The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>.<\/p>\nA spokeswoman said the committee was not filming voluntary transcribed interviews for witnesses who agreed to come in quickly. The committee released filmed interviews with other witnesses whom it had subpoenaed, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Les Wexner.<\/p>\n
Government watchdog experts said it was not unusual for a former top committee official to be hired by a person under scrutiny by the panel, and that it would not necessarily violate ethics rules \u2014 as long as Mr. Greenberg was not dealing directly with the committee he had previously worked for.<\/p>\n
Former members of Congress and top aides have a one-year \u201ccooling off\u201d period after leaving those jobs, during which they are barred from lobbying or communicating directly with lawmakers or committees. Mr. Greenberg would not be allowed, for instance, to negotiate with the oversight panel about the terms of Mr. Gates\u2019s appearance. But there is no rule prohibiting him from privately sharing with a client what he knows about how the committee operates, or his knowledge of how it is approaching a particular investigation.<\/p>\n
Still, the ethics experts said it could give the appearance of an unseemly revolving door.<\/p>\n
Donald Sherman, the chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said Mr. Greenberg\u2019s role could potentially raise questions, including whether he had been a part of any discussions when he was still working for the committee about potentially inviting Mr. Gates to testify.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly someone with Bill Gates\u2019s money can afford to hire the people who he believes are going to set him up for navigating the congressional oversight process \u2014 and it is a unique process,\u201d Mr. Sherman said.<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cOptics matters a great deal in congressional investigation. Certainly it raises questions that the public and the minority might ask about whether the investigation is independent or arms length, separate and apart from whether he is technically complying with the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, also said the arrangement raised concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cHearings are supposed to be serious attempts at fact-finding,\u201d he said. \u201cYou would want a process that is free of any sort of conflicts of interest or influence peddling. There\u2019s a lot of using the position you used to have, the leverage and the juice you bring, using that to benefit whoever you\u2019re working for and tilt the playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until December, Mr. Greenberg served as general counsel and chief investigations counsel for the House Oversight Committee. In that role, he led the investigation into former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.\u2019s mental acuity, taking the lead in the transcribed depositions of top Biden administration officials like Annie Tomasini and Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary.<\/p>\n
Mr. Greenberg was working on the committee last year when it deposed William P. Barr, the former attorney general, in the Epstein investigation.<\/p>\n
After leaving Capitol Hill, Mr. Greenberg joined the law firm DLA Piper. The firm now highlights his expertise in congressional oversight with glowing accolades from Mr. Comer on its website.<\/p>\n
\u201cJake Greenberg proved to be one of Washington\u2019s most capable oversight investigators,\u201d Mr. Comer says in a testimonial prominently displayed.<\/p>\n
DLA Piper did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the committee, Jessica Collins, said the committee had not worked with Mr. Greenberg in any capacity since he left and that the panel has worked only with Mr. Moran regarding Mr. Gates\u2019s appearance.<\/p>\n
Mr. Greenberg is not expected to be with Mr. Gates at the deposition on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the proceedings who insisted on anonymity to discuss them in advance.<\/p>\n
In his previous role, Mr. Greenberg was often one of the most direct and aggressive questioners of witnesses whom the Republican majority called in to testify in their investigations \u2014 experience that could help him prepare Mr. Gates for the kinds of questions he might face on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He asked Kevin O\u2019Connor, who served as Mr. Biden\u2019s physician under the president, whether he was ever \u201ctold to lie about the president\u2019s health\u201d or believed he was \u201cunfit to execute his duties as president.\u201d<\/p>\n
When questioning Ms. Jean-Pierre, he asked whether she thought it was \u201creckless for President Biden to seek re-election,\u201d whether she ever spoke with him about \u201cwhy he wasn\u2019t as good of a speaker as he used to be,\u201d and whether she felt she \u201chad to be blindly obedient to President Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Gates is not the only witness to turn to a former staff member for the committee ahead of his appearance before Congress. When the Clintons were fighting the subpoenas in the Epstein investigation, they brought on Ashley Callen, a co-chair of the congressional investigations practice at Jenner & Block, to deal with G.O.P. members of the Oversight Committee. Ms. Callen had previously worked as general counsel for Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans. She also had worked as a deputy staff director on the House Oversight Committee under Mr. Comer.<\/p>\n
But Ms. Callen had never worked on the Epstein issue, and her departure from Capitol Hill exceeded any cooling off period, so she was able to interact directly with the committee in her official role as a lawyer for the Clintons. She also appeared at the April deposition of Ted Waitt, the co-founder of Gateway computers who for years dated Ghislaine Maxwell and was called to testify before the committee, acting as his counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former chief investigations counsel for the House Oversight Committee has been helping to prepare Bill Gates, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5648,45567,101534,6667,84139,22452,45568,21922,9,11,10,1876],"class_list":["post-261399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bill","tag-comer","tag-dla-piper","tag-epstein","tag-gates","tag-house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform","tag-james-r","tag-jeffrey-e-1953","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}