Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government ethics watchdog group, says it has found an ethics waiver for the man who could replace Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in overseeing the Russia investigation should the president remove Rosenstein after the midterms.
If Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein either resigns or is fired, someone else will have to oversee the Special Counsel investigation. Next in line appears to be Solicitor General Noel Francisco. The problem is that Mr. Francisco has ties to the pending investigation that should preclude his participation.
For one thing, his former law firm, Jones Day, represents the Trump Presidential Campaign in the Special Counsel investigation. Also, Mr. Francisco has a continuing financial relationship with Jones Day, which owes him more than half a million dollars. In addition, he previously appeared before the Justice Department as a member of a “Landing Team” on behalf of the Presidential Transition Team.
CREW says Francisco signed an ethics pledge, as required by Trump executive order, that would require him to stay out of the Russia probe until after January 2019.
However, CREW has discovered that the Trump administration issued Mr. Francisco an ethics waiver on April 24, 2018. The waiver relieves him from any obligation to honor his ethics pledge to recuse from investigations involving Jones Day. The waiver states only that he is relieved of this obligation and offers no justification whatsoever. It simply waives the obligation, thereby eliminating one of the three obstacles to his overseeing the Special Counsel investigation.
According to CREW, the waiver was missing from an online list of all appointees who had received official waivers.
Second, the signature on Mr. Francisco’s waiver appears to match the signature of former Counsel to the President, Donald McGahn II, that appears on other waivers. Mr. McGahn’s involvement is troubling because he, too, comes from Jones Day and pledged not to participate in any investigation in which Jones Day is representing a party. By authorizing Mr. Francisco to participate in the investigation, Mr. McGahn himself participated in the investigation. Mr. McGahn himself received a limited ethics waiver as to Jones Day, but that waiver only authorizes him to participate in meetings and communications with Jones Day and does not authorize him to take other substantive legal actions like issuing a waiver to Mr. Francisco.
CREW says even without the mystery waiver, Francisco should recuse himself from anything connected to the Russia investigation because of his ties to Jones Day and the Trump campaign.
CREW DISCOVERS PREVIOUSLY UNDISCLOSED ETHICS WAIVER FOR SOLICITOR GENERAL NOEL FRANCISCO (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)