According to a new book on Donald Trump's contentious relationships with law firms representing him over the years, a partner in one of the world's top law firms pitched his services as the former president was under scrutiny for his Russia ties, but Trump wanted more of a showman than a legal expert.
Quoting from "Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice," by the New York Times reporter David Enrich, the Guardian's Martin Pengelly reports that former White House counsel Doug McGahn lobbied Trump to employ his old firm Jones Day, which had done work for him during the 2016 election, to help him with his Russia scrutiny and the former president balked.
As the report notes, "Jones Day, a huge international firm, advised Trump’s campaign in 2016 and played a major role in his administration from 2017 to 2021, most publicly through the work of Donald McGahn, a partner, as Trump’s first White House counsel."
Enrich wrote that, as White House counsel, McGahn saw his office increasingly being bogged down with Trump's personal issues and suggested he take on "his own, competent counsel” to help deal with the investigation into his Russia ties as well as his firing of FBI director James Comey.
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That, in turn, led Jones Day managing partner Stephen Brogan meeting in the Oval Office twice, against the wishes of some Jones Day partners who didn't wish to be "tied" too closely to the now former president, but Brogan came away empty-handed.
“In the end, Brogan didn’t get the job," the book reports, which “went instead to John Dowd. The feeling among some senior Jones Day partners was that Trump wanted someone a bit more bombastic than Brogan as his defender-in-chief.”
Pengelly adds that "Trump’s pick had ramifications for the rest of his presidency and beyond. Dowd, a former US Marine, resigned in March 2018, his conduct of Trump’s response to the Russia investigation widely seen as a failure. McGahn, who cooperated with the special counsel Robert Mueller quit five months later."
"The Russia investigation bruised Trump but he escaped impeachment. He did not escape it over approaches to Ukraine involving withholding military aid while seeking dirt on rivals including Joe Biden," he continued.
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