Third time's the appeal: Leading Biden adviser's company clientele draw scrutiny

Katherine Doyle

August 25, 07:00 AM August 25, 07:00 AM

Anita Dunn has returned to the White House at a second of uncertainty for President Joe Biden, assisting to push the administration’s message into the midterm elections, when voters will determine whether or not Democrats keep management of Congress.

But Dunn's most current tenure has cast a highlight on the administration’s assure to operate the most upstanding White Home in historical past, with ethics lawyers questioning a apply that authorized Biden’s senior adviser to skirt general public disclosure rules.

Through two previously stints in the Biden White House, Dunn bypassed traditional disclosure obligations with a momentary part. As a “special government employee” making just beneath the $132,552 salary threshold for disclosure, Dunn’s position stored her customer list non-public, together with a substantial asset portfolio.

Akin to a specialist, a so-named SGE usually holds the situation for 130 days or considerably less and is ready to go on function for outside the house consumers.

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Dunn also did not have to indicator Biden’s ethics pledge, which prohibits team from working on general public plan problems connected to their former employer or shoppers and mandates a cooling-off period for staffers leaving the administration.

Just after joining Biden’s administration as a senior adviser on Inauguration Working day, Dunn returned to SKDK, the impressive consulting shop she co-launched, last calendar year in August. She was again at 1600 Pennsylvania in March for a 2nd temporary putting up, in component filling in for Biden’s deputy chief of employees, who was out on personalized leave, the Washington Submit claimed.

Dunn’s 93-webpage submitting lists just about 20 purchasers, together with Pfizer, AT&T, Micron, American Clean Power Affiliation, Lyft, Salesforce, Reddit, and Melinda French Gates’s corporation Pivotal Ventures, as perfectly as an considerable expenditure portfolio. Her wage from SKDK, a major political seller, was $738,715.

With her spouse, Bob Bauer, White Home counsel beneath former President Barack Obama, Dunn holds an asset portfolio ranging in worth from $16.8 million to $48.2 million, according to an estimate by CNBC.

The White House mentioned Dunn will divest her holdings and recuse herself from all issues involving SKDK and earlier purchasers. Dunn also won’t be in a position to join any conferences with those shoppers for two decades, in line with the administration’s ethics pledge, White Residence spokesman Chris Meagher instructed CNBC. The White Home did not answer to the Washington Examiner when asked irrespective of whether Dunn experienced divested nevertheless.

But the revolving-door appointments and delay in divesting pose issues, reported Walter Shaub, director of the Business office of Govt Ethics less than Obama and briefly underneath previous President Donald Trump.

“She joined the government in Might. It’s now August. Why have three months absent by with these substantial conflicts of curiosity?” Shaub claimed, noting that she likely held the exact same economic interests for the duration of her before stints.

Not till May well did Dunn think a posture that necessary public disclosure of her financial assets and former consumers, inspite of advising the president for numerous months. This was not the scenario for Biden’s other senior adviser, Mike Donilon, or previous presidential senior advisers, such as Karl Rove, David Axelrod, or Jared Kushner.

Her newly public filing aspects her do the job and asset holdings about the two many years leading up to her appointment as assistant and senior adviser to the president in May possibly.

Although the follow follows the letter of the regulation, for a White Property fast to tout its ethical bona fides, “It just appears really disingenuous to give somebody that much authority, but established their pay out beneath a degree that would have to have monetary disclosure,” Shaub reported. “That results in the look that you are just seeking to stay away from permitting the public know what conflicts of curiosity a human being has.”

Calling Dunn’s circumstance “deeply troubling,” Shaub explained, “You just can't go around bragging, as this administration does, that they are the most moral administration in all of record when they’re only just about, technically lawfully compliant in a ton of instances and instead approaching governing administration ethics the way a tax lawyer does when striving to save the shopper dollars — by wanting for loopholes and exceptions,” he explained.

The substantial-degree temps that fill SGE roles have very long come beneath hearth.

Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, both equally close aides to former Secretary of Condition Hillary Clinton, held outside posts although serving in the Obama administration in temporary roles. All through a single 4-month time period, Mills served as Clinton’s unpaid chief of personnel and major White Household liaison although operating portion-time for New York College negotiating with Abu Dhabi to make a college campus in the metropolis.

Abedin invested her closing six-thirty day period extend as Clinton’s deputy main of workers in 2012 utilized by the Clinton Foundation and the New York Town-primarily based advisory agency Teneo.

In her existing post, Dunn is spearheading political technique for the White Dwelling heading into the midterm elections, like messaging on the local weather-targeted reconciliation bill that the White Dwelling hopes will aid propel Democrats as a result of November.

In a memo co-authored with White Household deputy main of workers Jen O’Malley Dillon, Dunn thorough an intense thrust to tout the Biden administration’s guidelines with voters.

But the invoice is in element a health care bill, and Dunn’s previous work for Pfizer raises fears, Jeff Hauser at the liberal Revolving Door Job thinks.

“It is difficult for us to know to what extent she may well be pulling punches,” Hauser reported. “We never know, and it is an apparent conflict of desire.”

The White House disputes this, with Meagher contacting the recommendation that Dunn’s past shopper interactions could pose a potential conflict of fascination “a essential misunderstanding of how the ethics pledge and recusals function.”

“Writing a broad messaging memo outlining a monthly bill that has been signed into legislation is a whole lot diverse than communicating with or advocating for the former client,” Meagher reported. “Anita has not, nor will she participate in any unique subject involving distinct get-togethers that is directly and significantly associated to a previous employer or former customer they worked for.”

In addition to Pfizer, Dunn a short while ago advised other corporations that have benefited from the administration’s procedures.

The main govt of Micron, a person of Dunn’s previous shoppers, designed the case before the U.S. authorities in March for increased federal subsidies to boost the semiconductor field.

Just after the CHIPS and Science Act handed this month, Micron declared that it would invest $40 billion to manufacture semiconductor chips in the U.S., supported by the bill’s grants and credits.

Shaub stated White House officers must be divesting proper away to keep away from even the appearance of conflicts.

“It may perhaps be authorized, but the truth that there’s some nuanced technical authorized clarification … does not make the community come to feel a entire ton superior when someone has a monetary curiosity in the govt insurance policies they’re influencing and shaping,” he additional.

In accordance to a report by Puck’s Tara Palmeri, some near to the White Home have suggested that to stay clear of the “logistical headache” of the Biden administration’s divestment and disclosure policies, Dunn could in its place “ascend to an nearly Valerie Jarrett-like role, essentially the chairwoman to the chief of staff — providing knowledge to the president, to the COS, and presumably accruing her individual benefit.”

But Hauser explained that as consigliere to Biden, his concerns around Dunn’s consumers would be elevated even more.

“The increased the amount, the a lot more impossible it is to essentially recuse on your own,” he charged. “There’s no way to make political technique for Biden where you are not taking a stance one way or a further, implicitly or explicitly.”

Was Russia collusion server data pushed in violation of Senate ethics rules?

Pamela K. Browne

June 01, 07:00 AM June 01, 07:01 AM

Lurking behind the mountains of prosecutorial evidence presented in over 150 exhibits and testimony by nearly two dozen witnesses in the now-concluded Michael Sussmann trial, questions swirl about how widely the debunked Trump-Russia collusion computer data spread among Washington, D.C.’s most powerful committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 2017.

On Tuesday, a D.C. jury found Sussmann, the 57-year-old former Perkins Coie lawyer, not guilty of lying to the FBI.

Despite this setback to special counsel John Durham’s investigation, the public learned how a powerful attorney, in a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign, deliberately bypassed protocol to get a meeting with the FBI general counsel in September 2016 to pass along the Alfa-Bank materials that Sussmann participated in preparing with the help of Fusion GPS and his client, Rodney Joffe.

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In addition, in a surprising revelation in the two-week trial, it was revealed that Sussmann’s client Joffe was fired as a confidential human source for the FBI in 2021. Joffe, identified as “Tech Executive 1,” may now be a focus in Durham’s investigation.

Lingering questions remain: if, for example, Sussmann, along with Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, Daniel Jones of the Democracy Integrity Project, and Joffe, worked together to promote the same fabricated allegations of a secret communications channel between Russia’s Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization to the Senate Armed Services Committee after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

Jason Foster, president of Empower Oversight, a nonprofit group dedicated to increasing accountability for government and corporate wrongdoing, told the Washington Examiner: “It remains unclear to what extent TDIP’s report allegedly produced for the Senate Armed Services Committee overlaps with the information Sussmann provided to the FBI, although they appear to be closely related. The testimony at the [Sussmann] trial has not explored that question, but it is an important one that the Senate Ethics Committee should examine.”

The debunked computer data “white papers,” written and assembled by Fusion GPS, Joffe, and Perkins Coie attorneys Sussmann and Marc Elias, were delivered to FBI General Counsel James Baker by Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, via hard copy and thumb drives.

This opposition research, down to the thumb drives passed, was paid for by the Clinton campaign while at the same time promoted by Fusion GPS into select reporters’ stories.

The “white papers” alleged a covert communications channel between Russia’s Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization. Ultimately, the FBI determined there was insufficient evidence, and Sussmann would later try to peddle the data to the CIA with no success.

Troubling to Foster, who worked for two decades as a congressional investigator, is whether or not the Senate Armed Services Committee knowingly allowed Daniel Jones’s TDIP to “work for free” for a year in violation of Senate Rule XXXV, which prohibits any gift, which includes gifts of services, over $100 per year.

On Oct. 8, 2021, three weeks after Sussmann was indicted by Durham for allegedly lying to the FBI, Foster wrote to Sen. Christopher Coons (D-DE), the Senate Ethics Committee’s chairman, and Vice Chairman Sen. James Lankford (R-OK). He specifically asked if the Senate Armed Services Committee violated rules “by requesting and accepting professional services from TDIP and Daniel J. Jones.”

Foster pointed out “TDIP’s research … began in 2017, continued for more than a year, involved hiring computer science experts at no cost to the Committee … [and] aimed at evaluating data that the Committee had received for alleged connections between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers.”

Foster emphasized the need for transparency, noting: “The advice we followed was to avoid accepting professional services without paying for them, even if it was related to the Committee’s official business.”

A review by the Washington Examiner of Alfa-Bank court filings, including Jones’s Aug. 18, 2021, deposition, congressional testimony, and other public documents, offers context into the relationship between TDIP and Fusion GPS.

On the Sunday following Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Fusion’s Simpson and Fritsch met with Jones. By Jan. 31, TDIP was incorporated as a new nonprofit organization. In their book, Crime in Progress, Simpson and Fritsch described how “TDIP intended to tap the super-wealthy to fund work to protect the democratic system of government from a new and insidious assault.”

Jones, with considerable input and fundraising efforts by Simpson and Fritsch, raised $7 million in the first year, and Jones paid half of that, $3.3 million, to Bean LLC, Fusion GPS’s limited liability company. TDIP also paid nearly $700,000 to discredited dossier author Christopher Steele’s entity, Walsingham Partners.

TDIP donors include George Soros, deep-pocketed Democrats in Silicon Valley, and a group tied to Tom Steyer, the California businessman-turned-failed 2020 presidential candidate.

As TDIP’s president, Jones, a former FBI analyst and former staffer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), was paid more than $380,000. Besides TDIP, Jones also operates a for-profit firm, Penn Quarter Group, in Washington, D.C.

Jones told the FBI in March 2017 that Penn Quarter Group “was being funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million.”

Foster stressed: “Allowing Senate committees to accept free investigative services by an unknown group of billionaires raises potential conflict of interest issues that the Gift Rule is intended to prevent."

“If Committees need to engage outside consultants for official business, there is a process for doing so," he continued. "It’s unclear who on the Foreign Relations Committee was aware of the arrangement for free services provided and to what extent it was officially authorized. An Ethics Committee investigation could help clear up some of those questions.”

Apparently, nothing stopped Fusion GPS from figuring out ways to promote the Alfa-Bank narrative, with the help of TDIP.

In the now-ended Alfa-Bank civil litigation, Jones testified how he met with the Senate Armed Services Committee’s T. Kirk McConnell, at McConnell’s request, in the spring of 2017 “in the Senate Armed Services space … and they asked for my insights into the alleged connection between Alfa-Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.”

“[McConnell] relayed that he had information from a trusted source about the server allegation … and the Senate Armed Services Committee was in possession of information about the server allegations.“

Jones described in his deposition how the DNS (domain name system) data was “already in the hands of the committee.”

Specifically, Jones said: “They asked me to evaluate that information. … The next step was to meet with an individual named Michael Sussmann.”

Jones had multiple meetings with Michael Sussmann in the spring of 2017. Sussmann also represented Joffe.

Curiously, Jones said Sussmann chose to refer to his client Joffe as “Max” or “John Galt.” But Jones said he figured out the expert was indeed Joffe. During the Sussmann trial, it was revealed that Joffe was “terminated” as a confidential human source for the FBI in 2021.

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Jones detailed, in his August 2021 deposition, that Fusion GPS was paid $3.3 million for a “hefty” 687-page Alfa research backgrounder that he admitted was produced “rather quickly.”

In a key exchange in his deposition, Jones was grilled by Alfa-Bank attorney Margaret Krawiec over a TDIP report dated March 21, 2017.

Jones claimed Fusion GPS had no knowledge that the background report that TDIP paid millions for would be included in the report he gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee for analysis sometime early to mid-2017.

The timing is notable, as this is shortly after TDIP was created on Jan. 31, 2017, and two months later, the Fusion report had a new home.

Was the data described in Durham’s indictment of Sussmann the same data obtained and analyzed by TDIP for the Senate Armed Services Committee? Was this also part of the core research that Fusion GPS provided? As Durham's investigation continues to unfold, this remains a mystery.

Simpson and Fritsch bragged about what TDIP could do in their book, writing: “Without the deadline of an election … TDIP had the luxury to roam into underexplored areas while also opening up entirely new inquiries. It could bring on specialists: linguists, accountants, campaign finance nerds, Web scraping data gurus.”

The reality was TDIP served as another way for Fusion GPS to earn even more money in lucrative contracts than in their previous work with Perkins Coie. This would enable them to continue the amplification of the Russian collusion narrative against Trump’s presidency.

Seven months after Foster sent his letter, he said: “We have received no reply or communication from anyone at the Senate Ethics Committee” regarding Empower Oversight’s request for an investigation. “The Ethics Committee’s procedures don’t require it to respond to complaints from the public like ours. However, our filing argues that a public resolution would be in the best interests of the Senate. If the Gift Rule was violated, then there should be accountability.”

The Washington Examiner did not receive a response to questions submitted to Coons and Lankford.