When Bob Bauer replaced Greg Craig last year as White House counsel, it seemed inevitable that he’d be working on some of the same issues he had in his previous job as President Barack Obama’s personal and campaign lawyer.
So late Friday afternoon, in recognition of that reality, the White House issued Bauer a waiver to ethics rules established by Obama that prohibit officials in his administration from working on issues affecting their former clients for two years.
Those rules would have prevented Bauer “from performing roles that someone in the Counsel’s position ordinarily performs” and, therefore, neither “make sense” nor are they “in the public interest,” wrote White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen in a post on the White House blog.
Eisen, who works under Bauer and wrote the waiver, stressed that it is limited, applying only to Bauer’s work at the powerhouse Democratic firm Perkins Coie as a private lawyer for the Obama family, and for the Democratic National Committee.
Bauer also served as the top lawyer for Obama’s presidential campaign and his confluence of positions made him a powerful member of Obama’s inner circle as well as the most influential Democratic election lawyer in town until he replaced Craig in November. - Politico Story
No comments:
Post a Comment