Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered Host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
This week, Civics 101 senior producer Christina Phillips joined Julia to talk about the White House counsel, what they do and where their interests lie.
Transcript
What is the role of the White House counsel?
This is the in-house legal adviser for the president and the White House. A president says, “I want to do something” — be it an executive order, a pardon, [or] an appointment. The White House counsel says, “Here's how you can do that legally and wisely, and here's the potential liability if you don't do it that way.” Importantly, this is not a personal lawyer to the person in office, the president. [The counsel] serves the institution of the presidency.
Who are the White House counsels? What kind of person typically gets this job?
There's usually two types of people that get this job. There's somebody who's a close friend or advisor to the president, maybe worked on one of their political campaigns or worked on their staff in a different political office, or it's someone with a lot of experience in federal law and politics, like a former attorney general [or] a district attorney, somebody who's very savvy in D.C. with federal law. Trump's White House counsels, for example, they've almost all been former lawyers who defended him and his campaign or his business in court. So they are more of that personal relationship side.
So we're talking about the lawyers around the president. Where does the Justice Department fit in here?
The Justice Department is separate from the White House. While some of the heads of the Justice Department, like the attorney general, might advise the president, their primary responsibility is to the public as federal law enforcement. They are given funding and power by Congress to investigate, prosecute and enforce the law. So the attorney general, the head of the FBI [and] all these positions in the Justice Department are overseeing a huge staff that carry out this enforcement across the country.
Where do the interests of the White House counsel lie?
The White House counsel wants to protect the institution of the presidency. That means [to] protect the powers that the president does have, but also [to] make sure that the president is not abusing power or giving the appearance of abusing power in a way that compromises or undermines the federal government's duty to the public. For example, the attorney general might decide to investigate something or order an investigation in the Justice Department into something that they believe is criminally happening, some violation of criminal law. If that investigation has anything to do with the president and the president's allies, historically, the White House counsel has wanted to maintain a separation between that investigation and the president so that the president is not seen as acting on their own personal behalf over the investigations of the law.
How is this looking in the current administration?
Well, historically, most presidents do not want to be seen as wielding their power for personal gain. And the White House counsel gives them guidance on how to maintain that balance, but Trump is different. He has said publicly and repeatedly that it's his right to, for example, order federal law enforcement in the Justice Department to go after people who, while working for the government, investigated him for allegedly violating the law. His White House counsel would presumably have told him of the benefits and consequences of these orders, but this is something we have never seen from a president before, [a president] publicly ordering these kinds of investigations.
