Trump Taps Campaign Lawyer and Pardon Adviser for Top U.S. Intel Agency - The Intercept
As a lawyer on President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, Gary Lawkowski filed a complaint against the Washington Post for supposedly making an in-kind contribution to the Kamala Harris campaign by buying social media advertising for its articles.
In the White House, he played a pivotal role in the pardons process that rewarded Trump cronies and donors.
Now, Lawkowski could serve in an obscure but crucial role within the nation’s top intelligence agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On Monday, Trump nominated Lawkowski to serve as general counsel of ODNI.
It is unclear when Lawkowski will appear before a confirmation hearing or whether Democrats will look favorably upon him when they take control of the Senate in January. His nomination is already drawing pushback, however, from a progressive group that says it represents another attempt to politicize the ODNI after Trump’s bid to install loyalist Bill Pulte as its director fizzled.
“Lawkowski has been a key player in Trump’s corrupt pardon scheme and his nomination tells us that the administration is trying to stack the intelligence community with cronies so they can further weaponize it against their perceived political opponents and innocent Americans,” Hajar Hammado, senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, said in a statement. “Senators must oppose his nomination.”
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The ODNI is a relatively small agency, and it doesn’t hoover up its own raw data. As the only intelligence body operating at the Cabinet level, however, it is tasked with coordinating and overseeing intelligence collection and analysis at other spy agencies like the CIA and National Security Agency.
Under former Director Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI took an unusually prominent role in declassifying information that cast a negative light on Trump’s enemies or fed into right-wing obsessions, such as the Covid lab-leak controversy.
The general counsel plays an important role in interpreting spying law — meaning that Lawkowski could either facilitate or block intelligence community abuses.
In recent months, Trump has displayed an unusual interest in the ODNI, installing housing czar Pulte to replace Gabbard before bipartisan pushback forced him to tap former prosecutor Jay Clayton as a permanent replacement.
In his current role at the White House, Lawkowski serves as deputy assistant and deputy counsel to the president, according to his most recent ethics disclosure, and it is unclear whether he has relevant national security experience.
There is ample evidence that he is a loyalist to Trump. As a lawyer on the Trump campaign, he blasted off a complaint to the Federal Election Commission claiming that the Washington Post’s online advertisements about stories on Trump represented an in-kind contribution to Harris’s campaign. Campaign finance law experts said the claim was baseless. Lawkowski also represented Trump in litigation over the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
In the White House, he has helped decide who does and does not receive pardons, according to reporting last year in the New York Times. Under Trump, the White House has asserted authority over a pardons process that traditionally flowed through the Department of Justice.
Trump’s blanket clemency for January 6, 2021, insurrectionists preceded a parade of pardons for people who donated to his campaign or causes, or Republican officials who had been convicted of corruption, drawing widespread criticism.
One of the many who received a Trump pardon was former Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey, who had been represented by Lawkowski before the lawyer went to the White House. Lawkowski did not respond to a request for comment on whether he recused himself from that pardon.
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It is unclear whether Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., will push to have Lawkowski confirmed before the next Senate is sworn in on January 3. The Senate is dealing with a cramped calendar before the end of the year. (Cotton’s office declined to comment.)
The likely incoming intelligence chair, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., was harshly critical of Trump’s temporary appointment of Pulte at the ODNI. He ultimately voted against Clayton’s nomination after touting him as a more acceptable alternative to Pulte. (Warner’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
Lawkowski was tapped to replace John “Jack” Dever, who was confirmed by the Senate to serve as general counsel a little over a year ago. Dever joined the government-backed mortgage finance company Freddie Mac as its executive counsel and vice president in September, according to its website. (Dever left the ODNI with Director Jay Clayton’s blessing and remains well-respected at the agency, an ODNI spokesperson said.)
Dever’s resume included extensive work in the national security realm as a Korean linguist for the U.S. Army, an assistance general counsel at the FBI, and a counter-terror prosecutor in Illinois.
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