[**Kenneth F. McCallion**](http://kennethmccallionauthor.com) is a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Dept. of Justice, specializing in organized crime, labor racketeering and counterintelligence cases.
An attorney with over 40 years of experience, Mr. McCallion has handled some of the country’s largest cases, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill case in Alaska, victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attack, the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant litigation, the Gulf War nerve-gas exposure case, and the Bhopal Gas disaster litigation. Ken has also represented thousands of World War II victims of Nazi persecution and forced and slave labor camps. Other cases handled by him include the representation of families exposed to Dursban TC, a pesticide manufactured by Dow Chemical Corp,, as well as the families of the victims of the American Airlines crash Flight 587, to name a few.
His latest books, Profiles in Courage and Profiles in Cowardice in the Trump Era take a closer look at those figures who stood up to trump and those who did not.
The acclaimed Senior Partner of McCallion and Associates LLP and author answers our questions about his two new releases. Available now at [**Amazon**](https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1&rh=p_27%3AKenneth%20Foard%20McCallion&s=relevancerank&text=Kenneth%20Foard%20McCallion) and [**Barnes & Noble**](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/profiles-in-cowardice-in-the-trump-era-kenneth-foard-mccallion/1139765869)**.**
**What gave you the idea to write these two books on the Trump Presidency?**
I read John F. Kennedy’s classic Profiles in Courage when I was still in my teens, and the idea has always stuck with me of writing about some contemporary leaders who displayed political courage and paid a high personal and political price for their courage.
**How did you go about selecting the Senators to have their profiles included in your book?**
Senators John McCain and Mitt Romney were the most obvious choices to be included. McCain cast the deciding vote in the Senate to save the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which thwarted Trump’s attempts to destroy and reverse everything that President Obama ever achieved while in office. After McCain died, Mitt Romney was the sole Republican Senator to vote in favor of convicting Trump in the first impeachment trial in the Senate. However, the courage displayed by some other Republican Senators and Representatives is less well known, such as Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, both of whom were forced to give up their Senate seats when attacked by the far right media and Trump himself for having dared to question some of his more idiotic proposals, such as a the need to spend billions of dollars on building a Border Wall along the Mexican border.
**What about Republicans in the House of Representatives? Did any of them qualify to be included in your Profiles in Courage book?**
Yes. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is the prime example of a conservative Republican who simply refused to buy into Trump’s false narrative about the 2020 election having been “stolen” from him by members of a shadowy left-wing conspiracy involving pedophiles who drink children’s blood and the Chinese secret service, which manufactured tens of thousands of phony ballots for Biden on rice paper and then dumped them at polling places around the country on election day. Cheney has now been stripped of her leadership position in the House of Representatives for the crime of having refused to sign onto Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, and is facing a primary challenge in Wyoming from a far right candidate supported by Trump.
**Other than Liz Cheney, were there any other House Republicans who showed public opposition during the Trump Era?**
Yes, there were a few, including a small handful who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment after the January 6, 2020 insurrection attempt in Washington to try to prevent the certification of the 2020 election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Rep. Adam Kinzinger is perhaps the most articulate of these Republicans in the House
who were willing to put their careers and their own personal well-being on the line rather than to take the easier route taken by most of their Republican colleagues, which was to fall in line behind Trump and to shamefully remain silent while our core democratic institutions were under attack by authoritarian forces and domestic terrorists who are trying to trash our democracy.
**Were there any Governors or state election officials who you feel deserved honorable mention?**
Yes, the Republican Governors of Georgia and Arizona – Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey - deserve recognition for having resisted the temptation to go along with most of their Republican colleagues around the country. They certified the election results in their states for Biden, despite intense pressure from Trump and his band of rogue lawyers, led by Rudy Giuliani, who tried to get them to declare the election results as invalid and to deliver the presidential electors in these two states to Trump. Several state election officials also deserve the undying thanks of the American people for holding true to their oaths of office and their obligations to the American people. These include Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling of Georgia, as well as Aaron Van Langevelde, a young Republican election official in Michigan who voted in favor of certifying the election results for Biden while other Republican state officials were caving into the pressure being brought to bear on them by the Trump White House.
**Other than Republican elected officials, were there any other officials in government service who you feel stood strongly (perhaps against party stance) and would not go along with the Trump program?**
Yes, as you may remember, there were several career civil servants in the U.S. State Department who refused to go along with Trump’s attempts to shake down the Ukrainian government by withholding military aid that they desperately needed to defend themselves against Russian aggression until they announced that they had opened an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. These courageous civil servants included Ambassador Marie Yovanovich and Lt Col. Alexander Vindman, whose family had emigrated from Ukraine and who served with distinction in the U.S. Army.
**Were there any other federal officials who you believe refused to go along with the Trump White House’s reported attempts to stop the investigations into Trump’s close association with President Putin and other Russian officials.**
Yes. One prime example is Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who pursued the investigation into Trump’s close ties with Russia even after being threatened with being fired by Trump. Don McGann, the White House counsel to Trump, refused to carry out various orders from Trump and threatened to resign, which caused Trump to back down from his demand that the Acting Attorney General be fired.
**Does your book deal at all with Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic?**
Yes, Trump’s almost continual denial of the pandemic and its long lasting impact on the country and the entire world was facilitated by a whole host of pandemic deniers in the White House and in the medical community, which I deal with in the companion book – Profiles in Cowardice in the Trump Era. On the plus side, I describe the heroic efforts of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rick Bright in the Profiles in Courage book. They were truth tellers about the extent of the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, even though Trump surrounded himself with pandemic deniers in the White House, who kept promising that it was all like a bad dream and would just go away without any need for social distancing or other preventative measures.
**How did you go about researching these books?**
To a large extent, there books are really sequels to my earlier book: Treason & Betrayal: The Rise and Fall of Individual One, which provided much of the factual basis for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s ties with Russian sources and the indictments of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and others. Much of my work for the government, including the Department of Justice and intelligence work, was focused on Russia and Eastern Europe. Even after I left government service, much of my efforts were focused on Ukraine and Russia’s attempts to re-establish its dominance in this former Soviet Republic. I represented former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was persecuted and jailed by the pro-Russian regime in Ukraine that was being advised by Paul Manafort, who later went on to become the Chairman of the Trump Campaign in 2016. I provided U.S. government prosecutors and agents with several “smoking guns” establishing Manafort’s money laundering activities and collusion with Russian intelligence operatives, such as Konstantin Kilimnik, who was also indicted by the Special Counsel’s office, but fled to Moscow where he has continued to avoid arrest.
**What are you hoping that readers will take away from these two books?**
I think it is important for all Americans and people worldwide to understand how close that U.S. democracy came to collapse in the Trump Era, even before the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and how that collapse was prevented only through the courageous efforts of a few Republican elected officials in Congress and in the various states We need to remember and honor the sacrifices that they made, and to be ever vigilant that no authoritarian despot such as Trump be ever again permitted to take up residence in the White House.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
