Category Archives: Trump administration

No linguistics in this post, just law. The post is about a legal-ethics complaint that I’ve filed with the District of Columbia Bar against three lawyers in the Office of White House Counsel, including White House Counsel Don McGahn.

The complaint relates to the episode in March when, two days after the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearing with Jim Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, Rep. Devin Nunes (chairman of the Committee) held an impromptu press conference at which he breathlessly announced that “he had been shown evidence that ‘on numerous occasions, the Intelligence Community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.'” (NYT [watch video]; press release.) Nunes then rushed to the White House to present this information to the president, who said that it “somewhat” vindicated his claim that President Obama had wiretapped him. Nunes was widely seen at the time as carrying water for Trump, and that view was confirmed when it was reported that the information in question had been provided to Nunes by the White House.

It was later reported that two lawyers in the Office of White Counsel had been involved in disclosing the information to Nunes. One of those lawyers, Michael Ellis, had until only a few weeks earlier been the House Intelligence Committee’s general counsel. Ellis is the primary target of the complaint, and the principal allegation against him is that his reported actions violated violated legal ethics that arose because of his previous work the House Committee’s lawyer.

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