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Lanny J. Davis (born 1946) is an American lawyer and lobbyist. From 1996 to 1998, he served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton.
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Davis grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. His father was a dentist in Jersey City and his mother worked as the office manager of his father's dental office. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. According to an item in U.S. News & World Report, as part of his initiation into the fraternity, Davis underwent hazing by, among others, the future President of the United States George W. Bush. He also served as chairman of the campus newspaper, the Yale Daily News. Davis went on to receive his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1970. It was there that he first met Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Davis now lives in Potomac, Maryland, with his second wife, Carolyn Atwell-Davis, who is the legislative affairs director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They have four children. One of his sons, Seth, is a columnist for Sports Illustrated magazine and a college basketball commentator for CBS.
From 1970 to 1972, Davis was National Director of Youth Coalition for Muskie, the youth organization of Edmund S. Muskie's unsuccessful campaign for the 1972 Democratic Party Presidential nomination.
In 1976, Davis ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland's 8th congressional district and lost to Republican Newton Steers.
Davis served three terms (1980–1992) on the Democratic National Committee representing the State of Maryland. In 2005, President Bush appointed Davis to serve as the only Democrat on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
Lanny Davis is the treasurer for Joe Lieberman's Reuniting Our Country PAC. [1]
Davis started his legal career as an associate at Patton Boggs in 1975 and became a partner in 1978. He served as special counsel to the President from 1996 to 1998, during which time he also was the spokesman for Clinton in issues regarding campaign finance investigations and other legal issues, including President Clinton's impeachment trial.
After leaving the White House, Davis returned to Patton Boggs. There he worked as a lobbyist for the nation of Pakistan prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2003, Davis became a partner in Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. There, he provides counseling to corporations and government contractors on crisis management. He left the firm in late 2009 to join McDermott Will & Emery, but has separated from the firm to open his own company, Lanny J. Davis & Associates.
He is a senior advisor and spokesman for the Israel Project, and serves as a lobbyist for the Pakistani government. In 2009, he did "damage control for hawkish Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman over the AIPAC leak story."
Davis has worked with San Diego-based lobbyist Bennett Ratcliff of Vander Ark/Ratcliff, a public relations manager with a close relationship to Hillary Clinton, and "recently launched a new public relations firm called Davis-Block."
In 1999, Davis wrote a memoir of his work in the White House entitled Truth to Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself: Notes from My White House Education. His most recent book, which appeared in 2006, is entitled Scandal: How "Gotcha" Politics Is Destroying America. The book received praise from politicians and commentators across party lines, including Senators Evan Bayh and Lindsey Graham.
Davis has also served as a frequent political commentator on television, radio, and newspapers. He currently writes for The Hill's online Pundits Blog.
In 2006, through opinions expressed in the Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2006) and on Fox News, Davis strongly supported longtime friend Joseph Lieberman in his losing bid against Ned Lamont for the Democratic Party nomination for the post of U.S. Senator from Connecticut. He then continued to support Lieberman when he ran and won the General Election as an Independent.
In 2008, Davis supported Senator Hillary Clinton in her race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC as a surrogate for her. After Clinton conceded, Davis went on to support Barack Obama.
In 2008, Davis questioned the United States' response to the conflict between Russia and Georgia and advised present and future US leaders to consider the point of view of the Russian leaders before unilaterally supporting the government of Georgia in the conflict.
Davis has done "decades of work for some of this country’s most powerful lobbying firms," where his work "has stoked growing criticism that Mr. Davis has become a kind of front man for the dark side, willing to take on some of the world’s least noble companies and causes."
Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and columnist for Salon, criticized Davis in 2009 for Davis's perceived failure to disclose his clients. Greenwald asserted his clients included dictatorships and opponents of unions and health care reform.
According to Salon, Davis "specializes in lobbying for controversial corporate and foreign clients, particularly those seeking Democratic representation in Washington." He has "built a client list that now includes 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," 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." 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." "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." The latter representation has earned him criticism from human rights groups, who 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."
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