CREW DISCOVERS PREVIOUSLY UNDISCLOSED ETHICS WAIVER FOR SOLICITOR GENERAL NOEL FRANCISCO
CREW has uncovered a previously undisclosed ethics waiver that may represent an effort to clear one of the obstacles to Solicitor General Noel Francisco replacing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the official overseeing the Russia investigation.
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.
The first of the three obstacles Mr. Francisco faces – his former employment relationship with Jones Day – raises an issue under the Trump ethics Executive Order. As required by that Executive Order, Mr. Francisco signed an ethics pledge in which he promised that, for two years after joining the government, he would not participate in any investigation in which Jones Day represents a client. That promise means he must stay out of the Special Counsel investigation until at least late 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.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/crew-discovers-previously-undisclosed-ethics-waiver-for-solicitor-general-noel-francisco/
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We're pretty close to Jan 2019. Trump could wait until then, he likely will anyway. Probably looking forward to fighting a Dem congress... good for his '20 campaign... always willing to throw red meat to the base.
