White House lawyer moved transcript of Trump call to classified server after Ukraine adviser raised [View all]

[UpInArms]

Source: Washington Post

Moments after President Trump ended his phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25, an unsettled national security aide rushed to the office of White House lawyer John Eisenberg.

Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine adviser at the White House, had been listening to the call and was disturbed by the pressure Trump had applied to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals, according to people familiar with Vindman’s testimony to lawmakers this week.

Vindman told Eisenberg, the White House’s legal adviser on national security issues, that what the president did was wrong, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, Eisenberg proposed a step that other officials have said is at odds with long-standing White House protocol: moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server and restricting access to it, according to two people familiar with Vindman’s account.

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Eisenberg, who worked in the Washington office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis before joining the Trump administration, also served in the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration. He has been deputy White House counsel overseeing national security issues since Trump’s inauguration, serving under both former White House counsel Donald McGahn and his successor, Pat Cipollone.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-lawyer-moved-transcript-of-trump-call-to-classified-server-after-ukraine-adviser-raised-alarms/2019/10/30/ba0fbdb6-fb4e-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html?outputType=amp

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Kirkland & Ellis

"On the roster of former Kirkland lawyers who have served in the Bush administration are Ciongoli; Philbin; Clement; Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel; R. Alexander Acosta, head of the Civil Rights Division; Kannon Shanmugam and Daryl Joseffer, both litigators in the Office of the Solicitor General; Jeffrey Clark, a senior official in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division; and John Wood, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Kirkland partner Jay Lefkowitz, who served as domestic policy adviser in the White House, returned to the firm in 2003.

"It's no coincidence that the firm is also home to Starr, the former D.C. Circuit judge and Whitewater independent counsel. In 1993, after leaving the post of solicitor general, Starr went to Kirkland with a handful of other former Justice Department officials, and the group set about building an appellate litigation practice with a conservative ideological bent.

"Starr's reputation as a leading conservative thinker drew young lawyers to Kirkland who identified with his politics. Nearly all came from prestigious appellate and Supreme Court clerkships. Perhaps without fully intending it, Kirkland's recruiting efforts built a farm team for the current Republican administration. Starr, who is of counsel at Kirkland and dean of Pepperdine University School of Law, declined comment.