Longstanding conflict-of-interest restrictions limit White House employees from taking free or discounted legal advice, but aides who need lawyers have some options for getting help.
President Donald Trump has deep pockets to pay for personal lawyers to defend him from the evolving federal investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russian officials. It’s a very different story for his staff.
White House aides bracing for subpoenas and grand jury summons have already begun making inquiries for legal help to navigate the unfamiliar terrain, according to lawyers who have been contacted, opening critical lines of communication in a bid to avoid serious harm to their reputations and careers, and perhaps even jail time.
“It can cost a lot of money,” said Peter Wehner, a former George W. Bush White House aide who was called in for a grand jury appearance in the investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. “Just for safety sake, even if you’ve done nothing wrong.”
Long-standing conflict of interest restrictions limit White House employees in many circumstances from accepting free or discounted attorney advice, and history is littered with examples of a president’s team buried under more than a hundred thousand dollars (George Stephanopoulos, under President Bill Clinton), if not millions (I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, under President George W. Bush), in legal fees.
Trump aides who can’t afford a premier $1,500-per-hour white-collar lawyer on their government salaries have options. They can file for public subsidies, lean on their homeowners’ insurance or tap lawyer friends for pro bono help. But even then, veterans of White House scandals stretching back to the Ronald Reagan era say that some of the staffers who get caught in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s crosshairs will want to start pinching pennies.
“Obviously for the people who have a lot of money and assets, some of these higher ups, it’s not a problem. It’s a problem for the lower downs who don’t,” said Stanley Brand, a white-collar attorney who represented Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s first White House press secretary, during the probe of the president’s Whitewater land deals.
As Mueller’s probe launches, Washington has been on a crash course relearning the rules of the road for how executive branch aides can fund their legal help, short of paying in full. The Washington Post reported Friday that an unnamed senior White House adviser is already a person of interest in the federal investigation into potential Trump campaign collusion with Russian hackers seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election.
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West Wing aides brace for big attorney bills https://t.co/BkVa5YM2Fn pic.twitter.com/pipfrDGFr1
— POLITICO (@politico) May 22, 2017
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