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By Kent Larsen
LDS Lawyer Joins White House Counsel's Office
WASHINGTON, DC -- Timothy Flanigan, a conservative Mormon lawyer who was
once a clerk for Chief Justice Warren Berger, has been tapped to serve as
the #2 lawyer in the Bush White House. An article in the Washington Post
yesterday detailed Flanigan's background and claimed that the counsel's
office may have "cornered the market" in legal talent.
According to the article and to a Bush/Cheney Transition press release,
Flanigan is a BYU graduate who went on to get a law degree from the
University of Virginia. After working as a clerk for Chief Justice Warren
Berger, he was an assistant Attorney General responsible for constitutional
questions in the George Bush administration. He then joined the law firm
White &Case, where he was a partner.
Flanigan has also been heavily involved in political issues during his
career. He has actively opposed "judicial activism" and testified in 1999
before a US House of Representatives subcommittee in support of then
Independent Counsel Kenneth Star and of the Independent Counsel statute.
More recently, he played a role working for Bush in the Florida recount.
The Post article claims that the appointments made to the Counsel's office
are part of a trend in the Bush administration to concentrate policy setting
in the White House instead of in the relevant cabinet department. "[The
appointment] says the real legal policy energy may well be in the White
House," said Boyden Gray, who was Counsel in the elder President George
Bush's administration. If that perspective is true, then Flanigan will be in
an important policy-making position in the administration.
Sources:
White House Counsel Office Now Full of Clinton Legal Foes
Washington Post pgA08 30Jan01 T2
By Dana Milbank: Washington Post Staff Writer
Bush Announces Appointments for White House Counsel
USNewswire 18Jan01 P2
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