Standing up to the ‘perils of Trump’
Stanley Twardy is one of the 11 angry men trying to accelerate the wheels of justice in the case of the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump.
“Angry” is my word. Maybe it's too strong, too convenient. Twardy sounds as poised as when he was U.S. Attorney for Connecticut from 1985-91 before serving as Gov. Lowell Weicker's chief of staff. Still, there's a bite to some of the phrases he uses, like when he calls out “the perils of Trump.”
There's more simmering language in the amicus brief these 11 men filed to support the proposed Jan. 2 trial date in the federal case seeking to prosecute Trump for trying to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
“There is no more important issue facing America and the American People” … “Nothing less is at stake than the American experiment in democracy.”
They were appointed or served as judges or attorneys during Republican administrations. Twardy, 71, says his lifetime status as a member of the GOP ended in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 riots, when he became unaffiliated. He hadn't even done that when Weicker, his professional mentor, claimed the governor's office in 1990 by switching to run under the flag of his own A Connecticut Party.
That there are 11 of them, like a lineup of a football team, seems fitting as well. This is a longoverdue formation of Republicans standing up to one of their own. In 1973, Twardy received the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Scholar-Athlete Award after finishing his football career at Trinity College in Hartford, where he was an offensive tackle for his first three years before switching to defensive end as a senior.
He's back on offense now.
It's been a month since Twardy spoke at Weicker's funeral and 50 years since he was first impressed by the senator from Connecticut who burnished his “maverick” label by staring down his own Republican Party during the Watergate hearings. Twardy's degree was in physics (his father taught math and physics at New Canaan High School along with courses at University of Connecticut), which was his backup career plan in case he couldn't get into law school. He was at University of Virginia School of Law when he watched the hearings that brought down President Richard Nixon.
“The Weicker style had a huge influence on me,” Twardy says. “Not only the willingness — but the obligation — to speak up about things. I learned
that from him.”
At 6-foot-3, Twardy was also one of the few people who could see (nearly) eye-to-eye with the 6-foot-6 Weicker. He joined the senator's paid staff in 1977, then returned to his native Stamford to work for the law firm of Silver, Golub & Sandak, where colleagues included Richard Blumenthal, now a Democratic U.S. senator. By 1984 he was an alternate delegate at the GOP Convention nominating incumbent President Ronald Reagan. Back in '84, he said, “I am not a true Reagan conservative,” insisting he hewed more closely to Weicker's style.
“are Reagan conservatives,” he says of his co-signers on the amicus brief. The lineup includes former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush; former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld; Jonathan Rose, who was a special assistant to Nixon; and retired federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig, who advised Mike Pence on his duties as vice president to certify the 2020 election.
Twardy likes the legal strategy of having the indictment focus on Trump rather than muddling the process by including his alleged co-conspirators. Keeps things simple. There's no reason for this trial to be all that complicated.
While Trump's team seeks to delay proceedings under April 2026, I ask Twardy why the brief doesn't offer the reasoning that a trial during a second term for Trump would leave him unable to fulfill his presidential duties.
“I'll go one step further,” the lawyer counters. “I think he directs the attorney general to dismiss the case.”
So there's that. Presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to set a trial date by month's end. Twardy doesn't think special counsel Jack Smith will get the Jan. 2, 2024 date endorsed in the amicus brief, but says he believes it will happen before Election Day.
He also has faith the party “will ultimately move beyond Trumpism.” Twardy has never run for office himself, explaining that he “loves government, but not politics.”
Twardy calls the former president “Trump” and the ex-governor “Weicker,” but pivots to “Rudy” when sharing an anecdote about former New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, aka, Trump's disgraced sidekick.
Back in the 1980s, when Giuliani was U.S. attorney for New York, Twardy lent him use of his office in New Haven during a Connecticut trial. The memory reminds him that Giuliani left behind a gift he insists should be somewhere within reach in his home in Wilton. He eventually finds it, a copy of David Eisenhower's “Eisenhower at War 19431945,” about another Republican icon. It included a note:
“Stanley, thank you for everything. Your courtesy was most appreciated by all of us. See you very soon.
Rudy
P.S. From One Republican to another.”
“Frankly, I supported him when he was running for mayor in New York,” Twardy says. “But I would not support him again given what he's done.”
He tells stories of other objects that have become poignant souvenirs of his career. I ask if it was the drive to Hartford that become too much to continue on as Weicker's chief of staff in 1993, when he took a job at Day Pitney in Stamford (where he still works). It wasn't the commute, but the opposite. He was so busy he only drove home to his wife and young daughter on weekends. At Christmas, Weicker gave him a basrelief ornament of the governor's residence with a circle he drew around the room Twardy stayed in.
Before Weicker's funeral was held in Greenwich July 10, his widow, Claudia, couldn't locate the pocket version of the U.S. Constitution he typically carried.
But she knew where she could get one.
“‘Stan, can I have yours? We need to put a copy in his jacket when we bury him,' ” Twardy recalls her asking.
She found the original, but “I was very honored she wanted my copy of it,” Twardy says. “Weicker, the Constitution and Twardy sort of all go together.”
Not long before the 2016 election, Weicker referred to Trump as “a total con artist” and a “disgrace,” an echo from Watergate of placing nation over party. In spirit, Lowell Weicker is the 12th angry man.