Government

Trump Fires Jones Day To Stick It To Don McGahn For Being Vaguely Competent

Trump lashes out at the firm that's bent over backward for him.

By  
on

Jones Day (Photo by David Lat)

It’s not much of an exaggeration to declare former White House Counsel Don McGahn the unexpected winner of the Mueller report. If there’s any argument that Trump didn’t obstruct justice, it hinges on McGahn’s refusal to actually do the criminal stuff he was being ordered to do. Plus he got an opportunity to prove how woefully inept Trump’s cabal of attorneys have been for his whole career.

When people started focusing on the report’s comical interludes of McGahn clowning Trump and his team, Trump went to Twitter to throw a hissy fit. But it came as a bit of a surprise when the Trump machine went ahead and acted on the social media ranting and fired Jones Day, replacing the firm with an old Scott Walker retread to handle campaign legal issues in-house.

Campaign officials and advisers cast the decision to hire Nathan Groth — a former lawyer for the Republican National Committee and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — as a money-saving move, supported by the businessman-turned-president who loves to cut costs.

But close Trump advisers say the decision also stems from disappointment with the White House’s former top attorney and current Jones Day partner, Don McGahn, whose behavior has irked the president and some of his family members.

Taking business away from Jones Day is payback, these advisers say, for McGahn’s soured relationship with the Trump family and a handful articles in high-profile newspapers that the family blames, unfairly or not, on the former White House counsel.

Jones Day, the firm that’s enabled this administration from jump, now finds itself on the outside looking in.

“Why in the world would you want to put your enemy on the payroll?” said one adviser close to the White House. “They do not want to reward his firm. Trump arrived at that point long ago, but the security clearance memo stories put a fine point on it.”

By “enemy,” they mean “the guy who arguably saved Trump’s presidency.” Just the sort of “cutting off your nose to spite your face” move we’ve come to expect from this outfit. Apparently, the White House blames McGahn for leaking the existence of a memo trying to get Jared Kushner security clearance despite the intelligence community’s insistence that they’d rather store the nuclear codes in a Teddy Ruxpin than let Jared Kushner read a dossier.

Sponsored

The news isn’t all bad for Jones Day, which will not be replaced as counsel in ongoing matters, but as the campaign ramps up, it’s going to watch millions in potential engagements go up in smoke. Politico notes that the firm had clocked at least $5.5 million in legal fees from the Trump campaign to date.

And now they’re getting punished for it. As the old adage goes, “If you get into bed with a dog, you wind up getting peed on by Russian prostitutes.”

Trump campaign punishes Don McGahn’s law firm [Politico]

Earlier: The Best Part Of The Mueller Report Is Definitely Don McGahn’s ‘Notegate’

Sponsored

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

, , ,