White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino is abandoning ship on Friday — the second departure of a top Trump administration lawyer announced this week, NBC News reported Thursday.
Passantino was in charge of making sure Team Trump played by government ethics rules, and had helped a number of administration officials get out of ethical jams.
One notable case came in February 2017 when Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway shilled for Ivanka Trump’s clothing line on national TV.
“This is just a wonderful line. I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online,” Conway gushed on Fox & Friends.
Then-White House spokesman Sean Spicer said later: “She’s been counseled, and that’s all we’re going to say” — presumably by Passantino and others from the office of White House Counsel Don McGahn.
On Wednesday, the president tweeted that McGahn would be departing in the fall — reportedly blindsiding the lawyer, who had planned to leave anyway but was unaware that Trump would abruptly tweet about it without his knowledge.
McGahn earlier this year had threatened to quit rather than follow Trump’s order to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, forcing the commander-in-chief to back down.
McGahn later spent 30 hours talking to Mueller’s team of investigators in the Russia election meddling probe.