NYT reports on Trump’s personal lawyer Marc E. Kasowitz giving what looks like awfully convenient (for him and for Trump) legal advice to White House staffers that they don’t need to lawyer up. As the NYT explains:
He told aides gathered in one meeting who had asked whether it was time to hire private lawyers that it was not yet necessary, according to another person with direct knowledge.
Such conversations between a private lawyer for the president and the government employees who work for his client are highly unusual, according to veterans of previous administrations.
…
Previous administrations tried to coordinate the activities of private lawyers before letting them interact with aides. Jane Sherburne, a White House special counsel who managed ethics issues during Mr. Clinton’s first term, said Mr. Kendall was not allowed to meet with White House staff members until “we had gone through a whole exercise of having conversations with employees ourselves, talking to them about whether they wanted to retain their own counsel and telling them they didn’t have to talk to Kendall.”
Under ethics rules, Mr. Kasowitz cannot interview any official who has hired a lawyer without that lawyer’s permission, meaning it would be in his interest if administration aides did not hire their own lawyers, experts said. “It is probably easier for him to represent Trump if he doesn’t have to deal with a bunch of other lawyers,” Ms. Sherburne said, adding that she believed it was inappropriate for Mr. Kasowitz to discourage aides from hiring their own counsel.
Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush who now teaches at the University of Minnesota’s law school, said that in a worst-case scenario, a staff member might listen to Mr. Kasowitz’s advice and “end up thrown under the bus.”
What the NYT don’t mention, however, is that Kasowitz does not appear to be a member of the DC Bar. At least according to Kasowitz’s homepage at his law firm, Kasowitz is only admitted in New York. I don’t think that is any obstacle to advising the President on matters of federal law, but it might be an issue on advising the staff as to whether they need representation?
