In a big piece for The Washington Post, Paul Farhi has done his best to profile D.C. super-lawyer Lanny Davis. I say "done his best" because trying to keep abreast of Davis's absurdity and dishonesty is a job for a team of professionals rather than a single man (I speak from experience). Davis has made his name defending basically everyone and everything (Martha Stewart, Penn State). Most recently, his client of choice has been Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. (Apparently he has just agreed to work for Alex Rodriguez, too). Davis is fascinating as a creature of Washington, and Farhi nicely captures Davis's mix of insecurity and hyperactivity:

He volunteered a list of friends and colleagues who could speak about him. It contained 93 names. “I know,” he appended, “it’s excessive.”

Excess, however, is a Davis specialty. Specifically, his excessive love for dictators. I am thinking of two particular dictators, both of whom Davis represented. Farhi has a go at interrogating Davis over his unsavory clients, and Davis's answers are particularly interesting. As Farhi explains:

Democracy advocates were appalled when Davis accepted a $1 million contract in 2010 from Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, oil-rich African nation with a dreadful human rights record, and another for $100,000 per month from Ivory Coast a few months later.

Let's start with Equatorial Guinea. Here is Farhi's account, and Davis's response:

He went to work for Equatorial Guinea’s longtime dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, on a promise that Obiang would initiate democratic reforms, he said. His principal contribution was writing a speech that Obiang gave at an international conference in South Africa that committed the country to admitting human rights monitors. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the apartheid icon, later praised the speech. “The reason I’m so hypersensitive about it is because I’m really proud of what I did,” he says. “People distorted this by saying that I advocated for [Obiang], that I defended him, that I’ll do anything for money. That’s the charge that violates all of the deepest sensibilities of who I am.”

Yeah yeah. Let's turn to a New York Times report from 2010:

Mr. Davis said he advised Mr. Obiang that he would need to follow promises of reform with action — and invite journalists and civic groups to verify progress. After Mr. Obiang left, a journalist asked Mr. Davis what would happen now to political prisoners. He replied, “If there are political prisoners and no substantive charges against them, they will be freed.”

"If there are?!" Here is Salon's description of an earlier State Department report on Obiang's rule, which was known for: