CQ | SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 9

Influencers

Counsel for the Defense of Justice

LEGAL AFFAIRS

By MIKE MAGNER

For anyone wondering how President Donald Trump’s re-lentless attacks on the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI are affecting those on the inside, a clear and confident an-swer comes from someone not far removed from the most con-sequential work going on there.

“I’d be lying if I said that we didn’t find those attacks to be distressing, objectionable, in-appropriate, unbecoming of the presidency, detrimental to the work of the department and to the public confidence in the de-

partment that is so essential to its carrying out its functions,” says David Laufman, who left his job in February as a senior Justice official after several years at the heart of both the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s email server.

But it was not demoralizing, he says.

“We were professionals charged with a mission to carry out,” Laufman says. “We were singularly focused on perform-ing that mission and not letting any of this outside noise derail us from that mission.”

Conservative bloggers have labeled Laufman part of a “deep state” trying to bring down the president and have accused him, without evidence, of leaking in-formation to the press about de-partment probes into the admin-istration.

None of that had any bearing on his decision to return to private law practice, Laufman insists. But now that he’s a private citizen, it has motivated him to talk bluntly about the denigration of certain institutions of government.

“I think it’s important for people who have that ability to speak out now to do so and call

DAVID LAUFMAN:Back in private practice after a career in public service.

attention to this conduct and try to raise consciousness about the effects that it can have, and try to instill in our elected representa-tives a greater willingness to hold accountable the president and any other officials who engage in this kind of conduct,” says Laufman.

When Laufman announced his decision to step down as chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section at Justice, websites like RedState specu-lated it was related to “the pres-sure building to appoint a spe-cial counsel to investigate how Hillary’s email investigation was handled.”

Laufman dismisses the claim. “In a job like that, you are so la-ser-focused on a mission,” he says. “The work you’re doing is incredibly important, it’s righ-teous work, you’re at the nexus of every cutting-edge national secu-rity problem. You could just not hope in government for a more gratifying position to contribute.

“But I felt I had done my duty and it was time to move on to the next chapter in my career.”

He also says his 25 years in public service, during which he drew fire from Democrats and Republicans alike, illustrates his devotion to an unbiased, uncom-promising pursuit of justice.

Laufman, 60, was inspired to consider government work by his father, who flew more than 60 combat missions over Ger-man-occupied Europe during World War II and returned to en-ter the supermarket business in Houston. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, Laufman joined the CIA as an analyst on Africa and the Mid-dle East.

Four years later he decided “it

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||| INFLUENCERS

Cherie Paquette is now director of media affairs for the House Repub-lican Conference under Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Paquette joined the conference staff earlier this year after nearly four years as an associate producer and booker for Fox News.

John Bonsell, a former aide to Oklahoma Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe, has been tapped as majority staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Inhofe now

chairs. Bonsell returns to the job he held when Republicans were in the minority from 2012 to 2015, when he left to become vice president of government affairs at SAIC.

Andrew Keller has been named chief counsel for Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under ranking member Robert Menendez of New Jersey. Keller previously was an aide to Menendez before moving to the State Department in 2013 as a le-gal adviser and deputy assistant secretary.

Teri Geiger is now chief of staff for newly elected GOP Rep. Troy Balderson of Ohio. Geiger moves from the office of Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, where she was state director.

Ashley Gunn has become senior adviser to Arkansas Republican Rep. French Hill. Gunn previously worked for the Mortgage Bank-ers Association and the American Bankers Association.

Matt Cournoyer has left his job as press secretary to Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren to return to Princeton University.

Michael Harris has joined the staff of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Was-serman Schultz after lobbying for Defenders of Wildlife. He once worked for Neva-da Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.

Juliet Spies-Gans has moved from Anne Lewis Strategies to become a speechwriter for Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

IN BRIEF

was either a career at the agency or leave the nest and explore the outer world,” which he did by earning a law degree at George-town. That got him a job at a Washington law firm specializing in antitrust and regulatory work, and later as counsel for Repub-licans on the House Foreign Af-fairs Committee.

He was involved in oversight investigations, including a probe into a book’s allegations that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presiden-tial campaign conspired with the Iranian government to delay re-lease of American hostages until after the election. (A bipartisan report found no credible evi-dence for the allegations.)

What followed was a series of positions digging into gov-ernment corruption and official misconduct: as part of an inde-pendent counsel investigation of improper snooping into pres-idential candidate Bill Clinton’s passport records; as a House Ethics Committee counsel ex-amining then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s outside finances; as an adviser to a federal commission studying how to handle charges

against international drug king-pins; and as an investigator in the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

The latter appointment led to Laufman’s hiring as chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Lar-ry Thompson at the start of the George W. Bush administration, which meant a consuming two years of high-profile cases, includ-ing probes of 9/11, anthrax attacks and the Washington area snipers.

“It was a high intensity but ulti-mately a high burnout position,” Laufman says. He convinced his boss to give him an appointment in the U.S. attorney’s office based in Alexandria, Va., also a center of significant cases with national implications.

In August 2006 Laufman was nominated for inspector gener-al at the Pentagon, but he was blocked by Senate Democrats who viewed him as too close to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “who I had met all of once,” he says. “It was a really frustrating, exasperating experi-ence” that prompted him to join a Georgetown law firm, Kelley Drye, specializing in white-collar

defense.He did return to the govern-

ment for nearly two years as coun-sel to the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, focused on fraud and corruption in the Iraq War, but then formed his own law firm in late 2011. Three years later he was recruited to take charge of the Justice Department’s counter-intelligence section, which result-ed in his involvement in the Rus-sia investigation and the Clinton email probe.

Now Laufman is back at his own firm, again focused on white-collar defense and gov-ernment investigations, but he is

more than confident in the col-leagues he left behind.

“You have a cadre of highly motivated, talented, smart, very hard-working prosecutors who I oversaw, and the officials to whom I reported, all of whom are most keen to identify threats to the national security of the United States, devise responses to those threats within the rule of law, that enable the department to deploy its resources to protect this country,” he says.

“There can be no greater re-sponsibility than that. And that, more than anything else, is what drives them.”

HAPPIER DAYS: Trump’s relationship with Jeff Sessions has soured since the attorney general was sworn in Feb. 9, 2017, alongside his wife, Mary.

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