Politico

Trump’s next White House counsel is ‘the exception to the rule’ of Trump lawyers

Josh Gerstein November 18, 20241/2

As Donald Trump selects the top lawyers in his next administration, he has mostly prioritized loyalists who have forcefully advocated for him — either on cable news or in court.

His pick for White House counsel is a bit different. William McGinley, a longtime Republican election lawyer and K Street player, is not known as an outspoken Trump defender or a member of his legal inner circle.

That differentiates him from MAGA provocateur Matt Gaetz, whom Trump wants to be attorney general, and from the trio of Trump’s personal lawyers who were tapped last week to fill other key positions at the Justice Department.

Instead, McGinley is an affable lawyer who doesn’t make enemies and has little appetite for drama or the spotlight, his friends and colleagues say.

“This makes the McGinley pick the exception to the rule,” said fellow longtime GOP election lawyer Jan Baran. “He’s not a publicity hound.”

But when Trump returns to the Oval Office, McGinley will be thrust into thehigh-profile and delicate role of a close legal adviser to a presidentwho often cares little about the boundaries of the law. The two men who served as White House counsel in Trump’s first term, Don McGahn and Pat Cipollone, ended up on the outs with Trump after they resisted Trump plans they considered illegal or unwise.

One of McGinley’s most important duties in the role — which does not require Senate confirmation —will be to serve as the liaison to the Justice Department, which is sure to be a hotbed of controversy even if Gaetz fails to win Senate confirmation. Trump has repeatedly suggested he wants the department to prosecute his many enemies, and he and his allies are poised to wipe away the traditional layer of separation that has allowed the department to operate somewhat independently from the White House. (No he hasn't)

But McGinley has experience navigating the tumult of a Trump administration.In Trump’s first term, he served in the relatively obscure role of White House Cabinet secretary— a position that made him a primary contact between the president and the various Cabinet departments.

During his tenure, McGinley managed one of the most impressive feats in Washington: He survived more than two years in the Trump White House without sullying his own reputation and without a major blow-up with Trump.

Asked how McGinley did it, McGahn joked: “I should maybe ask him what the secret was.”

McGinley did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

A scrappy intellectual with deep roots in GOP politics

While McGinley isn’t personally a fixture on cable news, he is a protege of a Trump-friendly, contrarian legal pundit who is a regular presence there: Jonathan Turley.In fact, Turley was one of McGinley’s first professors more than two decades ago at George Washington University Law School.

“He has an advanced degree in history … but he’s not a lace-curtain lawyer,” Turley said of McGinley, who attended UCLA as an undergraduate and later got a master’s in history from California State University, Long Beach. “He’s an intellectual who knows how to scrap and that’s not a bad profile in a White House counsel.”

The fact that McGinley is a creature of Washington also helps, Turley added.

“Washington, D.C., is a unique place,” he said. “You really want someone who has been immersed in practice in Washington, D.C.”

McGinley has two decades of immersion, dealing mainly with election law and representing Republican politicians or political entities.

“He can really see the intersection of law and policy and politics,”said McGahn, who called him “a great lawyer.”

In the most recent presidential campaign, McGinley served as outside counsel to the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” efforts. Prior to joining the Trump White House, McGinley worked as counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

For many years, McGinley worked alongside former RNC counsel Ben Ginsberg. At law firms Patton Boggs and later Jones Day, the pair advised Republican candidates on campaign finance and election issues….

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-next-white-house-counsel-150922817.html

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One of McGinley’s highest profile assignments came in the 2008 election, which led to a recount that pitted incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman against Al Franken. Battling over the vote tally stretched for nearly eight months, with Coleman conceding in June 2009 after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Franken the winner by 312 votes out of 2.9 million cast.

In recent years, McGinley has taken on some fights closer to home. Last year, he advised a Virginia Republican, Bob Anderson, in a challenge to the incumbent Democratic State Attorney Buta Biberaj. Anderson ultimately defeated Biberaj by 300 votes in a battle that came down to provisional ballots.

Friends describe McGinley as a devout Catholic with a reputation for truth-telling.

McGinley, 57, has two children studying at the University of Alabama. As a result, associates say, he’s now a big fan of Alabama football and has recently become acquainted with the contentious sorority pledge ritual there immortalized in the TV series, “‘Bama Rush.”

A low-profile lobbying practice on top of GOP work

McGinley joined the first Trump White House on Day 1 and served for 2 1/2 years before leaving to return to private practice. Since then,he has worked as a federally registered lobbyist alongside his legal practice.

His clients have included defense contractor Vectrus, a New England fishermen’s group, and Max Schachter, a school safety advocatewhose son was killed in the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018, federal filings show.

Until March of this year, McGinley served as a lobbyist for two Russian-born, U.S.-educated software tycoons, Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev.Both men are reported to be billionaires and under sanctions by Ukraine’s government.

Lobbying disclosures indicate McGinley’s work was related to “business operations and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.” Baronov and Timashev were placed on a Ukrainian sanctions list in 2022. They reportedly renounced their Russian citizenship in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year.

Returning to the White House, no longer under the radar

Now, as McGinley prepares to return to a Trump White House in a more prominent role,it will be more difficult, if not impossible, for the drama-averse lawyer to avoid controversy and the spotlight.

McGinley may have survived the first Trump administration relatively unscathed because he wasn’t in the White House counsel’s office, where he would have been involved in the most contentious issues. Instead, his duties as Cabinet secretary involved supervising the paper flow between the West Wing and federal agencies.

“His position, at least in that role early on … was largely under the radar,and I don’t believe he had much interaction with the presidentor other key figures there at the White House on major policy and legal issues,” said one Trump administration official who dealt with him there and was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel issues.

McGahn described McGinley’s remit somewhat differently, but acknowledged his colleague’s involvement in legal issues during the first Trump term was limited.

“Occasionally, we were attending the same meetings trying to assure legal alignment. So he certainly knows where the bathroom is and knows how the Cabinet works and knows how policy is made,” McGahn said.“I think that's going to help him as counsel, because he's kind of aware of the difference between the policy side, the lawyer side, and the intangible of the political-climate side.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-next-white-house-counsel-150922817.html

(When attys that failed, praise him, its a good sign.)