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Ivanka's lawyer, a Democrat, defends herself - POLITICO

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/ivanka-trump-lawyer-jamie-gorelick-clintons-236445

Ivanka's lawyer, a Democrat, defends herselfJamie Gorelick, a veteran of
President Bill Clinton's Justice Department and a Hillary Clinton
supporter, explains why she's working for Trump's daughter now.

By Annie Karni <http://www.politico.com/staff/annie-karni>
•03/24/17 05:09 AM EDT
[image: lede_20170323msmGORELICK040_1160.jpg]

“I don’t pass my clients through a 100 percent values alignment litmus
test,” Attorney Jamie Gorelick said. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Attorney Jamie Gorelick had just finished vetting potential cabinet
secretaries for Hillary Clinton—and raising money for the failed 2016
Democratic nominee – when Jared Kushner called her last year, seeking legal
counsel.

Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill
Clinton and a former member of the 9/11 Commission, was recommended to
Kushner by former News Corp. executive Joel Klein, who now serves as chief
strategy officer at Oscar, the health insurance company co-founded by
Kushner’s younger brother Josh. Klein told Jared Kushner he needed a real
lawyer to sort through nepotism and conflict-of-interest concerns that
could bar him from working in the White House for his father-in-law,
President Donald Trump.

Story Continued Below

“He said that Jared was a good person, and that he thought he would be a
good influence on the administration,” Gorelick said in an interview
Thursday afternoon, sitting in a sunny conference room at her law firm,
Wilmer Hale.

Gorelick, widely rumored to have been Hillary Clinton’s frontrunner for
attorney general, hesitated before agreeing to represent someone who served
as the de facto campaign manager for a candidate who encouraged chants of
"Lock Her Up" at rallies.

“At the time, I was grieving for Hillary Clinton,” she said. “This was not
the transition I was contemplating working on – at all. And I didn’t know
Jared Kushner. And I did think twice about it.”

Since signing on with Kushner, Gorelick has been in the spotlight for
lending credibility to his efforts to comply with federal ethics laws—as
well as those of his wife Ivanka, also a Gorelick client.

It has been an uncomfortable position for a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat to
assume, and Gorelick has been shocked by the vitriol that has been hurled
in her direction.

“Hey Jamie Gorelick, you’ve just poured that ‘Complicit’ perfume on
yourself. #Ivanka,” top Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen, also a former
Clinton surrogate and a partner at SKDKnickerbocker, tweeted, in reference
to a “Saturday Night Live” sketch about an Ivanka Trump-branded scent
called “Complicit.”

Gorelick sees herself as part of a time-honored Washington tradition of
well-respected lawyers representing clients from the opposite party. Two of
Bill Clinton’s chiefs of staff, Mack McLarty and Erskine Bowles, turned to
Arthur Culvahouse, former White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, to
oversee their ethics arrangements, as did members of President Barack
Obama’s administration.

In hiring Gorelick, Ivanka Trump and Kushner – two expats from Midtown
Manhattan, who are part of an administration trying to upend all of
Washington’s norms – are simply following that old D.C. playbook, buying
themselves the patina of a former Clinton Justice department official
vouching for their good names.

But Gorelick is testing whether that norm still holds true in Trump’s
Washington. Many former Clinton diehards have branded themselves as “the
resistance” and view any effort to work with advisers close to the
president as an obscene attempt to “normalize” a politically abnormal
president. For this liberal crowd, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner – branded
as the moderates of Trump’s world – are viewed as extensions of the
president, just operating under more glamorous, and therefore dangerous,
facades.

Earlier this week, Gorelick vouched for Ivanka Trump’s ability to work as a
de facto full-time White House adviser – complete with a security
clearance, a West Wing office, and a government-issued phone – without
formally becoming a government employee. Under the unprecedented
arrangement, the First Daughter will only voluntarily submit herself to
ethics laws, without taking an oath of office that would subject her to
disclosure and other requirements.

Gorelick also maintains that it would be impossible for Ivanka Trump to
sell her eponymous fashion and jewelry line, because the buyer would be
able to use her name – acknowledging there’s no way to create a setup for
the First Daughter that would be conflict-of-interest free.

“The swirl of money and conflicts is unprecedented and their arrangements
are not curing it," said Robert Weissman, president of the nonprofit Public
Citizen. “That Ivanka Trump has branded her company with her name is a
complicating factor, and it should be, for her, not for the American
people. Looking at [Gorelick’s] comments saying it doesn’t work for Ivanka
to sell off the company – well, then maybe it doesn’t work for her to be in
government.”

Even inside the Republican party, the bipartisan spirit of the Washington,
D.C. power-lawyer scene is being tested. “Some of my Republican friends who
are ‘Never Trumpers’ are not particularly happy that I wound up doing the
vice-presidential vetting,” Culvahouse conceded. “But the question is: do
you want him to fail, or do you want good people to get in? Is President
Trump better served with Kushner and Ivanka serving with him in the White
House? Absolutely he is.”

Gorelick is of the same mind as Culvahouse: she believes in pushing good
people into government, even if she disagrees with the man at the top. She
admitted the criticism from Democrats bothers her – especially Rosen’s
tweet, which was forwarded to her.

“I was shocked by that,” she said, adding sarcastically, “it must be that
Hilary has never taken a client on, whose values and principles she didn’t
entirely agree with. Really? There is something that has been so polarizing
about this administration that it does make it harder to do what I would
consider a normal lawyer’s job to be.”

Rosen, in response, said that she doesn’t “wish [Gorelick] or Ivanka any
ill will ... But there is widespread distaste for how the President has
meshed his and his family’s business interests, and good lawyering doesn’t
fix that problem.”

In Gorelick’s worldview, however, she believes that it does. “I don’t pass
my clients through a 100 percent values alignment litmus test,” she said.
“If people want to come to me and get good, principled, ethical advice, and
they want to follow it, then I will take them on as a client. I don’t need
to take on clients if I don’t want to spend my time with them. There is a
voluntary piece of this. But I encourage people to serve.”

Along with Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Gorelick represented former Exxon CEO
Rex Tillerson in his confirmation and vetting process to become Secretary
of State. She said she has not spoken to the Clintons about her new clients.

She dodged the question, though, of whether there are people she won’t
represent. If White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who represents the
most extreme end of Trump’s administration, asked for her help, would she
offer it? “Good luck to you, but I’m not going there,” Gorelick said. “In
general, I have really pressed people who have had the opportunity to go
into this administration to go in. A lot of people do not want to go in.
But we have one government, elections have consequences, we should not want
the government to fail.”

For Gorelick, there is some cosmic irony to representing members of the
Trump administration, late in her career.In her first job out of Harvard
Law School, her firm at the time was representing Richard Nixon in the
Supreme Court. “I was a very progressive young woman, and I had never
expected to represent Richard Nixon,” she said. “This is an interesting
bookend.”
[image: Jamie Gorelick sees herself as part of a time-honored Washington
tradition of well-respected lawyers representing clients from the opposite
party.]

Jamie Gorelick sees herself as part of a time-honored Washington tradition
of well-respected lawyers representing clients from the opposite party. |
M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Gorelick might be new to taking hits from the Hilary Rosens of the world,
but she has long been a bête noir of the right – she’s a recurring villain
on conservative talk radio, where Rush Limbaugh for years has falsely
blamed her for instituting a “wall” between law enforcement and
intelligence agencies when she served in the Justice Department, making it
easier for the lead 9/11 hijacker to enter the country. And Gorelick drew
criticism from both the left and the right when it was revealed she
received $26 million from Fannie Mae before the mortgage giant was bailed
out by the government.

“They make things up,” she said. “They say I caused 9/11, and that I caused
the financial crisis. I know there are people that say that, but no
legitimate person has ever said that. I ignore it. I've had criticism come
at me from different directions, pretty much my whole career.”

And for all the flack she’s getting from the left, it’s Gorelick’s
reputation in conservative circles that made her a surprising hire to Trump
loyalists. “If Jared and Ivanka had asked my opinion, I'd say great, find a
Democrat lawyer,” said one longtime Trump loyalist. “If they said, it’s
Jamie Gorelick, I’d say, great, find a different one.”

Gorelick is also in the odd position of working concurrently for clients
that are members of the Trump administration, as well as individuals
fighting his policies.

As part of her pro bono work, Gorelick recently filed a brief on behalf of
immigrant women who have been the subjects of of gender-based violence,
seeking the court in San Francisco to understand the implications of
Trump’s immigration ban on their lives and communities. She also serves as
an outside adviser to the liberal Center for American Progress, which has
been fighting against Trump’s health care overhaul.

Gorelick said she flags some of those outside issues she is working on to
Kushner and Ivanka Trump. “I’m not going to lobby them for any client, but
if there are issues that I know they care about that are percolating, I
would send it to them, and I have,” she said. “It’s possible to become
extremely isolated in the White House. I think people like that need to
hear from outside sources.”

Longtime Gorelick friends, like President Obama’s former ethics czar Norm
Eisen, have criticized her read of the anti-nepotism statute, which
Gorelick said does not bar Kushner from serving as a senior adviser in the
White House. And they have vocally disagreed with her decision that Ivanka
Trump could voluntarily submit herself to government ethics rules, when she
is serving as a de facto full-time government employee in everything but
title.

But Eisen said that despite his legal disagreement, he thinks Gorelick’s
involvement is good in that it’s pushing top members of the Trump
administration in the right direction. “It’s consistent with our profession
to represent your clients zealously, but at the same time push them as far
as they will go in the direction of what is right,” he said. “The thing
that distinguishes really great lawyers – starting with John Adams, who
famously represented a British redcoat – is that you take on tough clients
and you do the best for them. I think Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have
fared much better in the public eye because of Jamie’s work.”

Gorelick said separating Kushner from his real estate company took up most
of her time in December and January and that his financial disclosure form
will show that he still retains sizable assets.

“I like hard and interesting problems and I have certainly had them in this
representation," she said. “The Kushner Companies is really a series of
dozens and dozens and dozens of individual buildings and their own
corporate structure. Extricating him from each one of those was extremely
difficult.”

But she said Kushner gave her carte blanche to make it work. “His view was,
‘Do what needs to be done.’ There are a lot of assets left and he will have
to recuse himself on quite a few issues.”

Months after getting involved with the people closest to the man she tried
to help defeat, Gorelick said Klein's assessment of Kushner has held up. “I
don’t have much insight as to what he is doing inside on a daily basis,”
she said, “but he does seem like a good person.”
Authors:
[image: POLITICO Podcast: The Global Politico]
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-global-politico/id1202281739?mt=2>
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