As Rachel reported, the State Dept. legal advisor who gave documents to the IG has an extremely
thin resume. Even for this Administration.
Trump probably put this guy in place to be a yes-man. (By contrast, the person String brought the documents to, the Inspector General who will be meeting with 8 Congressional Committees tomorrow, is a well-qualified Obama appointee.)
Hopefully Trump was wrong.
https://www.justsecurity.org/64542/marik-string-appointed-acting-state-departments-top-lawyer/
String graduated with a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 2003. According to his bio (see also here, here, and here), “from 2006 to 2013, he served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee professional staff of Chairman/Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN), where he held responsibilities as Deputy Chief Counsel and Senior Professional Staff Member for European and Eurasian Affairs.” However, String was on the masthead of the student-edited law journal at Georgetown as of August 2012.
As of May 24, String heads the Office of Legal Adviser and is now the voice of international law for the United States. The Legal Adviser is also responsible for conducting all of the functions of a General Counsel’s office (including managing about two dozen sub-offices) for one of the largest federal departments, with operations and employees across the globe.
“The obvious question is whether someone of his experience has the stature to manage the world’s most high-powered international law firm and the backbone to give fearless and independent legal advice to our current President, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State,” another former senior State Department official told Just Security.
Or, as another former senior State Department official put it, “The idea that someone so few years out of law school, and not even practicing law for all that time, is in the office occupied by people like Abe Chayes—it’s absurd on its face. The only reason you’d do it is to undermine the institution.”
