Brett Gerry, Harriet Miers, Office of Legal Policy, White House Counsel

The White House Counsel's Office: Here Comes the Cavalry

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In a web-exclusive article published yesterday — and picked up by Drudge, so tout le monde read it — Time magazine proffered this delicious tidbit:

[President Bush] is curtailing his traditional August working vacation at the ranch so that he can barnstorm before the midterm elections. Their outlook thus far seems so ominous for the G.O.P. that one presidential adviser wants Bush to beef up his counsel’s office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue.

This report is consistent with what we’ve heard about the staff of White House Counsel Harriet Miers. (Yes, that Harriet Miers — she of the unfortunate hairstyles and aborted Supreme Court bid.)
Here are some of the forthcoming additions to the White House Counsel staff:

* The strappingly handsome Brent J. McIntosh, currently a deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, is joining the ranks of Miers’s minions. McIntosh is replacing his Yale Law School classmate and good friend, conservative legal superstar Brett Gerry. (Gerry — a former law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, as well as a descendant of American founding father Elbridge Gerry — is taking a high-ranking post at the Justice Department’s new National Security Division.)
* Wachtell Lipton associate Kenneth Lee is leaving that renowned Manhattan sweatshop — with its killer hours and eye-popping paychecks — to join the White House Counsel’s office. Lawyers in the White House Counsel’s office work long hours. But this move might be a lifestyle improvement for the beleaguered Lee, a veteran of some of Wachtell’s grimmest cases (e.g., the Larry Silverstein/World Trade Center litigation).

A position at the White House Counsel’s office is one of the most prestigious and exciting gigs that a lawyer can obtain. So it’s not surprising that Brent McIntosh and Ken Lee are willing to leave their current jobs — which are high-profile, in McIntosh’s case, and lucrative, in Lee’s case — for a Pennsylvania Avenue posting.
If you have any more info about comings and goings at the White House Counsel’s office, please drop us a line.
Into the Fray [Time]
Time: Presidential adviser wants Bush to ‘beef up’ White House Counsel’s office fearing possible Dem-controlled House probes [Raw Story]

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