In a Feb. 8 letter, Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Democratic ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, hurled a series of 13 pointed questions at the Trump Organization’s general counsel, George Sorial, and its newly-appointed ethics counsel, King & Spalding partner Bobby Burchfield. The senator wanted clarification on how Burchfield will do his job of vetting Trump Organization transactions for conflicts of interest involving President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, in the first two months of the Trump presidency, transactions by Trump businesses—including the $15 million sale of a penthouse to a consultant to Chinese companies and two planned resorts in Indonesia—have already attracted critical scrutiny from the media, lawyers and watchdog groups. Burchfield’s response has consistently been “no comment.” At press time, Burchfield and Sorial hadn’t publicly responded to McCaskill, either.
There will be no shortage of controversy for Burchfield in his new role. While it’s routine practice in Washington, D.C., for lawyers to give ethics opinions to politicians on issues, Burchfield’s new job is unprecedented. Some watchdog groups, including Democracy 21 and Public Citizen, have questioned whether he’ll be able to fulfill his mission for an already taciturn company. “Frankly, he’s been given a pretty impossible task, and I don’t know that there are going to be very high expectations that he is going to prevent conflicts of interests [between Trump and his companies] from happening,” says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a frequent critic of Burchfield’s positions on campaign finance.
