The 4 big Russia-Trump stories that flew under the radar this week
By Amber Phillips at the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/15/the-4-big-russia-trump-stories-that-flew-under-the-radar-this-week/?utm_term=.6359330eaabc
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1. Lobbyists can help Trump staffers pay legal fees for the Russia investigation
As special counsel Robert S. Mueller's team expands to question more and more people in the White House, those people generally need to lawyer up. That can get expensive real quick. So they can set up legal defense funds to offset the cost — think of it as an insider's GoFundMe.
Since the Clinton administration, lobbyists have been able to donate to those funds anonymously. The thinking was that if you don't know which lobbyist gave you the cash, you wouldn't owe them anything.
The Bush and Obama White Houses discouraged that practice. But as Politico's Darren Samuelsohn reported Wednesday, the new head of Trump's Office of Government Ethics revived the rule to make clear that, yes, legal defense funds can accept donations from lobbyists as long as they are anonymous and comply with other gift rules.
OGE spokeswoman Elizabeth Horton emphasized to The Fix that the office didn't change the policy and still encourages organizers of these funds to prohibit anonymous donations.
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