Bob Bauer addresses the situation of White House Counsel McGahn in the Trump Administration on Lawfare:
On this front, McGahn faces an extraordinary challenge. The President has concluded with the advice of other, private counsel that he can retain an interest in his global and national business interests, turning it over during his presidency to the management of his own children. Other lawyers have been recruited to act as ethics and compliance advisers to the business, but the White House Counsel is responsible for seeing that the arrangement set up to meet ethics standards holds together within the White House. McGahn apparently has concluded that he can function as Counsel within this controversial structure.
If he does, however, then the standards for addressing ethics issues are necessarily heightened, with implications for the steps that McGahn takes to enforce compliance. Compliance is a key White House Counsel function, still more so on these issues in this administration. Moreover, government ethics rules are meant in significant measure to reassure the public that the government is running for its benefit, not for the officeholders or their friends and family, with the result that the “appearance” of compliance, while tricky to interpret and administer, is also of high importance.
Hopefully McGahn understands the dangers of working with this amateur high wire act. Mr. Bauer expresses a lot of concern for McGahn in this White House, and helpfully lays out the responsibilities and pitfalls White House Counsels face in general.
