Al Drago/Pool via AP
Merrick Garland is sworn in at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The senior Biden team has done a good job at keeping the Wall Street revolving door far from the levers of power—but a lousy job when it comes to welcoming alums of the power law firms that serve corporate malefactors.
These are two faces of the same ill—too much corporate influence in a Democratic administration. These people revolve in, and then they revolve out. In the back of their heads is their next career move. And that tends to dampen their commitment to the public interest.
This is not to say that everyone who ever worked for a power law firm is bad. There are even some Wall Street vets who now work for the public interest, most notably Gary Gensler, the new head of the SEC. But both are few and far between.
In the case of people who really know the financial industry well enough to regulate it, the bench is not very deep. But Washington is blessed with plenty of public-interest lawyers; there is no need to go to the dark side.
Yet as Alex Sammon has reported, the Biden people are mostly ending up with the wrong sort of law firm alums.
The latest is Alicia O’Brien, who the Prospect learned has been named White House senior counsel and special assistant to the president. She came from King & Spalding. There, she helped prepare Google’s CEO for his appearance before a congressional hearing last July, and also served a wide range of Fortune 500 clients, including banks, hedge funds, Big Pharma, dirty energy, and for-profit colleges.
As Anatole France pointed out, all of these moguls are of course entitled to counsel, just like the indigent. Ha ha. But does Biden really want so many people who make such career choices?
At the center of this story is the new attorney general, Merrick Garland. He is mostly an admirable appointee. On domestic terrorism, where Garland first made his mark at the Justice Department, he is just the person we need. His appointment of Kristen Clarke as assistant AG for civil rights is also exemplary.
Garland himself served mostly in government and on the federal bench, not in the world of power law firms. But Garland and the White House both have serious blind spots when it comes to loading up with revolving-door power lawyers, who make high incomes helping corporate clients evade the public interest.
This is no more acceptable than letting the Wall Street revolving-door crowd run financial regulatory agencies and the Treasury. It’s a big blemish on a mostly good record.
