I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me.
As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.
As a trial lawyer, intelligence is important only in the sense that it allows you to play the game, if you will. Without it, you don't even have a ticket into the competitive arena. But beyond that, it doesn't get you very far at all.
Scientists want to know the evidence behind a statement; they want reproducible tests and verifiable facts. There is a big difference in the thought process of a trial lawyer who is interested not in what's true but what he can convince a jury is true.
I'm an old trial lawyer.
I was a trial lawyer when I was elected to Congress.
I went off to the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a boatload of loans, sights set on becoming a doctor or a lawyer.
I'm kind of floating out there as an artist. I'm in a safe place where I can play a girlfriend or a best friend or a mommy or a lawyer, but a huge part of me is unused. I'm classically trained, historically inclined and somewhat revolutionary by nature, so I'm frustrated as an artist.
I was a pretty independent kid. I thought maybe I'd be a veterinarian or an environmental lawyer.
I wasn't a shrinking violet when I joined Fox News. I didn't have any power at Fox - I had no power in the TV industry - but I had been a lawyer for nine years who had practiced employment law.
It used to be that what was going to be written on my tombstone was 'Benjamin Wittes, former 'Washington Post' editorial writer,' or 'Benjamin Wittes, who wasn't even a lawyer.' Now it's just, like, 'Benjamin Wittes, who's a friend of Jim Comey's.'
I have to say that every white-collar criminal defense lawyer knows when the chief financial officer turns state's evidence, everyone in the executive suite is in a lot of trouble because the chief financial officer knows exactly where the money is coming and going.