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**FEBRUARY 26, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Big Finance, BigLaw, and Biden's Big Choices

****

The senior Biden team has done a good job at keeping the Wall Street
revolving door far from the levers of power-but a lousy job when it
comes to welcoming alums of the power law firms that serve corporate
malefactors.

These are two faces of the same ill-too much corporate influence in a
Democratic administration. These people revolve in, and then they
revolve out. In the back of their heads is their next career move. And
that tends to dampen their commitment to the public interest.

This is not to say that everyone who ever worked for a power law firm is
bad. There are even some Wall Street vets who now work for the public
interest, most notably Gary Gensler, the new head of the SEC. But both
are few and far between.

In the case of people who really know the financial industry well enough
to regulate it, the bench is not very deep. But Washington is blessed
with plenty of public-interest lawyers; there is no need to go to the
dark side.

Yet as Alex Sammon has reported, the Biden people are mostly ending up
with the wrong sort

of law firm alums.

The latest is Alicia O'Brien, who the

**Prospect** learned has been named White House senior counsel and
special assistant to the president. She came from King & Spalding.
There, she helped prepare Google's CEO for his appearance before a
congressional hearing last July, and also served a wide range of Fortune
500 clients, including banks, hedge funds, Big Pharma, dirty energy, and
for-profit colleges.

As Anatole France pointed out, all of these moguls are of course
entitled to counsel, just like the indigent. Ha ha. But does Biden
really want so many people who make such career choices?

At the center of this story is the new attorney general, Merrick
Garland. He is mostly an admirable appointee. On domestic terrorism,
where Garland first made his mark at the Justice Department, he is just
the person we need. His appointment of Kristen Clarke as assistant AG
for civil rights is also exemplary.

Garland himself served mostly in government and on the federal bench,
not in the world of power law firms. But Garland and the White House
both have serious blind spots when it comes to loading up with
revolving-door power lawyers, who make high incomes helping corporate
clients evade the public interest.

This is no more acceptable than letting the Wall Street revolving-door
crowd run financial regulatory agencies and the Treasury. It's a big
blemish on a mostly good record.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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