by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall Street On Parade:

Robert Mueller, the former FBI Director who has been appointed as Special Counsel to oversee the investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 Presidential election may find out quickly that there is an obstacle course of roadblocks preventing him from doing his job. (Mueller served from September 4, 2001 to September 4, 2013 as FBI Director, under both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama. He is widely respected by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans in Washington.)

On January 28, President Trump quietly and with little fanfare signed an Executive Order that bars an Executive Branch employee from participating “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.”

This concept is further defined in the Executive Order to mean “matters in which the appointee’s former employer or a former client is a party or represents a party.”

Since 2014, Mueller has worked for the sprawling international law firm, WilmerHale. With approximately 1,000 lawyers working in twelve major cities around the globe, its conflicts are infinite as well as specific.

According to Reuters’ wire service on Friday, the Trump administration is already looking at this ethics rule “to undermine the special counsel investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russia, two people familiar with White House thinking said on Friday.”

Finding conflicted client relationships at WilmerHale won’t be hard. Politico reported in March that a partner at WilmerHale, Jamie Gorelick, represents Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. According to the report, Gorelick also represented former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson in the confirmation process to become Secretary of State under Trump. Adding to the intrigue, Gorelick had been active in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for President.

Kushner has been heavily rumored to be of interest to the investigation over his meeting last December with an executive of a Russian state-owned bank. In March, American Lawyer reported that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign adviser who is a subject of the investigation, was being represented by a top WilmerHale partner, Reginald Brown, chairman of the firm’s financial institutions group who also heads up the firm’s congressional investigations practice.

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