LAWFARE: The Spotlight Will Now Shift to the White House Counsel

[kpete]

The Flynn imbroglio raises similar questions. Yesterday we learned that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told “the White House counsel” late last month that she believed Flynn had misled senior administration officials about his Russian communications and “was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.” As the Post notes, “It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.” In the coming days it will be crucial to ask what McGahn did with this information, and when, and why.

Other questions will and should be asked about what McGahn has done to enforce ethics rules. Ethics compliance is one of the White House Counsel’s primary responsibilities. The multiple ethics problems swirling around the White House are squarely McGahn’s responsibility. There were early indications that McGahn ignored the usual protocols for ethics vetting of Cabinet officials. Since then the problem has only grown worse and has drawn bipartisan ire. One wants to know what McGahn’s role has been in ensuring (or not ensuring) compliance with relevant ethics rules, and (as several Democrat Senators asked last week) what “clear and specific steps the White House is taking to prevent further violations of government ethics laws by members of the White House”?

McGahn is also at fault if it is true that, as the NYT reported without attribution, Trump was angry because “he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed” concerning the organization of the National Security Council and the Principals’ Committee.

It is possible, as I said in my original piece on McGahn, that the many White House screw-ups outlined above are less a result of McGahn's incompetence and more a result of his lack of access to the President. If that is so, then the blame is partly the Chief of Staff’s, and McGahn needs to insist that the problem be fixed or resign. I doubt this is the problem, however, since McGahn was Trump’s campaign lawyer and by all accounts remains a close senior advisor. A related problem may be that Trump is simply a rogue elephant whom no chains can bind, and that McGahn is giving Trump appropriate advice that is having no impact on his behavior. I doubt that is a full explanation either, since (among other reasons) many of the problems outlined above cannot have been a result of Trump’s intransigence.

It thus appears that the problems noted above are less about access or influence, and more about McGahn’s substance and style. McGahn is reportedly “an iconoclast bent on shaking things up.” Unfortunately for the President, that is not an attractive quality in a White House Counsel, whose main job is to ensure that the President and the White House steer clear of legal and ethical and related political problems.



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https://lawfareblog.com/spotlight-will-now-shift-white-house-counsel

[msanthrope]

1. McGahn has no access to the President? What a load of shite. nt

[rgbecker]

2. Good luck waiting for McGahn to do anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McGahn

Career

Following his graduation from law school, McGahn worked in campaign finance law at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Patton Boggs.[3]
National Republican Congressional Committee

From 1999 to 2008, McGahn was chief counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).[4] During the early 2000s, he defended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for his actions during the controversial 2003 Texas redistricting plan. McGahn also represented DeLay in 2005 during a Federal Election Commission audit of the records of Americans for a Republican Majority, DeLay's political action committee.[5]

In 2005, when DeLay was indicted for funneling campaign contributions into the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), McGahn said that "money gets transferred all the time".[6] McGahn also defended DeLay regarding contributions made by Russian oil tycoons to the U.S. Family Network.[7] During McGahn's tenure as in-house counsel for the NRCC, it was investigated by the FBI and its treasurer was convicted of embezzlement.[8]

Following the 2004 elections, McGahn established a legal practice, McGahn & Associates PLLC. He has represented the Koch brothers-funded Freedom Partners.[9]
Federal Election Commission

McGahn was considered for the Federal Election Commission in 2005, but was passed over due to difficulty replacing him at the NRCC and concerns about his former work as ethics lawyer for Congressman DeLay.[10]

George W. Bush nominated McGahn as a Republican-selected member of the Federal Election Commission in 2008. He was confirmed on June 24, 2008 by the United States Senate and was sworn in shortly thereafter. He is credited as having played a crucial role in loosening regulations on campaign spending.[11][12] In 2013, McGahn advocated for rules that would require FEC approval for its staffers to share information with federal prosecutors.[13] Critics of the proposed rule said it would interfere with the FEC and Justice Department prosecutions of election violations. McGahn resigned from the FEC in September 2013.[14]

After leaving the FEC, McGahn returned to the law firm Patton Boggs.[4] In 2014 he moved to the law firm of Jones Day in Washington, D.C. He represented former Representative Aaron Schock as a client while Schock was being investigated for misuse of federal funds.[11]