Five Questions with Congressman Dan Goldman

Dan Goldman represents New York House District 10, which includes Brooklyn and Manhattan. He starts his second term as a member of Congress in January.

Readers of Civil Discourse will remember the Congressman from before he was elected because we watched him serve as lead counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Before that, he was a legal analyst on MSNBC.

But, my favorite story about Dan doesn’t come from our time working together doing television commentary or even his time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York as a highly regarded prosecutor. It comes from an afternoon during the pandemic when he agreed to talk with one of my seminar classes at the law school about the importance of prosecutorial discretion, the power prosecutors have to decide which cases get prosecuted. Midway through, one of his five children walked into the room and asked what he was doing. He casually put an arm around her as she sat down on the couch next to him, introduced her to my class, and went on with the conversation.

That level of confidence and comfort in blending family and work life with ease is rare. The Congressman’s ability to do it looks natural because it is. He’s one of those people you’re delighted to see run for office. We are all better off when Congress is populated with committed public servants, even if they don’t represent the district you live in. Congressman Goldman joins us tonight to share his assessment of what we’re up against when Donald Trump returns to the White House and his optimism about what he thinks we can accomplish, nonetheless, during this time.

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