Greg Craig Selected as White House Counsel:
The Washington Post reports, via How Appealing:
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Washington lawyer Gregory B. Craig, who served as President Bill Clinton's lead attorney during the 1998 impeachment proceedings, to be his White House counsel, according to an individual involved with the transition.Craig is a partner at Williams & Connolly, and you can access his law firm bio here.
Craig has been a longtime adviser to former president Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but became a close adviser to Obama during the campaign, reportedly serving as the stand-in for Sen. John McCain during debate preparations.
Notably, though, the current WHC is Fred Fielding.
2. Obama demands the resignation of all U.S. Attorneys in ...3, ...2, ...1 ...
Are you implying there is something wrong with that?
Don't forget Annan in Oil for Food.
Boo-yeah. Clinton could scarcely believe there wasn't anything he couldn't charm his way out of.
There is nothing wrong with that. "You're all fired, but you may reapply. The line forms at the right." Let's just hope he follows Truman's example: Every appointee must give the President an undated letter of resignation.
Well, ok. In some cases maybe that's apropos...
BTW, who'd Jefferson have as his WHC? Imagine how the DOI would have read with another lawyer editing the damn thing.
Craig was Clinton's lawyer in the impeachment hearings; Robert Bennett represented Clinton throughout the Paula Jones case.
He would not have been caught - except for the fact that he made the big mistake of exiling BOTH Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky - two people whose silence he wanted and whom he believed government employment would help maintain that silence - to the VERY SAME OFFICE!
(Linda Tripp knew something about the Vincent Foster case.
See testimonmy here:
http://snurl.com/5nw46
She never said exactly what it is that she knew. Maybe something about the timeline. Or some other lie they had told.
(One thing they had to do was to get files out of Vincent Foster's office without is nominal boss, Bernard Nussbaum, seeing them, as he might very logically have wanted to do. Then they staged some incident two days after they removed the files which they could later leak designed to make it appear that it was Bernard Nussbaum who was keeping secrets, and by implication, knew them of course. Maybe it was only that. Later on by the way, the Clintons mixed up Whitewater papers with some items removed from the office and sort of pretended it had come from the office.)
Bill Clinton never considered letting the suit lapse. More important, Bill Cliton had actually maneuvered Paula Jones into filing the lawsuit. he had wanted that lawsuit. He could have had this suit dismissed too rather easily at the beginning on technical grounds.
But the lawsuit gave public cover for setting up a legal defense fund. If he hadn't had this lawsuit it would have looked much more significant. His real legal problems were something else - and they were handled by the law firm of Williams &Connolly.
So now I don't know what this means. Does it mean Clinton now has an important spy in the Obama Administration - or is Craig's true loyalty ow going to be to Obama? And did Obama pick him because of his relationship to Clinton or not?
After he was caught commiting perjury the better idea was to settle the lawsuit so that it could not be argued he had benefitted from his perjury. That is undoubtably the legal advice he was given.
Thomas Jefferson? In those days there was only an Attorney General.
BTW it is very interesting how he covered up the Sally Hemings affair. He leaked a false version of the truth that could be proven false. It involved a son named Tom who probably never existed and described Sally Hemings as "dusky Sally"
But she was nearly white - three quarters white - and his late wife's half sister.
Jefferson of course had written in Notes on Virginia in 1784 - well before the affair was supposed to have begun in 1789 - that he did not find dark skinned people physically attractive, so describing Sally as dusky would immediately cause people in the Republican party familiar with Jefferson's writings to conclude that the story had to be false.
Note: Modern convention, established by members of Congress in the Twentieth Century. is to describe Jefferson's party party as Democratic-Republican, however it was known as Republican then and when the Republican Party was founded in 1854 it deleiberatly took that old name. The name Democratic wasn't really used till the time of Andrew Jackson.
Have you ever represented someone with a huge ego and a public reputation to uphold?
These clients always insist on testifying, and can't be talked out of it.
The US Attorneys thing is only an issue because (1) it involved replacement in the midst of an Administration (unusual but perfectly legal); (2) the Demos saw and maybe see it as a useful claim.
Obama seems fond of signing on old hand Clinton vets, established Washington power brokers. That's curious to me: there's no love lost between the Obamas and the Clintons. And while these folks were last in power during the Clinton years, surely there are other qualified people?
I'm pretty sure Gregory Craig was an early supporter of Obama.
1. As a DC newbie, Obama may have limited ability to find non-Clinton people with connections and knowledge (and yes, those requirements do make "change you can believe in" an impossible theme).
2. Just in case Hillary is thinking about a try in 2012 should Obama stumble between now and then (think Ted Kennedy's run against Jimmy Carter), hiring on her people can decimate her potential supporters. Or, given that gratitude and loyalty are not DC virtues, at least make it clumsy for them to back her.
Obama needs to stop stripping out safe Democratic Senators and Congress members for his cabinet. The subs that get assigned to fill out the time in office may not have the charisma or the political machine to hold the office through the next election. And if they can, the subs may challenge the previous holder in the primary. And everyone knows cabinet offices get reshuffled every two years if the President needs help in say rebuilding his opinion polls. Thus, some of these people may end up waiting a couple of years to retake their safe seat in the House or Senate if they get booted in a white house shakeup in 2010.
Dave, if you're suggesting that Obama's prior experience has any bearing on his ability to serve as President, RACIST!
Exactly how many Democratic Senators has Obama stripped for the cabinet yet? None. Rahm Emmanuel is from one of the safest Democratic districts in the country.
Has this ever been successfully pulled off? Winning a primary against a sitting president?
I'm pretty sure that was the only time.
1. He was, himself, under investigation by some of them.
2. He demanded the resignation of all of them, and accepted that resignation from the ones investigating him,
3. And then proceeded to replace the rest on a normal schedule.
IOW, the charge is that the immediate demand for the resignation of all of them was a smokescreen for killing the criminal investigations of himself which were going on when he took office.
The thing to watch for in the Obama administration, then, is what happens to the attorneys going after his pals in Chicago, who might have some dirt on him. I understand he's given some kind of promise it won't be disrupted. We'll see...
I think the chief significance of this is merely that the Obama administration is going to be the same old same old, he didn't have any fresh faces in mind, just the old party hacks. We've yet to see the "Whoa, didn't see that coming!" nomination.
"In 1999, Mr. Craig represented a major corporation in a trial in which a senior executive brought suit against the company alleging age discrimination."
He's anti-woman!
In 1983 to 1984, working with Edward Bennett Williams, Mr. Craig represented a prominent businessman who was charged with tax evasion in federal court in Miami.
He favors fat-cat tax evaders!
From 1973 to 1975, working with Edward Bennett Williams, Mr. Craig represented the clubs of the National Hockey League in antitrust litigation involving the World Hockey Association.
He's against antitrust enforcement and hates consumers!
Mr. Craig represented two Chicago policemen in extradition proceedings in federal court in Chicago and brought a declaratory judgment action on their behalf in federal court in Washington, D.C.
He wants to hold policemen unaccountable for their actions!
But, of course, we won't be hearing any of that this time around.
(Craig is actually a good guy and a hell of a lawyer, and obviously the above cases aren't grounds for any suspicion. I just enjoy the absence of outrage that would accompany a conservative with a similar record.)
1. Clinton suuucked.
2. Obama suuucks!
3. Obama is like Clinton's twin brother, only he sucks more.
4. The MSM suuucks.
That is all.
I would say this is very bad karma for Obama.
(BTW, Terrivus, you left out that he represented as recently as January 2008 a Panamanian accused of murdering a US soldier. Funny, that is not on his firm bio.)
"How he remade himself into the agent of change that so many are hoping he is, is one of the most remarkable sales jobs I have ever seen."
He is the grandson of Willy Loman.
"It is not surprising that he is picking guys like Emmanuel and Craig, guys BO can count on who are on the same page idiologically and fierce partisan D's, etc. BO's mentor in the Illinois Senate was Emil Jones, a long time pol and as inside a guy you can find and far from an agent of change. I thnk alot of BO's appeal is that he is not George Bush."
Not George Bush? This sounds exactly like how George Bush proceeded. I'm thinking that there are more interesting things about Rahmulus than his fierce partisanship, but by your account, you're describing the first days of the Bush administration to a "w".
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
Quoted from Ed Morrissey
Followed your link, didn't find a trace of debunking of the allegations I related, which had nothing to do with Bush's subsequent conduct. Just a debunking of the idea that Bush and Clinton did the same thing.
Ok, they didn't do the same thing. I didn't say they did. Maybe there was something vaguely relevant to what *I* said, in the comments? My lunch wasn't long enough to read them.
It would be very inconsistent to keep Obama away from his blackberry and at the same time say it is OK to vet the Clinton;s only partially.
(With the blackberry, you'd think also his duty would be to try to help the president do what he wants to do if itn principle it is legal and Congress certainly never meant to prohibuit the President from having a blackberry nor is it even useful. Keeping him away from ablackbwerry would merely isolate the president and make it easier to manipulate him. And technical record keeping questions can be worked out. And people could be warned that at some point in time archivists would go through it and try to eliminate what is not business and taht anyway it probably would be made opublic eventually anyway in 75 or 100 years.
As for security questions, other people in sensitive positions in the US government own blackberries.
With Clinton, no vetting beyond a certain amount is legally required but if he counsels Obama to avoid what he otherwise would do and yet doesn't help him keep a blackberry the whole thing looks very very bad)
In 1852, Millard Fillmore was dumped by the Whigs in favor of Winfield Scott. In 1860, the Democrats fell apart, but they were relatively united in their rejection of James Buchanan.
right" Should read Left."Pr 9/11 mindset?
Ok, but those allegations are false, too. See here and here.
You can't seem to address the charge I actually related, which has nothing to do with subsequent Bush conduct. Hardly could, since the charges were leveled during Clinton's first term in office.
Whether or not Bush subsequently did something different is irrelevant.
Ok, but in my defense (a) it's really hard to keep track of wingnut charges against the Clintons; (b) there were no investigations of Clinton pending at the time he took office; and (c) as at least one of my links points out, Clinton replaced 89 USAs within the first year, so it wasn't the case that he replaced only selected ones.
B, You wish. Half of the Clintons' legal problems dated back to things they'd been up to in Arkansas, and those investigations didn't start after the inauguration.
C. So what? The charge is that he was in a hurry to replace selected ones.
Anyway, at this point Obama has done nothing wrong with regards to attorney firings. Time will tell whether he will act on taking office to disrupt investigations of people he associated with in Chicago.
I'm suspecting he won't have to, that any prospect of somebody in Chicago singing went away when it became evident that they'd have a friend in charge of the Justice department soon enough, if they just clammed up. Obama would have to take affirmative action at this point, to keep that from coming into play, and nobody expects him to visit his pal Rezko and urge him to sing like a canary. Not even me.