More fuel for the hannitys?
White House Lawyer Who Reportedly Cautioned Against Comey Firing Used To Work For Comey
Uttam Dhillon advised President Trump that he had limited authority to fire former FBI director James Comey, according to a New York Times story published Thursday. Dhillon had worked for Comey a dozen years earlier, when Comey was deputy attorney general and fought back against perceived overreach from the White House Counsel's Office.
www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/chrisgeidner/white-house-lawyer-who-reportedly-cautioned-against-comey?utm_term=.rqKkjr6Lo&__twitter_impression=true
The White House lawyer who reportedly advised President Trump that he had limited authority to fire former FBI director James Comey has an unexpected background: He once worked for Comey.
Uttam Dhillon, who the New York Times on Thursday night reported had taken "the extraordinary step" in early 2017 "of misleading" President Trump about the circumstances under which he could fire Comey, has served in several Republican-led offices.
Prior to joining the White House, he worked for Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling. More than a decade earlier, he had worked for then-Rep. Chris Cox. And, notably, in between those jobs, he served in the George W. Bush-era Justice Department, working for Comey, who was then deputy attorney general.
At the start of the Trump administration, however, Dhillon joined the White House Counsel's Office, led by White House Counsel Donald McGahn.
In that role, Dhillon, the New York Times reported, had a junior lawyer examine what grounds Trump would need to fire Comey. The lawyer, per the Times, concluded that — like any executive branch employee — Trump could fire Comey at will.
”Mr. Dhillon, who had earlier told Mr. Trump that he needed cause to fire Mr. Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research," the Times reports.
The story asserts that Dhillon did so because he "was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled" — because it could lead to the sort of investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now overseeing.
White House spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment late Thursday about Dhillon's role in the White House counsel's office.
Before joining the White House in early 2017, Dhillon was chief counsel for oversight for the House Financial Services Committee under Hensarling, the committee's chair. Before that, he had worked for a law firm doing securities litigation in Dallas. Before that, he had been in DC, a part of the Bush administration.