Professor Bruce Green was quoted in The Washington Post about a Justice Department ethics review that will examine possible conflicts of interest regarding the former law firm of Robert Mueller, who was appointed special counsel for the Trump-Russia investigation.
Ethics experts said they anticipate that the Justice Department will grant a waiver, noting that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein would have taken Mueller’s past employer into consideration when selecting him.
“The deputy attorney general’s assumption is that Mr. Mueller has such an extraordinarily impressive reputation that everyone is going to have confidence in him,” said Bruce Green, who directs the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at the Fordham University School of Law.
Still, Green noted, granting such a waiver could later prove politically risky.
“At the end of the day, if he says, ‘I didn’t find anything here,’ are members of the public going to say, ‘We don’t trust that because we think you favored these individuals because they are your former firm’s clients?’ ”