Conflicts & Social Risk — Laterals’ Social Media Now Getting Risk Looks, DOJ Lawyer Conflicts Concerns

“How Trump’s personal attorney wound up investigating the Epstein case at DOJ” —

• “Five months ago, Todd Blanche was asked at his Senate confirmation hearing whether being President Donald Trump’s lawyer in his hush money trial and other cases meant he would have a ‘continuing duty of loyalty and confidentiality’ to his former client even after becoming deputy attorney general.”
• “‘Yes,’ Blanche responded, citing his ‘attorney-client relationship with President Trump.’”
• “Now that loyalty — and the question of a potential conflict of interest — has become a key component of the questions swirling about Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking and died in prison in 2019. The second-ranking Justice Department official is at the center of a controversial effort to reexamine the Epstein case, the results of which could reopen high-stakes litigation that concluded years ago and play a role in defining aspects of Trump’s legacy.”
• “After weeks of furor about whether the Justice Department would release much of its file on Epstein — and amid speculation about whether the file had information about Trump and others — Blanche traveled to Florida to interview Epstein’s longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.”
• “Maxwell spent nine hours over two days last week answering every question posed by Blanche, according to Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus. But the details of the interview have not been released, and Democrats said they feared it was the kind of conflict they had been concerned about when Blanche was nominated.”
• “Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said last week in a floor speech that ‘Trump is sending his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, to try and execute a corrupt cover-up, potentially offering leniency to a woman who also abused the victims.’ Schumer said this and other actions by Justice officials represent a conflict, but he did not provide evidence of an alleged cover-up.”
• “The relationship between Trump and Blanche has been a financially significant one. Blanche’s law firm was paid $9.2 million by Save America, a pro-Trump political action committee, between April 2023 and December 2024, for work on cases that included the trial about payment of alleged hush money to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, according to federal election records. Trump was found guilty in the hush money case, which has been appealed and is being handled by other attorneys.”
• “The Justice Department did not respond directly to questions from The Washington Post about whether Blanche consulted a government ethics official regarding an interview with Maxwell. Instead, the department sent a written statement from spokesman Gates McGavick that said, in full: ‘Any suggestion that Todd Blanche has acted unethically while serving as Deputy Attorney General is baseless and defamatory. This gossip column relies on innuendo and the word of an agenda-driven political hack to push a false narrative. This is not a serious article.’”
• “Some of Blanche’s ex-colleagues are surprised by what they see as his transformation from the independent litigator they knew to one they say seems willing to prioritize his loyalty to Trump.”
• “Mimi Rocah, who previously co-led the White Plains division in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York with Blanche, said that it is ‘completely inappropriate and wrong’ for him to interview Maxwell — both because of his relationship to Trump and because it is a job that should be reserved for prosecutors on the case, not a Justice official at the highest level.”
• “If a top Washington official had injected himself into a case Blanche handled as a prosecutor, he would have gone ‘running to Main Justice,’ Rocah said, referring to the department’s headquarters in Washington that oversees U.S. attorneys offices and other units.”
• “‘That just shows how completely far gone he is as an actual prosecutor,’ Rocah said. ‘He’s really more akin to a political player at this point.’”

“Law Firms Are Eyeing Lateral Hires’ Social Media—But Vetting Isn’t Without Risks” —

• “Seven or eight years ago, legal investigative intelligence firm Decipher received ‘very few’ inquiries from Big Law firms about backgrounding the social media profiles of potential laterals, according to chief data officer Greg Hamman. Since then, law firms’ interest in learning what potential hires have posted online has gone up substantially, such that Decipher has now worked with roughly half of the Am Law 200, Hamman estimates.”
• “The issue of lawyers’ social media activities became relevant again this summer when Mayer Brown fired partner David Kreisler this month after hiring him in May and then discovering lewd social media posts on his personal X account. Kreisler’s most recent post occurred in February. It’s unclear when the account was deleted, but a Mayer Brown spokesperson said the firm learned about the posts in early July from a June 25 Medium post that included screenshots of Kreisler’s X account.”
• “Hamman estimates that roughly one-third of Big Law firms are conducting a thorough review of social media profiles for potential hires, with another third conducting minimal reviews and a final third doing nothing.”
• “For the firms that conduct searches, requests that Decipher review social media profiles for associates are a new development.”
• “‘A trend that we’ve been seeing in the last year, given the political climate, is that firms are also looking to vet associates more than they ever have before,’ said Julie Henson, Decipher’s chief growth officer. ‘Firms just kind of assumed that the law schools were doing a little bit of vetting on their students, but they really don’t. So, firms are wanting to make sure something wasn’t said on campus.’”
• “However, social media background checks also come with risks, employment lawyers said. A hiring manager’s discovery of a protected characteristic or stigmatized fact that could influence the hiring decision may open a firm up to litigation, said Jackson Lewis employment principal Susan Corcoran. ‘An employer is generally supposed to put the blinders on and not consider non-job-related information or other factors that may be prohibited by law,’ Corcoran said.”
• “The targets of a social media background check vary by the firm, Hamman said. ‘Some are sensitive to political material, some don’t care,’ he said. ‘We are essentially giving the firm information with which they can make a decision.’”
• “Some firms don’t police political speech but also don’t want to see anything vulgar or threatening on a candidate’s public socials, Hamman said, while other firms consider it bad judgment to wade into polarizing political issues online.”
• “Employers also open themselves up to the risk of taking factors into account that don’t directly pertain to whether a candidate is suitable for a role. ‘Some of these state laws also protect activity that may appear in candidates’ public or private social media postings, like lawful possession of firearms, certain political activities, use of marijuana, and participation of other recreational activities during non-work time,’ Drenosky added.”
• “A candidate who gets turned down for a role also could argue that a firm’s review of their social media uncovered a trait against which a hiring manager is biased. ‘The drawbacks of conducting a social media search include the potential disclosure of a protected characteristic that may make a hiring manager uncomfortable with hiring the person,’ Corcoran said.”
• “To minimize risk, firms should conduct the social media check through a third-party or human resources, keeping the hiring manager removed from the process, Drenosky said. The check also should occur at the end of the hiring process, when the candidate’s membership in a protected group is already known, and it should be systematized so it can be performed consistently. Drenosky also recommended that firms reach out to their employment counsel before taking any action based on a review of a candidate’s social media profiles.”