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When attorney Timothy Heaphy learned a White Supremacist rally had turned deadly in the streets of his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, he knew he had something to offer.

“I raised my hand and volunteered, and the city hired me and the firm I then worked for to do an independent assessment,” Heaphy said during an event hosted by the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership & Public Service and moderated by Rudman Center Director Anna Brown. 

In addition to overseeing the investigation into the 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Heaphy was Chief Investigative Counsel of the House of Representatives Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.  In January, Heaphy will join Jack Smith, Former Special Counsel, and several attorneys who investigated President Donald Trump and his supporters,  in launching a new firm. 

Heaphy discussed his views on the root causes of political violence, as well as possible remedies – the subject of his book Harbingers: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy.   (The quotes in this piece have been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.)

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“It was essential to me, before I took the Charlottesville job, that it would be independent, that this was not going to be a predeter

mined outcome and exoneration of my client,” he said. “The city, to its credit, gave me complete carte blanche to look at whatever I wanted, talk to whomever I wanted, and make no changes to our final report.”

Heaphy argues the Charlottesville and January 6 riots had much in common:  Both were inspired in part by anger at institutions; in both cases, law enforcement was inadequately prepared due to certain systemic failures, and both were planned on social media, with plenty of foreshadowing of the violence to come.  

As Heaphy sees it, law enforcement should take more initiative when it comes to social media posts that encourage extremist behavior, a challenge given First Amendment free speech protections. In addition, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, websites and social media platforms are not liable for content their users post.

“It's got to rise to a pretty high level for us to essentially do anything investigatory with it. I think that's a mistake, candidly,” he said. “That's a relatively conservative position, but I think law enforcement ought to lean more forward, more aggressively, and at least aggregate and even take some prophylactic investigative steps based on stuff that they read because it’s all an opportunity for law enforcement. Planning these things in plain view creates an amazing bank of data that ought to inform law enforcement preparation.”

Political Division: Causes & Solutions

Heaphy recalled earlier political times decades ago, when staunch opponents, like then-Senator Joe Biden and Senator Strom Thurmond, actually got along on a personal level.  At the time, he worked for Biden.

“Thurmond's office was down the hall from us in the Russell Senate Office Building, and they were friends. They spent time together. They disagreed most of the time politically, but they knew each other,” he said.  “Thirty years later, when I worked in Congress for the Jan 6 Committee, they don't know each other. They don't spend time together,” he said.

Those divisions run deep in the American population, and Heaphy sees it in terms of insider vs. outsider, rather than right vs. left.

“It's people who believe in and are invested in the efficacy of institutions, government being the primary one, and a lot of people across the political spectrum, on the right and the left, who just think those systems are broken, that they don't work for them, and they are mad and just ready for fundamental change.”  

Rudman Center Director Anna Brown and attorney Timothy J. Heaphy.

Heaphy said he can understand some of the frustration toward the entrenched partisanship that allows for little if any change. “The two twin evils, in my view, are gerrymandered districts and money in politics,” he said.  “There's no real incentive, if you're in safe districts, to compromise. Your incentive is the opposite -- it's to get more extreme to prevent a primary challenge. And then you add to that the incessant flow of special interest money that largely goes to incumbents.”

Heaphy offered several possible solutions for overcoming this schism.    

“When I was U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Virginia, I had a lot of really red rural areas where I'd go talk to chiefs and sheriffs. That was hugely important because I was smarter and better as a result of listening to them,” he said. “My strong advice to students, to everybody, is to not get so locked into your orthodoxy, think you have it figured out, harshly judge people that disagree with you.”

Apathy, Heaphy argues, is the greatest threat to democracy.  “Apathy is much more insidious and harder to combat. And what I fear is that what happens is that when people get cynical, for good reason about institutions, they just sit it out. They don't educate themselves; they don't get balanced perspectives; they don't engage with their neighbors; they don't vote.”

Yet Heaphy remains optimistic.  “I believe that if everybody in America engages, educates himself or herself, thoughtfully, interacts with other people, votes, raises her hand, does what people in a democracy I think are duty bound to do, we're good. We're fine. I have a lot of faith in the essential goodness of Americans. Republicans and Democrats have more in common than separate them.” 

This event was part of the Alison Curelop Series in Ethics, Professionalism and Civility.