CLIENTS OF TRUMP’S PERSONAL LAWYER INCLUDE O’REILLY
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Such conversations between a private lawyer for the president and the government employees who work for his client are highly unusual, according to veterans of previous administrations. Kasowitz bypassed the White House Counsel’s Office in having these discussions, according to one person familiar with the talks, who like others requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. And concerns about Kasowitz’s role led at least two prominent Washington lawyers to turn down offers to join the White House staff.
“The president’s private lawyer is representing only his interests, not the interests of the United States government or the individual interests of the White House staff,” said Robert F. Bauer, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama.
The administration referred questions to Kasowitz. A spokesman for Kasowitz called the characterizations of his conversations with staff members “inaccurate,” but would not specify how. “The lawyers don’t disclose conversations they have had with anyone,” Mark Corallo, the spokesman, wrote in an email. “Of course people are free to hire a lawyer or talk to anyone they want.”
Kasowitz is not the first personal lawyer to represent a president facing legal issues. President Bill Clinton retained Robert S. Bennett to defend him in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones and David E. Kendall and Nicole K. Seligman to represent him in the Whitewater and Monica S. Lewinsky investigations.
The line between government lawyers representing the administration and private lawyers representing the president was always somewhat vague. But one important difference was that the president’s conversations with private lawyers were protected by attorney-client privilege, while those with his White House lawyers were not.
To many Washington hands, Kasowitz, 64 — who represented Trump during his Atlantic City casino financial troubles and represents other clients like Bill O’reilly, the former Fox News host — seems an unusual choice for the mission. While he is widely respected as a fierce and successful lawyer, he has little experience in high-profile criminal cases or politically charged Washington investigations.
Kasowitz has been central to Trump’s recent legal battles, helping his client keep divorce records sealed and representing him in the Trump University fraud lawsuit, in which Trump ultimately agreed to pay $25 million to settle claims from former students that the institution had cheated them out of tuition money.
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Kasowitz threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Trump’s behalf over a story in which two women accused Trump of inappropriate touching years earlier. No lawsuit has been filed. A decade earlier, however, Kasowitz followed through on a similar threat, suing Timothy O’brien, a Trump biographer and former reporter and editor for The Times, for libel and alleging that he had understated Trump’s net worth. That suit was dismissed by a New Jersey Superior Court judge.
Also raising eyebrows are two of Kasowitz’s other clients — Sberbank, the largest stateowned bank in Russia, on which the Obama administration imposed sanctions, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon who is close to President Vladimir Putin and had business dealings with Paul Manafort, once Trump’s campaign chairman.
While Trump is not known to be under investigation over potential collusion with Russia, the special counsel leading the Russia inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, has the authority to investigate obstruction of justice. Some in Congress have said that Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey coupled with his own statements about Comey, could be seen as evidence of attempted obstruction of justice.
Whether Kasowitz is having an effect on his client is unclear. He advised Trump to ease up on his use of Twitter, and when Trump’s account was quiet for nearly 48 hours last week around the time of Comey’s Senate hearing, some speculated that Kasowitz was responsible. But Trump began attacking Comey’s testimony Friday morning, and he has defiantly told friends that despite his lawyer’s instructions, he has not changed his behavior.
As for Kasowitz’s conversations with presidential aides, the White House Counsel’s Office typically supervises such discussions to make sure the aides understand their rights and do not feel pressured to help a lawyer who does not represent their interests, legal experts said. The counsel’s involvement is all the more critical in this case, they said, because many of the aides — potential witnesses in the government’s inquiry — do not currently have personal lawyers.
Kasowitz’s advice to administration staff may benefit the president more than the aides themselves, the experts said. The conversations he has with aides could shape their testimony before Mueller has a chance to interview them, should they be called as witnesses.
Bauer said that the current White House counsel, Donald F. Mcgahn II, should know Kasowitz’s schedule of conversations so that he could inform the special counsel. “He does not want Kasowitz to do anything that could be interpreted as an act of obstruction, a means of dissuading the witnesses from cooperating in the investigation,” Bauer said.
Since asserting influence in the White House in recent weeks, Kasowitz has discussed establishing an office on White House grounds — in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where much of the president’s staff works — according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations. Such an arrangement would have Kasowitz and his team frequently crossing paths with potential witnesses.
Corallo, the spokesman for Kasowitz, said the team was working in private space. “The lawyers do not have an office in the EEOB and are working out of their offices in D.C.,” he said. “They come to the White House to meet with their client, President Trump.”
Partly because of concerns that Kasowitz is undermining the White House Counsel’s Office, at least two veteran Washington lawyers — Emmet Flood, a partner at Williams & Connolly, and William A. Burck, a partner at Quinn Emanuel — rejected offers to join the counsel’s office to help represent the administration in the Russia inquiry, according to people familiar with the hiring discussions, although they may yet represent individual White House officials.
Other noted criminal defense lawyers have similarly rejected offers to join Trump’s private legal team because of a range of uncertainties, including how much control Kasowitz exercises over his client, whether their advice would be secondary to his and whether Trump would pay legal bills. Besides Kasowitz, Trump’s personal legal team includes his partner, Michael J. Bowe, and Jay Sekulow, a Washington lawyer who specializes in free speech and religious liberties.
“Kasowitz is looking for at least one criminal expert, but the problem is Trump is a difficult client notorious for not following legal advice and for not paying his bills,” said Norman Eisen, the White House ethics lawyer under Obama and a frequent critic of Trump.
Under ethics rules, Kasowitz cannot interview any official who has hired a lawyer without that lawyer’s permission, meaning it would be in his interest if administration aides did not hire their own lawyers, experts said. “It is probably easier for him to represent Trump if he doesn’t have to deal with a bunch of other lawyers,” Sherburne said,