New WH Counsel Must Resign From Capital Planning Role To Avoid Conflicts of Interest
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump’s newly appointed White House Counsel William Scharf currently also serves as Chair of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the two jobs. A Public Citizen report this spring titled Trump’s Three Ballroom Stooges identified Scharf and two other Trump appointees to NCPC as unqualified to serve on the commission at all because they didn’t have the legally required “experience in city or regional planning.”
In a statement, Public Citizen democracy advocate Jon Golinger said:
“William Scharf should immediately resign his seat as Chair of the National Capital Planning Commission. The White House Counsel has an incredibly sensitive job and an important responsibility to provide the president with objective legal advice that may not be what the president wants to hear. In his NCPC Chair role, Mr. Scharf has been a bulldozer who has rammed through the president’s blatantly unlawful vanity projects such as the White House Ballroom project, which the Court of Appeals just held is illegal. Continuing to serve in both roles would create a two-headed beast with one master.”
In April, Scharf and other Trump NCPC appointees overrode opposition from DC officials, dismissed 35,000 public comments, with 97% of them mostly against the ballroom project, and voted to approve the project without conducting a substantive independent review. At the time, Scharf dismissed the criticism stating: “I believe that, in time, this ballroom will be considered every bit as much of a national treasure as the other key components of the White House.”