Washington: An Indian-American legal adviser Uttam Dhillon faces firing after it transpires that the lawyer misled President Donald Trump on his powers to fire FBI Director James Comey, partly in an effort to protect the Presidency. Dhillon, who is a special assistant to the President advising him on compliance and ethics issues, was reportedly so unnerved by the possibility that Trump would fire Comey and invite a Justice Department investigation that would imperil the Presidency, that he let Trump believe he could not sack the FBI Director.
"Long-standing analysis of presidential power says that the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not need grounds to fire the FBI director. Dhillon, a veteran Justice Department lawyer before joining the Trump White House, assigned a junior lawyer to examine this issue. That lawyer determined that the FBI director was no different than any other employee in the executive branch, and that there was nothing prohibiting the president from firing him. But Dhillon, who had earlier told Trump that he needed cause to fire Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research."
Dhillon's ruse, albeit in the interest of protecting the Trump presidency, made him some sort of hero among liberals even as many other predicted his imminent firing. Trump eventually fired Comey, but that is not expected to save Dhillon his job, particularly since it transpired that Dhillion once served under Comey. Legal experts called the episode (of Dhillon misleading the President by withholding legal advice) "extraordinary" if it was made with intent to save him, and that he was "duty bound" to tell him the truth. "This shows that the president's lawyers don't trust giving him all the facts because they fear he will make a decision that is not best suited for him," one legal expert said
Dhillon, a graduate Boalt law school at University of California, is highly regarded in Washington's political and legal circles, having worked as Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice, Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, Policy Director for the US House of Representatives Policy Committee, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles. He also served as chief of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement.
