Making The White House Counsel's Office Great Again
The 26 lawyers working in the White House Counsel's office are an impressive group indeed.
White House (by Cezary p via Wikimedia)
A few weeks in, the presidency of Donald J. Trump has had its highs and its lows, just like any presidential tenure. One of the highs: the selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch as Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee. One of the lows: the problematic rollout of the initial travel ban.
The lesson to be learned from these two disparate episodes: President Trump should listen to his White House Counsel, Don McGahn (aka Above the Law’s reigning Lawyer of the Year).
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McGahn and his colleagues in the White House Counsel’s office played a key role in picking Judge Gorsuch for SCOTUS. Their involvement with the ill-fated travel ban, in contrast, was minimal; they reviewed just for form and legality.[1]
And the case for following the advice of the White House Counsel’s office just got stronger. Today the White House announced the 26 lawyers who are serving under Don McGahn, and it would be hard to find a more high-powered collection of two dozen attorneys in any law office. Based just on what’s in the bios in the press release — which might not include every post a lawyer has held, so these numbers could be low — I count the following:
- 19 former Biglaw lawyers, including 8 partners;
- 8 former lawyers for the Department of Justice or other federal agencies;
- 16 former federal law clerks, including 7 former Supreme Court clerks; and
- 9 former Capitol Hill staffers.
The team, which also includes lawyers with in-house and military experience, contains a broad range of backgrounds. It boasts experts with deep subject-matter expertise, such as John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis on national security, and Scott Gast and Jim Carroll on ethics. And it features more degrees from elite law schools than you can shake a stick at.
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“Don tried to build the strongest office he could,” one source told us. “It can handle all of the standard policy and judicial-nominations work of a White House Counsel’s office, as well as the unique challenges faced by this administration.”
President Trump has filled his White House Counsel’s office with some incredibly impressive individuals. If he heeds their advice, it will stand him in good stead.
[1] There are decent arguments in favor of the legality of the original travel ban — see, e.g., Judge Nathaniel Gorton’s opinion declining to enjoin the ban, and Stanford law professor (and former judge) Michael McConnell’s criticism of the Ninth Circuit decision blocking the ban. But its wisdom as a policy matter is much more open to question, and there’s no denying that the rollout was, well, suboptimal.
UPDATE (5:00 p.m.): The Associated Press reported on the hires before this morning’s White House announcement. Some of the AP’s observations:
- The 26 lawyers include four Jones Day alums.
- The office “also includes a special ethics counselor, Stefan Passantino, and three other senior attorneys dedicated to that topic.”
- “McGahn has organized the office under four deputy counsels: Passantino, who was chairman of the Dentons political law team; Greg Katsas, a partner at Jones Day; Makan Delrahim, a partner at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; and John Eisenberg, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis.”
- “Trump’s counsel office appears slightly larger than President Barack Obama’s was at the start of his administration in 2009, when he announced 22 attorneys. By July, Obama had increased his legal counsel to 41 attorneys. Bush employed 26 White House attorneys at the end of his administration, up from just over a dozen in earlier years.”
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(Flip to the next page to read the complete White House press release, which lists the names of all 26 lawyers.)
President Donald J. Trump Announces Key Additions to the Office of the White House Counsel [Office of the Press Secretary / The White House]
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.
