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Here’s What Happened When a Trump Admin Hopeful Tried to Delete His Pro-Hillary Columns

by VaniaOrosco563 Posted on April 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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According to Arab News, columnist Andrew J. Bowen, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is currently in the process of landing a job with the Trump administration. But in order to clear the final hurdles of the hiring process, Bowen has allegedly tried to convince the news outlet to delete some of his previous writings, mainly ones that were critical of Trump and praised his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Examples include posts describing Trump as “boorish and predatory” and charging the then-Republican candidate with “whipping xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments” unlike any other presidential hopeful in US history.

Those attempts to strong-arm Arab News have apparently backfired. A statement from the editors on Tuesday:

Arab News regrettably announces that it will discontinue publishing articles by US columnist Andrew Bowen.

The reason behind this decision is the columnist insisting that this newspaper deletes previous articles dating back prior to the recent US election where he was in favor of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Bowen, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has repeatedly requested the removal of these articles stating that this is needed for him “to be cleared” for what he claims to be a possible job with the new Donald Trump administration’s State Department.

Mr. Bowen also insinuated — verbally and in writing — that he will seek the support of influential friends and contacts to help remove the articles.

Arab News possesses all correspondence relating to this matter and its position is that such a request is unprofessional journalistically, particularly given that there were no factual errors or libelous comments that require a redaction or correction.

We wish Mr. Bowen the best of luck in his job application.

The statement ends with a link to Bowen’s archival history writing for the site.

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Here’s What Happened When a Trump Admin Hopeful Tried to Delete His Pro-Hillary Columns

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Justice Department Gets Ready to Turn the Cops Loose

by TrishaCrombie Posted on April 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here we go:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered a sweeping review of federal agreements with dozens of law enforcement agencies….In a memorandum dated March 31 and made public Monday, the attorney general directed his staff to look at whether law enforcement programs adhere to principles put forth by the Trump administration, including one declaring that “the individual misdeeds of bad actors should not impugn” the work police officers perform “in keeping American communities safe.”

I think we can safely guess that many or most of these agreements will, upon review, be discovered to be heavy-handed and unfair sanctions based on a few individual bad apples. They will then be gutted or thrown out.

These are shaping up to be golden years for police departments, who are getting a very clear message: Paint the town red, boys. No need to worry anymore about the feds ginning up any ridiculous “civil rights” concerns just because you harass lots of black people or beat up prisoners in your jails. Just catch us some bad dudes, OK?

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Justice Department Gets Ready to Turn the Cops Loose

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

by DarrellBarreiro Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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In a significant rebuke of the Trump administration Monday, a federal judge in Texas rejected the Department of Justice’s request to halt a major voting rights case that had been filed during Obama administration.

The case in question dates back to 2013, when the Obama DOJ joined voting rights advocates, Democratic lawmakers, and a group of Texas residents in suing to block a draconian voter ID law in Texas. This coalition scored a major victory last year when a federal appeals court ruled that the law discriminated against minorities and needed to be softened. The Texas legislature is currently working on amending the law.

However, the appeals court left open a key question in the case: whether the discrimination was intentional. It sent the case back to federal district court for a determination on that issue. The question of intent is significant. The finding of a discriminatory effect necessitates altering the law. But if the court finds that Texas acted with a discriminatory intent, the judge could throw the law out entirely. What’s more, if Texas is found to have engaged in intentional voting discrimination, a judge could require the state to seek federal approval for future changes to its voting laws. In arguing that Texas lawmakers indeed sought to discriminate against minorities, critics of the law pointed out that it allows voters to prove their identifies with concealed carry permits, which are disproportionately held by white people, but excludes IDs issued to state employees and state university students, which minorities are more likely to have.

But after Trump was sworn in and Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the federal government changed course. In February, the DOJ requested to withdraw its claim that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s instructions were to let the legislature amend the law before the courts decided whether to resolve to the intent question. In March, the government urged the court not to issue any opinion until after the legislature had acted. On Monday, the court allowed the US government to withdraw from the case—but rejected its reasoning for trying to halt the case.

United States District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos took issue with the idea that the state legislature’s action would remove the need to litigate the intent issue. “It is well-settled that new legislation does not ipso facto eliminate the discriminatory intent behind older legislation and moot a dispute regarding the violation of law,” the judge wrote. In her eight page order, she went on to dispute the logic the government’s lawyers presented in their briefs and cited multiple cases to explain why the case should proceed. The judge indicated she will issue a ruling on the discriminatory intent question this spring, without waiting on Texas lawmakers to act.

In a series of tweets, Gerry Hebert, an attorney representing the plaintiffs fighting this law, celebrated the judge’s order as “good news for voters seeking relief” and an “important victory.”

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

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Trump Donates His Presidential Salary to the Park Service While Pushing Cuts That Would Harm It

by Kurt25M364900224 Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is donating the first three months of his presidential salary to the National Park Service, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced on Monday. “The Park Service has cared for our parks since 1916,” Spicer said in handing over a check for $78,333 to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, “and the president is personally proud to contribute the first quarter of his salary to the important mission of the Park Service, which is preserving our country’s national security.”

It was unclear if Spicer misspoke by mentioning national security, and Zinke emphasized the donation would help cover $229 million of deferred maintenance on the nation’s 25 national battlefields. “As a veteran myself, I want to say I am thrilled at the President’s decision to donate the check he did today,” he said. “We’re excited about that opportunity.”

Last month, Trump proposed slashing spending at the Department of Interior by $1.5 billion, 12 percent of the budget at the Park Service’s parent agency. Advocates have warned that the cuts would harm acquisition and preservation programs. The check presented today would make up just .005 percent of the cuts.

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Trump Donates His Presidential Salary to the Park Service While Pushing Cuts That Would Harm It

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A Lot of Trump Voters Only Heard One Thing: Build the Wall

by FinnZ48tawaen Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post has a story on the front page today that’s already become so common it’s almost a cliche. It’s about the small-town folks who voted for Donald Trump but somehow didn’t realize he was going to do things that might harm them. Today’s example features on-the-ground reporting from Durant, Oklahoma, and Exhibit A is Betty Harris:

She likes the president’s promises to crack down on illegal immigration, which she thinks has hurt the job market, and to bully manufacturers into staying in the country. She said both of her daughters were out of work for months because they worked for companies that moved overseas.

But Harris is upset by the president’s proposed budget, which would dramatically cut funding for the Robert T. Davis Senior Center, managed by the Bryan County Retired Senior Volunteer Program.

There seem to be an awful lot of people who heard only one thing from Trump during the campaign: He was going to build a wall and keep out all the Mexicans. Now, as best I can tell, the unauthorized population of Durant is at most 1 percent. But no matter. Illegal immigration still seemed like a scary thing, and Harris was all in favor of stopping it cold.

Over and over, I read stories where I hear this. Trump got the votes of people who liked his promise to stop illegal immigration. And that was about it. They didn’t really hear the part about repealing Obamacare. They didn’t hear the part about cutting the budget. They didn’t hear the part about climate change being a hoax. They didn’t hear the part about 86ing regulations that protect workers but are disliked by big corporations. They didn’t hear the part about big tariffs, which would make the stuff they buy more expensive. They didn’t hear the part—or didn’t care—about gigantic tax cuts for the rich.

Over and over, it’s illegal immigration. And now they’re shocked that Trump wants to take away their health care and their senior center and their workplace safety rules and all the financial regulations that protect consumers. They didn’t notice him talking about all of that. Or else they didn’t think he was serious. Or they didn’t realize that when they voted for Trump, they were voting for a White House full of true-believing conservatives who have never cared about the working class and still don’t.

The saddest part, from their point of view, is that they’re probably not even going to get their wall. They’re just going to get all the stuff they didn’t want.

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A Lot of Trump Voters Only Heard One Thing: Build the Wall

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Clean Up On Aisle Trump

by JuanaPerryman80 Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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In early March, a procession of lawyers in boxy suits and overcoats crowded into a chandeliered dining room at Tony Cheng’s in Washington, DC’s Chinatown. Justice Department attorneys passed heaping plates of beef with broccoli and spring rolls to corporate law firm partners and think tank fellows in bow ties. A sign taped to the restaurant’s entrance announced the event was sold out, and regulars of the Federalist Society’s monthly luncheon marveled at the turnout. The featured guest was Donald F. McGahn II, who had recently ascended to one of Washington’s most influential legal perches, White House counsel.

After the fortune cookies were distributed, C. Boyden Gray, a former White House counsel to George H.W. Bush and a Federalist Society board member, approached the microphone. McGahn was stuck at the White House dealing with a “pressing matter,” he informed the disappointed audience. Gray didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to: The night before, the Washington Post had revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had told the Senate that he had no contact with Russian officials during the presidential campaign, had in fact met twice with Russia’s ambassador.

Trump Might Be a Dream Come True for Megarich Campaign Donors

Hours after the Federalist Society luncheon let out, Sessions recused himself from ongoing investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. President Donald Trump spent the next day fuming at his staff—particularly McGahn, who had to explain to the incensed commander in chief that Sessions’ recusal was the AG’s decision alone. Early the next morning, Trump rattled off a series of tweets accusing Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. McGahn was soon on a plane to Mar-a-Lago; his surreal task was to figure out how the administration might retroactively prove an explosive allegation that Trump had tossed out without evidence.

As the top legal adviser to the president, the White House counsel is one of the most vital positions in any administration. The counsel vets executive orders and nominees, reviews the legal aspects of national security matters, and monitors compliance with federal ethics laws. Rarely does an order or a memo leave the White House without the counsel’s sign-off. Gray says that during his time as counsel, his office received four times more paperwork than any other White House department. (This was before email.) A former Obama White House counsel told me, “People used to say to me, ‘You and the chief of staff are the only two people who really touch everything.'”

Above all, the White House counsel’s role is to keep the president out of trouble, legal or otherwise. With Trump, that’s a Herculean task. McGahn has represented scandal-plagued Republicans—Tom DeLay was a client—but the controversy and chaos engulfing the Trump White House are another order of magnitude. McGahn represents the most conflict-ridden commander in chief in the nation’s history. He has spent his short time in the White House constantly rushing to put out fires.

On paper, McGahn, who is 48, wasn’t an obvious choice for White House counsel. He has never previously worked in a presidential administration, and he has all the attributes of the Washington elites whom Trump has denounced. (One attendee of McGahn’s 2010 wedding says it was like “a convention for election lawyers.”) Trump vowed to get big money out of politics, while McGahn has spent much of his legal career helping candidates and donors stretch the limits of campaign finance laws. “The irony is that Trump campaigned on ‘draining the swamp,'” says Dan Weiner, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, “but it’s my impression that Don thinks the ‘swamp’—at least as many good-government types would define it—is necessary and constitutionally protected.” (McGahn did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Yet on another level, McGahn is ideally suited for a job in the Trump White House. The administration’s deregulatory agenda—the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” as chief strategist Stephen Bannon put it—is perfectly in sync with McGahn’s libertarian views. To carry out that mission, he has put together a team of nearly 30 lawyers, many of whom are experts in federal law and how to unravel it. McGahn has plenty of experience dismantling the bureaucracy from within: That was precisely the program he pursued for five years while serving on the Federal Election Commission. “He didn’t care about the institution, and he seemed mostly interested in grinding its work to a halt,” says David Kolker, a former associate general counsel at the FEC who worked alongside McGahn. “Don had a blow-it-up mentality.”

Before recent renovations, visitors to the ninth floor of the FEC’s headquarters, where the commissioners have their offices, were greeted by a wall of black-and-white photographs—headshots of all 23 commissioners who had served the agency since its founding in 1975. All except one.

McGahn, who was on the FEC from 2008 to 2013, had refused to sit for his official photo. It was his way of dispelling the notion that he had any affinity for his employer. The way he saw it, he was reining in an overzealous bureaucracy that trampled the rights of ordinary Americans. No commissioner has done more to change the agency.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, McGahn carved out a niche as the go-to lawyer for House Republicans and spent nearly a decade representing the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm for House Republicans. When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was accused of ethics violations, partly in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, McGahn led his legal defense. (DeLay resigned from Congress but was exonerated in 2013.) In 2005, McGahn hung his own shingle and built a modest practice focusing on election-related cases. (He’d convinced the NRCC to keep him on retainer as its general counsel—an unorthodox and lucrative arrangement.) He developed a reputation as a fierce ideologue with a deep understanding of the law, but within the clubby network of election lawyers, he cut an odd figure. He lacked an Ivy League pedigree, wore his hair long, and spent weekends playing guitar in local rock bands. (His latest, Scott’s New Band, which advertised itself as “one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s most exciting and flat-out FUN cover bands,” split up in December as McGahn prepared to enter the White House.) “He is kind of an iconoclast,” says James Bopp, a prominent conservative election lawyer.

Don McGahn and his band play in Ocean City, Maryland in 2011.

Republicans had floated McGahn in the 2000s to fill an open seat on the FEC. He never hid his disdain for the independent agency—a perspective that undoubtedly appealed to lawmakers who thought of the agency as a nuisance. “The original intent was for it to be a glorified congressional committee,” he said in 2001. Nodding to the fact that the commission is appointed by the same people—members of Congress—whom it regulates, McGahn acknowledged that “you have the charge of the fox guarding the hen-house.”

Congress designed the FEC to ensure bipartisanship, mandating that the six-member commission have no more than three members from either party. The commission can’t act without a four-vote majority. But in 2008, in what some commissioners call the “dark ages,” it was down to two members. Without a quorum, the agency could do little more than run its website and keep the lights on.

Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell cut a deal in the summer of 2008 to end the FEC’s impasse when they confirmed a slate of new commissioners, McGahn among them. From the beginning, McGahn made clear he felt no kinship with his new employer. “A lot of the staff said, ‘Welcome to the agency. It’s so nice to have you join us,'” recalls Eric Wang, an election lawyer who got to know McGahn while working for another Republican commissioner. “He made a point of saying, ‘I’m not joining you,'” making it clear that he was not there to collaborate with the career agency staff, but rather to serve as a check on them.

Watch Trump’s Top White House Lawyer Shred on the Guitar

The FEC has always suffered from partisan infighting. Still, former Democratic and Republican commissioners say they largely viewed their job as enforcing the law and finding four-vote majorities on the cases before them. That seemed to change with the arrival of McGahn and his two Republican colleagues, Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen, according to Ellen Weintraub, the FEC’s most senior Democratic commissioner, who recalls that they kept their deliberations to themselves and voted as a bloc. The first time Weintraub witnessed this, she thought, “What? You have one brain for the three of you?”

McGahn was seen as a domineering force on the commission. “There is no nice way to say it: At some point, McGahn will be an asshole,” conservative lawyer Steve Hoersting warned newly confirmed Commissioner Petersen in a 2008 email. “He’ll insist he knows the better course on an issue and will insist you go along. Don likes to employ the ‘trust me’ method of persuasion.”

Weintraub says it was nearly impossible to pry any information out of McGahn, who refused to return her messages or reply to her emails. He rarely seemed to be in his office. Once, Weintraub bumped into his executive assistant in the women’s restroom. “She looked at me, and without even a hello she blurted out, ‘He’s not in, I don’t know when he’s going to be in, I don’t know when I’m going to be talking to him.'”

To his critics, McGahn was on a one-man crusade to destroy the FEC from within. An analysis by the good-government organization Public Citizen found that the number of deadlocked enforcement votes spiked after his arrival, from an average of 1 or 2 percent in the early and mid-2000s to 15 percent in 2011. McGahn had no qualms about undermining the FEC’s nonpartisan lawyers—in one case, he posted a memo to the agency’s website contradicting the commission’s attorneys in an ongoing lawsuit. He bragged about disregarding parts of the law he disputed or saw as out of sync with court rulings. “I’m not enforcing the law as Congress passed it,” he told a group of law students in 2011, referring to the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, which was partially invalidated by the 2010 Citizens United ruling. “I plead guilty as charged.”

Former FEC employees say McGahn’s hostility to the agency sometimes extended to its staff. Lawyers from the Office of the General Counsel—which issues recommendations to the commission and defends the FEC in lawsuits filed by outside parties—got the worst of it. When junior lawyers appeared before the commissioners in closed sessions, McGahn could be brutal, former FEC employees say. “I remember passing my boss notes saying, ‘Make him stop,'” one former executive assistant told me. “He would pick on not the supervising attorney, but the line attorney—like a cat would play with a mouse, swatting him.” McGahn, former colleagues recall, saw the career employees as liberal do-gooders, and he made it his mission to rein them in. “He would berate the staff,” says a former FEC lawyer. “He said they came to certain conclusions because they favored the Democrats.”

Don McGahn and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, conversing in the Oval Office. Stephen Crowley/New York Times/Redux

The FEC’s lawyers enjoyed an open line of communication with the Justice Department. The two agencies often worked different sides of the same cases—the DOJ handled the criminal side while the FEC handled the civil. Near the end of his tenure, McGahn pushed for changes to the agency’s enforcement manual so the Office of General Counsel couldn’t share information with other federal agencies without the commission’s approval. McGahn also sought to require FEC lawyers to get four votes on the commission before accessing publicly available information—such as news clips and old lawsuits—in enforcement matters. Allies of McGahn say these moves were intended to bring order to an out-of-control bureaucracy. (Both efforts were unsuccessful, though his proposals have since become de facto policy at the commission.) FEC lawyers saw McGahn’s efforts as an attempt to handcuff them. The FEC’s general counsel at the time, Anthony Herman, quit in frustration.

McGahn left the commission in September 2013 and returned to private practice. If his goal was to paralyze the nation’s election watchdog, he largely succeeded. Deadlocked votes continue. Enforcement actions and assessed fines have dropped. (The Republican commissioners tout these statistics as evidence that more candidates and committees are following the law, while Democrats say they’re proof of the agency’s failure to act.) The commission has gone more than three years without naming a new general counsel, and Congress hasn’t confirmed any new members since 2013, with one current member’s term having expired as many as 10 years ago. A 2016 survey of federal employees found that morale at the FEC was at its lowest ever. Ann Ravel, a Democratic commissioner, recently resigned two months early, weary of the FEC’s dysfunction.

McGahn is not solely at fault for the FEC’s sorry state—but those who worked alongside him or observed his time there say he deserves much of the blame. “He ushered in a strategic approach to gridlocking that agency,” says David Donnelly, president of the election reform group Every Voice, “because if an agency can’t do its job, it can’t enforce the law.”

In late 2014, McGahn met Donald Trump for the first time. He was now a partner at Jones Day and had taken on high-profile conservative clients, including the political action committee of the billionaire Koch brothers and Citizens United, the nonprofit group behind the monumental Supreme Court ruling of the same name. David Bossie, the head of Citizens United, had hired McGahn to spearhead a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to block disclosure of its donors. (The suit ultimately lost.) As Trump mulled a presidential run, Bossie recommended McGahn as a campaign lawyer.

According to a person familiar with the meeting, McGahn reminded Trump that they had a personal connection. In the early 1980s, when the real estate mogul wanted to muscle his way into the fledgling casino industry in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he hired McGahn’s uncle Patrick, a local lawyer and political power broker. A three-time Purple Heart recipient nicknamed Piano Wire Paddy for his weapon of choice in the Korean War, Paddy McGahn and his brother Joe, a Democratic state senator, had been instrumental in bringing casino gambling to Atlantic City. Paddy, who died in 2000, paved the way for Trump’s Atlantic City expansion. When a Trump executive complained at the time about his high legal fees, Trump reportedly said, “Jack, I’m 13 and 0 with this guy.”

By the time Trump opened his first casino in 1984, however, the McGahns had undergone a conversion. Tired of operating under Paddy’s thumb, the state assemblyman for Atlantic City, Steven Perskie, had challenged Joe McGahn for his state Senate seat in 1977. The Democratic machine threw its weight behind Perskie (McGahn ran as an independent), and Perskie won the election—a betrayal in the eyes of the McGahn family. Thereafter, the McGahns were Republicans.

What the FEC?

Don McGahn, who grew up in Atlantic City, was one of Trump’s earliest campaign hires. The lawyer, though, didn’t bet entirely on Trump. In March 2015, he also took on another client: former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership PAC, seen as a vehicle for a Perry presidential run. It is not uncommon for rival candidates to be represented by lawyers at the same law firm, but rarely does the same attorney work for more than one contender, according to election lawyers I spoke to.

McGahn was in attendance for Trump’s official campaign announcement in the rose-marble lobby of Trump Tower in June 2015. It was a landmark moment in a lucrative partnership. According to an election lawyer I talked to, a presidential campaign typically pays a flat fee in the range of $25,000 to $35,000 a month for legal representation. Jones Day, according to a former Trump staffer, instead billed the campaign on an hourly basis, racking up monthly bills of as much as several hundred thousand dollars. “For the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal, Trump got totally screwed on the deal with Jones Day,” the election lawyer told me.

McGahn came to play an integral role as the race wore on. In November 2015, he beat back an attempt by the former chair of New Hampshire’s Republican Party to keep Trump off the ballot in the state. As Trump delivered his victory speech in Manchester, a beaming McGahn stood onstage with the Trump family. And it was McGahn who introduced Trump to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society executive who oversaw the Trump campaign’s assembly of two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees as a way to win over skeptical Republicans. Polls show that Trump’s picks played a key role in convincing social conservatives to hold their noses and vote for him.

For a campaign with no shortage of drama, McGahn proved remarkably adept at ducking attention. In a rare on-camera interview with a right-wing TV network called the One America News Network on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, he predicted that Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton and claim the presidency in November. Asked what Trump would say in his RNC acceptance speech, McGahn grinned. “I wouldn’t dare begin to guess.”

One day this winter, C. Boyden Gray passed the scrum of photographers camped out in the lobby of Trump Tower and rode the elevator up. McGahn, now the White House counsel-to-be, had sought his advice on how to represent the most unorthodox president in perhaps all of American history. Their conversation focused on the massive ethics conundrums facing President-elect Trump, Gray told me. He’d tackled ethics questions himself while working as White House counsel for George H.W. Bush, who made a fortune in the oil industry, but “I didn’t have anywhere near the complexities that Don McGahn had,” he says.

Those who know McGahn see his influence at play in the White House’s laissez-faire approach to ethics and its insistence that conflict-of-interest rules don’t apply to Trump. Trump has refused to divest from his business holdings, raising the possibility of self-enrichment by virtue of the office and violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from accepting payments from foreign governments. Trump told the New York Times in November that a sitting president “can’t have a conflict of interest” and that the law was “totally on my side.” The idea that conflict-of-interest laws don’t apply to the president “is vintage McGahn,” a former colleague told me.

McGahn’s hiring choices to oversee Trump’s sprawling ethics portfolio may be telling. As his top deputy in charge of compliance and ethics, he brought on Stefan Passantino, a lawyer perhaps best known for representing former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert in their respective ethics scandals—Gingrich for using tax-deductible money for political purposes and submitting false information to House investigators, and Hastert for failing to properly disclose that he’d paid legal bills with campaign funds in connection with the congressional page scandal. (Years later, Hastert admitted in court to abusing young boys and was sentenced to 15 months in prison for illegally paying hush money to one alleged victim.) Under McGahn, as Politico reported, the White House eschewed the traditional ethics briefing for senior staffers. After the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics recommended that Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway be reprimanded for promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing business, Passantino refused, arguing that many federal ethics laws don’t apply to White House employees. OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. countered that Passantino’s assertion “cites no legal basis” and “is incorrect.”

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Ethics haven’t been the only issue dogging McGahn and the counsel’s office. The chaos surrounding Trump’s January 27 travel ban raised the question of whether McGahn was in over his head. His attempt to clarify the order via a legal memo in federal court was panned by outside legal experts, and his case was not helped when Trump went on a Twitter tirade against the “so-called judge” who had made a “ridiculous” ruling. (If McGahn did urge Trump to curb his attacks on the judiciary, Trump didn’t listen: After the administration’s revised immigration order was blocked in court in March, Trump called the ruling “terrible” and “done by a judge for political reasons.”)

A more experienced counsel, say ex-White House lawyers and other legal experts, would have consulted federal agencies before releasing such an explosive order and stopped the president from launching verbal assaults against members of the judiciary. “One person who must bear responsibility for the awful rollout of the EO is White House Counsel Donald McGahn,” Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, wrote on the website Lawfare. If McGahn had tried to restrain Trump and failed, Goldsmith argued, then he was ineffectual; if he had not attempted to corral Trump and correct the flaws in the immigration order, he was incompetent.

Still more questions were raised about McGahn’s judgment and the White House’s vetting process when the Washington Post reported that national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and that the Justice Department had briefed McGahn about it during the transition. The next day, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that McGahn had conducted his own review and “determined that there is not a legal issue.”

Former White House lawyers were stunned. “I wouldn’t have done that,” a former Obama White House counsel told me. “I don’t know what the FBI knows. I don’t know who they’re interviewing.” Goldsmith, the former senior Justice Department lawyer, questioned how rigorous McGahn’s review could have been. The White House counsels he knew, Goldsmith wrote, “were all tough-minded but extremely prudent in dealing with legal jeopardy related to the White House, especially if that jeopardy touched someone as close to the President as his National Security Advisor.” He added, “It is far from clear that the current White House counsel has acted in this fashion.” And McGahn’s judgment was once again called into question when news reports revealed that Flynn had worked as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkish interests at the same time he served as Trump’s national security adviser—a troubling conflict that the incoming White House counsel was briefed on but declined to address.

In late March, two of McGahn’s underlings in the counsel’s office were reported to have helped supply classified intelligence reports to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House intelligence committee, in an attempt to support President Trump’s unfounded allegation that his predecessor had wiretapped him. The revelation raised questions about whether McGahn had played any part in this effort.

The mark of a great White House counsel, experts say, is providing sound legal advice to the commander in chief whether he wants to hear it or not. But with McGahn, the evidence so far—the lax approach to Trump’s ethics problems, the execution of the immigration order, the Flynn imbroglio—suggests a loyal lieutenant eager to please the president. “Don is an expert. He is not a lawyer who says, ‘You simply are unable to do X,'” a former Trump campaign aide told me. “He’ll look for every single type of way to be able to do X.” Which, in the end, may be the last thing this president needs.

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Clean Up On Aisle Trump

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Gary Clark Jr.’s Twisty, Flame-Throwing Solos

by BlakeSchnaars Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Gary Clark Jr.
Live North America 2016
Warner Bros.

Courtesy of Warner Bros Records

Arguably the best blues-rock guitarist of the modern era, Gary Clark Jr. carries on in the tradition of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan without blind worship of the old ways, adding hints of funk and R&B to the mix. However, his studio records haven’t always matched the smoking intensity of his concert performances. The solution? Another live album, Clark’s second in his last three outings. The twisty, flame-throwing solos on Live North America 2016 are over the top and then some, yet never feel excessive, exploring familiar chords in inventive ways that will convert skeptics. Check out the barn-burning nine-minute version of “When My Train Pulls In,” which also showcases his gritty, deceptively subtle singing. Live doesn’t solve any long term artistic conundrums—a guest appearance by retro-soul crooner Leon Bridges revisits a style Clark has tried himself, with mixed results—but it’s a great listen.

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Gary Clark Jr.’s Twisty, Flame-Throwing Solos

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Cartoonist Takes On the Sketchiest President Yet

by FernandZylstra Posted on April 2, 2017

Mother Jones

Freelance illustrator Barry Blitt keeps folders and folders of Donald Trump photos on his computer—nearly 400 total, he says. “They’re pictures of him at strange angles, like from the back,” says Blitt, adding that Trump’s head looks like it is “sculpted out of some kind of pudding.” The current president, he says, makes for an endlessly fascinating muse. “I didn’t know anyone could look like that. He’s like an instruction manual for how to caricature.”

“Broken Windows” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

Born in Montreal, Blitt, 58, has been inking illustrations for the New Yorker since 1992 and has also contributed drawings to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones. He has a knack for rendering political moments with dark humor, and the most recent presidential election has meant he’s busier than ever. His most recent cover took aim at President Trump’s frequent golf trips, showing the president lobbing balls at the White House’s shattered windows. Another cover offered a sly commentary on Russia’s influence on the election: Vladimir Putin takes the place of the magazine’s mascot, with Trump as a moth under examination.

As the reality sinks in that Trump will likely be a main subject for four more years, I talked to Blitt about capturing the president’s quirks, how he got his start, and learning to loosen up.

Mother Jones: You have a Connecticut number.

Barry Blitt: Actually I’m living in the house that Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in many years ago. Been here about a year.

MJ: Thank you for agreeing to talk. I’ve always loved your covers.

BB: Okay, well, we’ll see if you can get anything out of me.

MJ: I mentioned by e-mail that if I record our interview it’s not going anywhere outside a computer of mine.

BB: As long as it doesn’t turn up like that Milo interview or like Donald Trump’s infamous bus interview, then we’re fine.

Barry Blitt Angie Silverstein

MJ: As long as you don’t say anything about grabbing things, I think you should be good.

BB: Yeah, haven’t grabbed anything.

MJ: Just some pens and brushes I guess.

BB: I grab a lot of pens, yes. If that becomes controversial, then I’m in trouble.

MJ: Okay, here’s a softball: What brought you to cartooning and drawing?

BB: Like all kids I was plopped down in front of crayons and paper when I was quite young. My grandfather used to copy Norman Rockwell pictures, so I had him as a cheerleader. All my drawings always sort of looked funny even if I was trying to do serious stuff and express myself about grim situations. It was always cartoony.

MJ: What did you like to draw as a kid?

BB: I was drawing Popeye a lot. I was a big fan. A lot of the early work I did was sort of hero worship. I remember drawing a lot of hockey players—I’m Canadian. Hockey players and baseball players and Elton John and rock stars and stuff. Only in high school and college, I became more sarcastic and hostile.

MJ: How so?

BB: I felt it was more fun to knock people down than to build them up. I seemed to get a better reaction from my peers and from my friends when I was mocking stuff—which isn’t necessarily anything to be too proud of.

MJ: Did you aspire to be an artist?

BB: I guess for a while I thought I would be drawing caricatures in parks and stuff. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do, actually. Cartooning didn’t seem like a real thing—it seemed like cheating. Letting a sense of humor into the process somehow seemed like an easy way out. I wouldn’t have to paint the Sistine Chapel if I could just make a joke that got a reaction—not that painting the Sistine Chapel was ever an option.

“The Boys of Autumn,” 2012 Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

MJ: Do you remember the first piece that got published?

BB: When I was a teenager, I was a rabid hockey fan—I still am—and I ended up doing illustrations for a couple of yearbooks: the Philadelphia Flyers’ and the Pittsburgh Penguins’. I got those published when I was probably 15. A friend of mine, a kid in my 10th grade class, said, “I’ll be your agent.” He typed up a letter and sent it out to a bunch of hockey teams and a couple of them responded and I think I did drawings for $25 a pop and I gave him $5. I was totally full of myself. I thought it was the greatest thing.

MJ: Hey, getting hockey teams that you like to buy your drawings is a big deal at that age.

BB: It’s true. It didn’t help me with girls or anything, but it made adolescence a little less terrible.

MJ: Should we go into your adolescence?

BB: No. Let’s stay away from all of this.

MJ: That’s totally fine. I wasn’t a really great adolescent either.

BB: I’m 58 and I’m still recovering.

MJ: Tell me about your first big break?

BB: I was getting stuff published in Toronto and I made a couple of trips to New York and brought my portfolio. It was all pen and ink and attempted funny stuff. I went to see Chris Curry at The New Yorker. It all just sort of happened organically. I’m not a good businessman and I don’t promote myself particularly well. It’s best I don’t talk to anybody lest I alienate myself. Chris was an art director there and she was using some small drawings. When Françoise Mouly, the cover-art director, was brought on, Chris arranged for me to meet with her. I really didn’t think that I had the right sensibility to be doing New Yorker covers, but I was hired.

I was doing interior color drawings for Françoise. At the end of a conversation she just happened to mention, “You know, that smoker’s cover, the sketch that you sent us, why don’t you go ahead with that? Tina Brown accepted it.”

I guess if we’re looking for a big break, that was one of them, although it almost broke me. I get so nervous often with bigger assignments—I probably drew it 10 or 15 times, the final artwork. It took a lot of art direction to get it out of me. I think it was the first issue of 1994.

MJ: What was the picture?

BB: “Resolute Smokers.” It was right around the time when smokers had to go outside to smoke, and so I had a lot of smokers standing on window ledges on high buildings in New York, stepping outside to smoke. It turned out someone else had done that idea, not only in Time but in the New Yorker in one of their black and white cartoons some years before. Now we always check.

“Resolute Smokers” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

MJ: What was it like to get a cover?

BB: Very exciting. When I saw it printed I was sort of, like I often am, “Oh, why didn’t I do this?” or, “Why did I make that that color?” That’s pretty par for the course.

MJ: I think that’s something a lot of creative people feel.

BB: Yeah. It would be nice to be satisfied once in a while, though.

MJ: It sounds like you’re on the obsessive side. Are you a perfectionist?

BB: I’m an adequatist! I would be happy with something adequate. Perfection’s out of the question.

MJ: Do you work mainly for the New Yorker now?

BB: I work for lots of different magazines. I’ve done some kids books. The New Yorker is just about my favorite magazine and it’s incredibly nice to do a cover for them. You get a lot of feedback. When you do a bad one, it’s horrific. It’s a very visible kind of venue.

MJ: How closely were you following this past election?

BB: I was sort of obsessed with it, and living and dying with every new poll that came out. I have to say that I had the sick feeling Trump would win pretty much all the way through it. Even when it seemed like Hillary had it. I went to an election party that night and everyone was really cheerful and I just thought they were crazy. By 9:30 our time, I had to leave. I felt like I was like the one guy on the airplane that knew the plane was going to crash.

“At The Wheel” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

MJ: How do you approach the task of drawing Trump? Is there any feature that you focus on?

BB: When I’m online and I see a picture I want to draw of anybody or anything, a unique angle of them or just something that looks very drawable, I slide it to my desktop and put it in a folder. It just seems like every picture of Trump is a revelation. Any angle. I didn’t know a person could look like that. His facial expressions—he really is a cartoon. He’s like an instruction manual of how to caricature someone. I mean it’s just all there.

If you’re asking me what features—obviously his hair. The back of his head is fantastic and his eyebrows are amazing. His overbite and his series of chins and the color of him and the texture. It’s amazing! He’s like an artifact. It’s an amazing head to draw and I have to think it’s got to be part of his success. It’s ready-made for public consumption.

Just look at the back of his head, any angle. There’s some angles that his chin is just, what do I mean? I mean he’s sculpted out of some kind of pudding, I think. It looks like his face is sort of melting slowly. I should talk because my face is melting quickly. He’s some kind of bizarre sculpture. There’s no one really who looks like that.

MJ: How does that compare to Hillary?

BB: Hillary’s not un-caricaturable, that’s for sure. She’s got that mouth low on her face and her eyes are kind of wide apart. I’d be much happier drawing Hillary even if there were more challenges involved with getting a likeness. I’m not sure why we should even mention Hillary now. God bless her, but I don’t know. It feels like a ship that’s sailed.

MJ: I’d love to talk through the process for one of your Trump covers. Which is your favorite?

BB: If I tell you, you’ll see how shallow I am, because the favorite one I have would be the one where he’s in a little kiddie car. The flat watercolor that I got on his jacket, I like the way the color adhered to the paper.

“Belly Flop” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

The first cover I drew of Trump was of him diving into a pool. You always remember your first. It just seemed crazy at the time that he was running and that it was actually happening and that he was insulting people. The whole thing seemed circus-like and crazy.

I remember doing a sketch of Hillary diving into a pool when she announced she was running. It was one of those diving boards where they have a secondary diving board and I had Bill on the lower board diving in as well, doing a flashier dive that was distracting from Hillary’s dive. That didn’t go, but I had that dive idea. Then when Trump started to make a splash I submitted a Trump. I remember it was him doing a cannonball. I think there was some reluctance on the New Yorker‘s part, if I’m remembering this correctly, to show him in any kind of triumphant or successful dive. Then I took that back and said, whatever, a belly flop, which suggests screwing up. That one they went with.

MJ: Tell me about your “Miss Congeniality” Trump cover.

“Miss Congeniality” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

BB: A lot of people seem to like that one. I remember Hillary brought up that beauty pageant contestant whom he had openly mocked. It seemed like an interesting way to draw him.

I don’t remember how I arrived at that during the panic that’s involved sometimes when I’ll get a call from Françoise looking for an idea: “It would be great to do something about Trump” and whatever catastrophe happened last night or this afternoon. I will get into a state of panic and scribble things and send things and somehow what I’ve sent is legible enough and the ink isn’t smeared with my tears and she’s able to see what I’ve sent her and they’ll choose something and I’ll redraw it as properly as time allows.

MJ: Let’s talk through just one more cover. The “Anything But That” cover from before the election.

“Anything But That” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

BB: I remember Françoise getting in touch with me and saying we still don’t have a cover for our politics issue, which is the issue that comes out the day before the election, kind of odd timing.

Hillary’s going to win—obviously—but we can’t really show that yet. It was sort of nice to not draw either of them. I think I had one of Uncle Sam watching with a remote in his hand. You don’t see the television and he’s reacting to what’s going on on the TV. I was sending in those kind of ideas, ones that didn’t favor or even show either candidate. It seemed funny to write headlines that obviously you’d never see, headlines of reaction and dread. I have friends who are right-wing. Most of my friends are not, but all of us were dreading the results of the election. The dread was built into this election—a little spoonful of dread. What was behind it was that it could work no matter who won. Someone pointed out to me that it looked like the person sitting next to the main figure was carrying a parachute and had a pilot’s, not a helmet, on, which really makes me laugh. I wish I had done that intentionally—they were about to leap.

MJ: What it’s like to look back on that cover now or to look at the cover the day after the election?

BB: After the election, I don’t think I was looking at that cover. I was looking at my Canadian passport, was what I was looking at. This was the first election I got to vote in also. I became a citizen a couple of years ago.

MJ: Wow, congratulations!

BB: Thanks. What was it like to look back at the cover? I’ll tell you what I always say, I wish that my verticals had lined up with it more and I wish that yellow of the background subway station had a little less line in it.

MJ: Do you think you’ll ever get tired of drawing Trump over the next four years?

BB: Yes, I probably will. I mean I’m already tired of the bullshit and not just the lying but the way he’s covered. It really seems like a low point. I’m sure this era will be remembered for a long time if there’s still time after it. Just as far as drawing him, that almost seems like the least of it. I’ve been thinking of trying to de-caricaturize him. I thought it would be fun to try and, since he’s already a caricature, to make him normal looking. I don’t know if I’ll get tired of him. It depends what he’s got in store. I don’t know how long it will be either. I don’t know how much more of this he or any of us can stand.

MJ: Maybe he’ll get a haircut.

BB: That’ll never happen!

MJ: I wanted to ask about the 2008 cover with Michelle and Barack Obama.

“The Politics of Fear” Barry Blitt/The New Yorker

BB: Mm-hmm.

MJ: A lot has been said around that but what do you think about it now, and has it changed anything about your approach to drawing political cartoons since then?

BB: It probably changed my approach for the first few days it was on newsstands. It sort of freaked me out, but not anymore. I’m still sending crazy stuff that I can’t always justify necessarily. That one attempted to be satire. I can see how people were upset by it but I knew what I was trying to do and so did the New Yorker. It was an attempt at satirizing a voice of someone who wasn’t there, who wasn’t in the picture. I don’t know if it worked or not, but on to the next one.

MJ: Speaking of going on to the next picture, I saw that you’re doing a retrospective of your work.

BB: I do, I have a book. I got a deal but I can’t say deal without thinking of Donald Trump. I’m doing a book for Riverhead. I’m putting together all my years of drawings.

MJ: What does it feel like to look over all of your work?

BB: It’s kind of horrifying, but it is what it is. Some of them are worse than you remember, some are better than you remember. It’s hard to pick a representative number of them. My deadline is around now and I’ve not been feeling well and I’m sure it’s psychosomatic. As soon as I hand the stuff off I will feel better.

A Trump sketch Courtesy of Barry Blitt

MJ: I definitely understand the psychosomatic thing. Happens to me too. Do you feel like you’ve noticed anything about yourself or your drawings when you look back at them over many, many years? Do you feel like you’ve changed?

BB: I see stylistic things. I learned that I wish I had learned more. I look at some drawings and I see I was attempting to try and be too loose and then other ones, I guess I get hung up on the stylistic side of things and the execution of the drawings.

As far as the process, I did one cover of Hillary Clinton as a fighter when she secured the nomination. I was able to sort of document in the book how that got away from me. The very first sketch I did, I made her look, not literally like a bulldog, but like a battle scarred veteran. She’s in the ring, sitting in her corner and she’s got a black eye and she looks toughened as hell. Then you see as it progresses to a tighter sketch she starts becoming a little cuter and more svelte. There was also an issue of not making her look like a battered woman that I suppose played into it. By the end of it the drawing was far too cute and it didn’t express what the first sketch was. If you can learn to convey what you express in the first rough sketch, you’re really saying what you need to say in that.

MJ: It seems like learning to trust your initial ideas is something that takes time.

BB: Right. If only, because that’s where the storytelling is, I think. I think I just learnt that now talking to you.

MJ: Oh really? What do you mean?

BB: I mean you forced me to consider what the hell I’m doing with this book. That’s what I would learn most if I would look at everything that I’ve put together. The choices for the stuff that go in the book weren’t just mine. There was an art director and a designer and editor involved. They chose a lot of sketches. We’ve got a couple of spreads of just 32 Trump attempts, attempts at Trump ideas that didn’t go anywhere. There’s probably more interesting ideas there than necessarily one finished drawing.

MJ: I always like going to retrospectives at the museum because you really do see how things move or how ideas change. I think that thinking about processes or seeing someone’s process is just very fascinating.

BB: Yeah, especially if you’ve already seen the final art. It’s incumbent on me to try and learn something from that, though.

MJ: You might get a flash of brilliance at the end.

BB: I might get a flash of self awareness, and we don’t want that.

“Whitewashing Guernica” Courtesy of Barry Blitt

MJ: Who are some artists you admire? Where do you find inspiration or what are some things that you love, that you really enjoy?

BB: I love Steve Brodner‘s work and I love John Cuneo‘s work and I love Ed Sorel‘s work. And Edel Rodriguez. Where do I get inspiration? I like John Oliver and I’ll see clips of Stephen Colbert and the Daily Show. Bill Maher. I go to right-wing sites as well, as hard as that is to stomach sometimes.

MJ: What do you love about your work?

BB: I like to make myself laugh. When I’m just sitting with a sketchbook and trying to make myself laugh or trying to come up with ideas, I try not to worry about aim right away. I’m just sort of shooting in all directions.

I will sometimes scribble things no one should ever see. Several ideas for the New Yorker, I’ve had conversations with Françoise after I’ve sent her some sketches and she doesn’t like what I’ve sent her and she said, “You didn’t have any more?” I say, “Well you know, there are a couple of other things I’ve thought of but you don’t want to see them, believe me.” She’s really an advocate for not self editing and she’s got it out of me. A couple of times things have made it to the cover, just things I thought, “There’s no way that they would do that.”

If you’re asking me what I love, it’s that point where I’m just scribbling and trying to make myself laugh and trying to outrage myself. Getting in that frame of mind where the more you laugh the more you laugh—I think that’s what I’m attempting to do. It’s just like loosening up basically.

MJ: Do you ever have someone that you show your pictures to as a base?

BB: You mean like a sounding board? Sometimes my wife, but not always. Sometimes I get precious about ideas and I’ll send them to the New Yorker first. But I can be a little precious about them sometimes. You show it to someone and if they don’t get it right away or it’s not legible and you have to explain it, then you lose confidence in it. I’m very neurotic, let’s just come out and say that, about the process. I just don’t trust myself or anyone else. That sounds healthy, huh?

MJ: No, I understand. I get really neurotic with my stories. I should send them out to more people but I protect them, like little babies.

BB: Good. Don’t send this one to anybody!

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Cartoonist Takes On the Sketchiest President Yet

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Germany Unhappy Over New Steel Tariffs

by PerryDallachy7 Posted on April 1, 2017

Mother Jones

Germany is upset at new tariffs on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate:

Germany’s foreign minister on Friday morning said the Trump administration is taking a “dangerous step” after the Commerce Department announced a tariff on imports of foreign steel, indicating the tax could become a new source of conflict with the powerful U.S. ally and trading partner.

….“The U.S. Government is apparently prepared to provide American companies with unfair competitive advantages over European and other producers, even if such action violates international trade law,” Gabriel’s statement read. “I very much fail to comprehend the decision.”

FWIW, none of this is really a Trump thing. The International Trade Commission began investigating dumping claims against Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, and Turkey in early 2016, and finished up its work before Trump took office. The vote determining that these countries were dumping product in the US below cost was unanimous.

I don’t know what the Obama or Clinton administrations would have done if they’d had the final decision on this, but my guess is that they would have done the same thing as Trump, and the targets of the tariffs would have complained and threatened to take the case to the WTO. So there’s nothing much new here. It’s just another steel tariff. Because, you know, all the previous ones over the past four decades have been so successful.

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Germany Unhappy Over New Steel Tariffs

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What Are Trump’s White House Aides Worth? Read Their Financial Disclosures

by ReyesSmartt Posted on April 1, 2017

Mother Jones

On Friday evening, the White House began releasing the financial disclosures of up to 180 top staffers. The forms provide a revealing though incomplete picture, showing an aide’s sources of income over the past year and his or her investments and debts, expressed in ranges not exact amounts. So far, these records show that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump could be worth as much as $740 million and are still benefiting from their vast business holdings, including Ivanka’s stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. And they indicate that chief White House strategist, whose assets are valued between $11.8 million and $53.8 million, earned a significant amount of his income last year from entities linked to Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, the conservative megadonors. Below are the disclosures of more than 30 officials. We’ll post more as they become available.

Stephen Bannon, assistant to the president and chief strategist

Katie Walsh, deputy chief of staff for implementation. (Walsh recently departed the White House for a job with an outside group promoting Trump’s polices.)

Sean Spicer, press secretary

Reince Preibus, chief of staff

Donald McGahn II, White House counsel

Stephen Miller, senior adviser to the president for policy

Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison

Jared Kushner, assistant to the president and senior adviser to the president

Makan Delrahim, deputy White House counsel

Gerrit Lansing, chief digital officer

Joseph Lai, special assistant to the president

Jennifer Korn, deputy director, White House

Jeremy Katz, deputy director of the National Economic Council

Kenneth Juster, international economic affairs

Gregory Katsas, deputy counsel to the president

Boris Epshteyn, assistant director of communications. (Epshteyn is reportedly leaving his White House role.)

Hope Hicks, director of strategic communications

Andy Koenig, special assistant to the president

Shahira Knight, special assistant to the president

Timothy Pataki, special assistant to the president, Office of Legislative Affairs

David J. Gribbin, special assistant to the president

James Burnham, senior associate counsel

Bill McGinley, White House cabinet secretary

Joyce Meyer, deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of legislative affairs

Uttam Dhillon, special assistant to the president and senior associate counsel

Ann Donaldson, special counsel to the president and chief of staff to the White House counsel

Benjamin Howard, special assistant to the president and house special assistant

Ashley Marquis, chief of staff, National Economic Council

Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council

Michael Ellis, special assistant to the president and associate counsel

Julia Hahn, deputy policy strategist

John Eisenberg, deputy assistant to the president, National Security Council legal adviser, and deputy counsel to the president for national security

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president

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What Are Trump’s White House Aides Worth? Read Their Financial Disclosures

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