five Commission to oversee the implementation of the initiative.  In 2003 he led the effort to save Ahmanson Ranch from an environmentally harmful development in the Santa Monica Mountains.  He and his wife, Michele helped form The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which filed a federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Prop 8.  Their victory at the Supreme Court paved the way for marriage equality nationwide. He’s been outspoken through Twitter, Mini Doc videos and appearances on news broadcasts about Donald Trump’s toxic presidency and the fight to protect our democracy.

In Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump,  former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, with Sam Koppelman, makes clear why he believes President Trump has left Congress with no choice but to remove him from office. Katyal explains why the Ukraine allegations are an open and shut, simple case for impeachment. Katyal argues that if President Trump is not held accountable for repeatedly asking foreign powers to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, our democracy may never recover. Opposition to foreign interference in our elections is as old as America itself; to quote President George Washington’s Farewell Address: “Foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” Impeachment should always be our last resort, explains Katyal, an “extreme centrist,” but our founders, our principles, and our Constitution demand impeachment now—before it’s too late. 

By outlining what President Trump did, when he did it, and why it meets the Constitution’s standards for impeachment, Katyal provides readers with the facts they need to decide the case for themselves.

Among the topics Katyal covers:

  • The origins of impeachment—why our founders included it in our Constitution, how it’s defined, and when it’s been used against past presidents
  • The evidence available to us with regard to President Trump’s conduct with Ukraine (including evidence of three “high crimes”: soliciting foreign interference, bribery, and obstruction of justice) and why the only viable remedy is impeachment
  • Answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about impeachment—from how it works to how long it takes—and responses to the most common defenses of President Trump’s actions
  • What legislative and regulatory changes we could make to ensure that no president could abuse their power in the same way again, including reforms to campaign finance laws, rewriting Special Counsel regulations (which Katyal drafted as a young Justice Department lawyer in 1999), allowing the Department of Justice to indict the president, and revising Congressional rules so that investigations can be launched by the minority party as well as the majority party

“If we don’t impeach President Trump, then we will live in a country where our president is above the law—effectively writing impeachment out of our Constitution” says Katyal. “This is a moment to remind each other, and the world, of who Americans are and what we stand for.”