he joined me with kathleen clark. a government ethics lawyer.han, what do you make of this. >> i think this is a situation where you had somebody given counseling and told to -- to have his pay docked when he was accused of sexual harassment and later reassigned this young woman and she was assigned to another part of the campaign according to the 2008 staffer i talked to and came back into 2016 with a new job supporting hillary clinton, not on the campaign this time, and was apparently dismissed according to the time's record for allegations of sexual harassment again. this is a situation where i think secretary clinton's decision-making on an individual case doesn't line up with her stated beliefs and what i assume she believes about empowering women. >> but this is thisn't -- this isn't the first concerning report, jonathan, last year lena dunham told "the new york times" she told the deputy communications director that harvey weinstein is a rapist, and it is going to come out and you shouldn't be so closely association apted wi association a

those are the questions we are tackling today with our esteemed panel of guests, including kathleen clark, professor of law at the washington university school of law. walter shaub, the ethics director at the campaign legal center. welcome to the brennan center of justice at nyu the state -- nuc nyc d.c. inant to start are discussed -- our discussion -- we will have time at the end for questions. hold them type and we will come to them later. i want to talk about the background of federal ethics law and how they apply to the president. >> that is a good question. the exemption dates back to the late 80's, although it was implied before. is presidentesting , notwithstanding there were not prohibited from having health -- took voluntary steps to avoid them. usually, it took the form and my co-panelists will correct me if i am wrong. they usually took the form of limiting the types of assets they held to diversify mutual fund bank accounts or placing other types of assets in a blind trust. that is a key element of the federal ethics regime not apply to the president. other rules include prop

those other questions we are tackling today with our esteemed panel of guests including kathleen clark from washington university. walter shaub, ethics director of the campaign legal center and former director of the office of government ethics and daniel weiner, senior of the brennan center for justice at nyu school of law. welcome to the brennan center of justice at nyu dc. okay. so, my name is kimberly atkins, i'm a political columnist and reporter for the boston herald. i want to start our discussion -- and note in the beginning we will have time at the end for questions so hold them tight and we will come to that a little later but i want to start out talking about the background of federal ethics laws and how do they apply to the president. >> that is a good question. some federal ethics laws apply to the president, one of the most important, which is the federal prohibition on conflict of interest does not and that exemption dates back to the late 80s although it was implied before. what is interesting of course, most folks know this is historically, presidents notwithstanding t

questions that we are going to be tackling today with our esteemed panel of guests, including kathleen clark, professor of law at the washington university school of law, walter shaub, the ethics director at the campaign legal center and former director of the office of government ethics, and daniel weiner, the senior counsel of the democracy program at the brennan center for justice and the nyu school of law. welcome to the brennan center of justice here at nyu-d.c. ok, and, again, my name is kimberly atkins, and i am a political columnist and reporter for "the boston herald." i also wanted to note in the beginning that we will have time at the end for questions, so keep them and hold them tight, and we will get to them later, but i wanted to start out talking about the background of federal ethics laws and how they apply to the president. >> well, that is a good question. the federal ethics laws affect the president, but one of the most important is the federal prohibition does not, and that exemption dates back to the late 1980's, although it was applied before. what is interesting, of co

as the legal scholar kathleen clark has pointed out, the order did not cite the special counsel statute cited some other laws and appeared to give mueller very broad authority to investigate whatever he deems necessary. and rosenstein testified that mueller was well within his mandate. the other point he's making, he was investigated in 2014 for his work, consulting in ukraine and for his offshore banking. he was interviewed by the fbi and no charges resulted. and he's saying it's unfair that mueller came in and undied me on this. but we know that mueller's team learned a lot of new information from the searches of paul manafort's apartment and subpoenas and other forms of information. so most legal experts think this is not going anywhere. >> does manafort's lawsuit have any merit? or is this some kind of legal tactic on throw up road blocks in the mueller investigation at large? >> yeah. i don't think it has any merit to it. it seems frivolous to me. if you think about what robert mueller is doing, he is doing what any u.s. attorney anywhere where there's venue could do. he was appoin