WASHINGTON — As Republicans gear up for new jobs in the second Trump administration, people who worked for Donald Trump the first time around are dispensing advice about a must-buy item for those coming to Washington.
It’s not an article of clothing or a trendy apartment, and it is something most hope they will never use.
Incoming administration staffers are being warned to weigh the threat of a pricey legal defense and consider purchasing a form of legal insurance that would provide them a lawyer if needed, a protection that many now consider part of doing business after former Trump aides were hauled before congressional committees and grand juries over the past eight years, five former senior administration officials and longtime Washington advisers said.
In a cautionary move, Trump’s transition has briefed some incoming administration staff members on the need to price and buy professional liability insurance, according to two people familiar with the warnings. The transition did not respond to requests for comment.
It is a need that former aides said they realized they had during Trump’s first impeachment. “Everyone started getting it,” a former administration official said. This person went without insurance and emerged unscathed but said if they returned, they would not be so cavalier.
“You need legal representation if you’re facing people who have the arms of the government at their disposal,” said a former White House official who also was not covered by insurance during the last administration but has purchased it since. “It’s very intimidating when you don’t have people on your side to tell you what you can do and what circumstances you might be walking into.”
“It’s edging into absolute requirement territory,” said a second former Trump White House official. “It would be reckless if you have any assets to protect — the house, college funds, whatever.”
Better prepared
Washington insiders have long sounded a note of caution when advising incoming administration officials about the legal risks they could face as they go about their jobs.
“One thing I tell every client considering taking a political appointment in a new administration, whether Republican or Democrat, is to expect that they could get drawn into an investigation and to think hard about whether they are willing to take that risk and whether they’re prepared for it,” said Robert Kelner, the head of the congressional investigations practice at the law firm Covington & Burling. “It’s just become so routine that it’s almost to be assumed, and it can be very distracting and burdensome and occasionally expensive for political appointees.”
It’s a lesson many learned the hard way. During Trump’s first term, White House aides said they would not cooperate with Democrats’ probes, and current and former officials rebuffed demands to testify before Congress during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry, and the probe in the Jan. 6 attack.
Two former Trump advisers — Steve Bannon and Roger Stone — ultimately served jail time for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations.
“I often say that congressional investigations are like the wild, wild West because there are no rules,” Kelner said. “It’s all about who’s the quicker draw, and who’s tougher, and who’s more clever. So there’s a lot of strategy, a lot of maneuvering, a lot of posturing, but not a lot of law, not a lot of rules governing the process.”
Some in Washington see a business opportunity in helping to defray the cost of legal expenses for government workers. Anthony Vergnetti left his job as a lawyer more than a decade ago to launch an insurance firm protecting government workers from legal exposure. Vergnetti said in a “FEDTalk” podcast interview that aired in 2023 that the cost of a policy can range from $250 to $400 and often extends for a number of months after a person leaves their government job. Certain agencies help pay part of the cost, he said. Vergnetti declined to be interviewed by NBC News.
Brace for the worst
In May 2017, Trump was barely five months into office and already the hint of potential congressional investigations was prompting aides to brace for cover. In a memoir of his 500-day stretch in the Trump White House, former White House director of message strategy Cliff Sims wrote that a leaked story falsely reported that he and another colleague would be helming a “Russia War Room” — and immediately yoked them to a political live wire.
“We were livid,” Sims wrote in “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.” “First of all, it wasn’t true. But more concerning was that being connected to anything Russia-related opened up the possibility of legal bills that could easily be more than a year’s salary in the White House.”
The hope is that this time around, aides will enter with some cover as Trump begins rolling out a promised immigration crackdown and a sweep of executive actions.
A former senior Trump White House official said that Trump’s staff members — unlike the president himself, whose core presidential powers are protected — bear the brunt of any actions that could come under future legal fire.
“If Trump gives an illegal order and you do it out of loyalty to him, you are liable,” the former senior official said. “He’s protected, you’re not. You can find yourself with a serious legal problem, while he’s protected.”
Trump used a political account to help pay for lawyers for some of his allies who were summoned before the Jan. 6 committee and grand juries, but that assistance didn’t stretch to everyone. And even when it did, at least one recipient didn’t believe it helped.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson appeared before the Jan. 6 committee with a lawyer who had been paid by Trump’s allies. She later secured a lawyer of her own and returned to the committee to offer more information, saying she felt the first attorney was giving her bad advice. In her book, Hutchinson wrote about the anxiety she faced about being unable to pay for her own lawyer, including traveling to her estranged biological father’s house to beg him to help her retain a lawyer and an offer from an aunt and uncle to mortgage their house to foot the bill.
The investigations into Trump left other staff members staring down a gantlet of costly lawyer’s fees as they sought out representation that wouldn’t leave them saddled with a mountain of legal debt. Investigations into Trump continued after he left office, leading White House alumni to help set up a charity to help pay for the legal defense of certain co-defendants.
“These are things that people that have been around Washington know, to get liability insurance,” the first former White House official explained. “That wasn’t necessarily told to everybody last time, but in a difficult way, we eventually figured out.”
The advice this person is dispensing today? “Prepare for the worst. You never know.”
One former Republican official who worked for the party made the argument that if you have any level of exposure to potential subpoenas, insurance is nondiscretionary. “You have got to buy insurance. It’s not one of these ‘I’m going to roll the dice’ scenarios. You self-insure,” said the former official. Certain insurers will even allow you to roll it into your current home or auto coverage.
Said the former first White House official: “For most, that can do some damage to your bank account.”
Mike Howell, a lawyer who represented a high-profile client pro bono in front of the Jan. 6 committee, said the dynamic generates perverse incentives among Republican attorneys at a time when incoming political appointees are more at risk than ever.
“The right’s lawyers exist to make a lot money off these conflicts; they see it as a client base and a market,” Howell argued. “And so, when young people are subject to these lawfare exercises, there is nobody to protect them.”
Not a new phenomenon
The threat of political investigations is hardly new. There was the Benghazi report, where Congress flexed its powers, the probe into whether George W. Bush’s Justice Department ordered the dismissal of U.S. attorneys, and an impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan’s presidency saw the Iran-Contra affair.
“We’re kind of in low-intensity conflict, is what the Defense Department guys like to call it,” said the second former White House official. “This low-level warfare goes on all the time. The only question is, can they figure out some way to damage you personally, not just as an official of the government?”
Yet incoming political staffers on both sides of the aisle, and especially those new to government, have not always thought to buy insurance. The thinking is that if an administration official were to be called in for questioning over a work matter, they could safely rely on the government’s counsel.
But that promise has failed to halt concerns. One former Obama White House official recalled how friends at the State Department began searching for cover as congressional Republicans promised a drumbeat of investigations into the assault that killed Americans at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
And Kelner said he does not recall a situation where he represented someone in government and his firm’s fees were paid by an insurance policy — suggesting these were not likely geared toward the rates of Big Law.
The person may instead find themselves with an attorney selected by their provider and not one of the handful of white shoe partners with experience before the most challenging government investigations, meaning some insurance may not offer the kind of coverage that some come to expect. The corollary is the more charged the inquiry, the higher the potential reputational cost.
Kelner said Clinton’s presidency marked a turning point as partisan, politicized investigations ramped up with no sign of slowing. “It never really stopped after that,” he added.
