Sheri Dillon, William Nelson, and Fred Fielding have sullied themselves and imperiled the reputation of their firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Dillon and Nelson began sliding down a slippery slope with their March 7, 2016 letter purporting to justify then-candidate Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. Confirming that the IRS had closed its audits through 2008, it reinforced Trump’s “under audit” excuse for not releasing them. Returns for 2009 forward, they wrote, “are continuations of prior, closed examinations.”
The descent continued in Trump’s Jan. 11, 2017 press conference. “President-elect Trump wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests,” Dillon explained amid a mountain of paper. Some of the documents appeared to be blank and some of the folders lacked labels. Why the esteemed Fred Fielding lent his name to the cause is a mystery. Substantively, attorneys knew immediately that the Dillon/Nelson/Fielding/Morgan Lewis plan was a joke. Every day, it has become less funny.
