Legal News

Which Lawyers Are Meeting With Elizabeth Warren?

By David Ingram

Newly released schedules for White House adviser Elizabeth Warren offer a peek at her meetings with administration lawyers around Washington soon after her appointment.

The schedules from last fall are available on Wikicountability.org, a new Republican-allied Web site that serves as a dumping ground for information acquired under the Freedom of Information Act. Americans for Limited Government, a conservative group based in Fairfax, Va., requested Warren?s schedules in December, according to a copy of the request that?s also posted on the site.

Warren is responsible for setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She was appointed Sept. 17 with the dual titles of assistant to the president and special adviser to the treasury secretary. Not surprisingly, many of her scheduled meetings were with White House and Treasury Department lawyers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posts Warren's more recent schedule on its Web site, but the calendar there does not include her meetings before early December.

The newly posted schedules list at least six meetings or calls with White House Counsel Robert Bauer, on Oct. 13 and 15, Nov. 2, 10 and 15 and Dec. 2. Deputy White House Counsel Donald Verrilli, now the Obama nominee for U.S. solicitor general, was set to be at the Dec. 2 meeting. On Nov. 2, Warren had a scheduled call with Preeta Bansal, general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

On Oct. 1, Warren had a scheduled meeting with George Madison, general counsel at Treasury and a former general counsel of TIAA-CREF. They were scheduled to talk by phone Dec. 2. Her first meeting on Sept. 20, after having her photo taken for a Treasury identification badge, was scheduled with Neal Wolin, deputy treasury secretary and former GC of the department.

She was scheduled to meet with senior Justice Department officials on Nov. 10. On the list of expected attendees was Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli; Perrelli?s senior counsel, Brian Hauck; and Clifford White III, head of the U.S. Trustee Program, which administers bankruptcy cases.

Some nongovernment lawyers pop up on the schedules, too. On Oct. 19, Warren had a scheduled call with officials from Discover Financial Services, ?possibly? including general counsel Kelly McNamara Corley. On Nov. 18, she had a scheduled call with Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres.

Updated at 1:56 p.m.

Full post as published by The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times on March 24, 2011 (boomark / email).