Don McGahn, White House Counsel and Assistant to the President

Click here for an article by Digby at Hullabaloo entitled "Don McGahn, Tom Delay's defense attorney." Yes, you read that right: The White House Counsel advising Donald Trump these days was Tom Delay's defense attorney, and he guided Delay, speaker of the House, through various disgusting ethical quagmires (outlined in the article) before Delay was finally indicted on criminal charges of conspiracy to violate election law.

George W. Bush then appointed McGahn to the Federal Election Commission, where "he did everything in his power to undermine the campaign finance laws — and succeeded — after which he went to work for the Koch brothers."

"The idea that this man is going to give Trump guidance on how to deal with conflicts of interest in an ethical manner is laughable. His career has been spent counseling his clients on how to do the opposite. Like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Jeff Sessions, it's yet another example of Trump hiring the worst person in America for the job. It's almost as if he's trolling America, just messing with our heads for the fun of it. And like nearly all forms of trolling, it's not funny at all."

As Ellen L. Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission wrote back in December of 2016:

"Agency dysfunction was not a byproduct of McGahn’s approach — it was the goal. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, McGahn vetoed proposed rules aimed at ensuring disclosure of the sources of political spending, barring employees from being coerced to support their bosses’ political choices, keeping foreign interests from influencing our elections and addressing the new political powerhouses known as super PACs.

"I have served on the FEC for 14 years, with 14 commissioners. While disagreements are nothing new at the FEC, commissioners on both sides of the aisle used to understand that serving on a commission composed of three Democratic and three Republican appointees required compromise and that it was our job to make the agency work. No other commissioner has been as intransigent, as hostile to other points of view and as determined to undermine the law and the commission as McGahn was. The example he set hampers the agency to this day."