Washington Correspondent
If ever the Trump administration and its lawyers could become more weird it might have been in the last couple of weeks. Apart from the Cohen plea, there has also been the exiting of White House Counsel Don McGahn and his potential replacement by King & Spalding litigator Bobby Burchfield, who has been the Trump Organization’s top ethics counsel.
Ethics and the Trump Organization may seem like an unhappy marriage at times, but so too is the case of Mr Burchfield, whose wife pleaded no contest this week to charges of disorderly conduct stemming from an in-car sexual encounter with a then-23-year-old jail inmate in her Maserati outside a jailhouse in suburban Washington, D.C.
Teresa Jo Burchfield was arrested roughly a year ago after the Maserati encounter and the tryst was cited by Mr Burchfield’s divorce filing.
Bobby Burchfield joined King & Spalding in early 2015 and was hired as chief independent ethics counsel for the Trump Organization last year.
The National Law Journal reported that the inmate had been meeting the 53-year-old Teresa Burchfield (right) for a month, during which time she would bring him cigarettes and the duo would have sex in her car. Now, Teresa Burchfield is facing a $2,500 fine and has nine months to pay it, per an order imposed by a judge.
Bobby Burchfield has been suggested as a Don McGahn replacement or even as someone who might replace the still-to-be-fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He spent 23 years at Covington & Burling and nine years co-leading the DC office of McDermott Will & Emery, as well as previously serving as general counsel to President George H W Bush’s re-election campaign.
