House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler, one of the key congressional Democrats investigating President Trump over alleged obstruction of justice, appears to have a conflict of interest.
Jerry Nadler’s son, Michael L. Nadler, works as an associate attorney for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a law firm based in New York that has repeatedly sued the Trump administration on behalf of other people.
Last November the firm sued Trump’s administration on behalf of CNN after the White House suspended CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass.
One month later the firm sued the Trump administration on behalf of the Center for Reproductive Rights after the State Department reportedly made changes to its regularly issued human rights reports.
Two years ago one of the firm’s lawyers, Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., the co-chair of the firm’s litigation group, filed his own lawsuit against the president after Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“Los Angeles attorney Ted Boutrous has been itching for a courtroom battle with President Donald Trump. Now, he’s got it,” Minnesota Lawyer, an independent newspaper for the legal industry, reported at the time, describing Boutrous as “Trump’s legal nemesis.”
“Boutrous sued Trump on Monday on behalf of six program participants, most of whom came from Mexico before they were 10. Trump’s decision to end the program in six months is a ‘cruel bait and switch’ motivated by an ‘unconstitutional bias against Mexicans,’ according to the complaint.”
Boutrous also has a history of slamming President Trump on Twitter:
Three years ago, during the 2016 presidential election, he offered to provide pro bono services to President Trump’s enemies, including the women who accused him of sexual assault.
“It’s chilling that a powerful person can sue you, even though at the end of the day he might lose the case,” he said at the time to The Global Legal Post. “If people know there’s a support network, then they can make their own decision about coming forward.”
The outlet confirmed that “25 other Gibson Dunn lawyers” had also offered the same. Their shared concern was that Trump’s threats to sue his accusers for defamation would scare other accusers from coming forward with their own admittedly oftentimes dubious accusations.
Despite this glaring anti-Trump history, Nadler’s own son works for this law firm.
According to a source from Washington who spoke with BigLeague Politics, the outlet responsible for outing Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s blackface photos, Nadler’s son obtained the job in 2018, which was the same year that Democrats won control of the House.
“His son (Michael Nadler) got a job with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in 2018,” the source said. “That’s convenient because Jerry Nadler and the Democrats just won control of the House in 2018. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher hire Jerry’s son and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher are the main nemesis against Trump and the Trump Administration on numerous lawsuits.”
“Now the Nadler family will gain access to thousands of Trump documents via Jerry’s subpoenas!”
“Such an arrangement — Jerry Nadler investigating Trump with his son’s firm trying to get access to documents in other cases — violates ethics rules for federal investigators,” BLP notes.
Nadler has been desperately seeking as much information about the president as possible since at least 2017, a year before he was up for reelection again.
Not surprisingly, ever since he became the House Judiciary Committee in January, he’s been pursuing the same agenda, issuing subpoena after subpoena against the White House.
While it’s unclear how this conflict of interest will affect Nadler’s work, some believe he should resign from his position:
