President Donald Trump’s incoming White House counsel reveals the role that the president’s top lawyers are meant to have, a legal analyst explained.
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On a Tuesday episode of her podcast, attorney and journalist Katie Phang unloaded on Will Scharf, who’s currently serving as staff secretary but is set to take over as the White House counsel on September 1. She described Scharf as having “had a history of being a little bit dubious” as Trump’s former personal lawyer.
“The only qualification you need is not competency. It is not loyalty to the United States Constitution,” Phang said. “It’s the capacity to only kiss one person’s a—, and that is convicted felon, Donald Trump.”
He’s the latest Trump personal lawyer to be awarded a job close to the president, following the confirmation of Attorney General Todd Blanche. Phang noted that Emil Bove, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, and Solicitor General John Sauer were also in Trump’s personal legal orbit before they “garnered some cushy positions.”
Scharf’s new job as Trump’s White House counsel will involve “running a team of lawyers and advisers who are going to be telling felon Trump whether he is running afoul of the law or not,” according to Phang.
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“And of course, we all laugh and chuckle when we hear that because it is a day ending in Y when felon Trump runs afoul of the law,” Phang explained. “The dangers here with constantly having personal lawyers as your attorney general, as federal appellate judges, as your White House counsel, as your solicitor general…they’re going to sit there and scheme and strategize a way to try and end-run the law.”
She pointed out that the Trump administration’s record of winning and losing cases in court is “pretty abysmal,” but the real damage comes with “the havoc they wreak along the way. It is the destruction of values, norms, rule of law, and institutions.”
After all that destruction, Phang warned, “It’s the rebuild that we’re left with, that we’re stuck with when these a— are out of power.”
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