Indian American legal whiz is in que of many aides who have been sacked by Donald Trump

Washington : Uttam Dhillon, who is a special assistant to the President advising him on compliance and ethics issues, let Trump believe he could not sack the FBI director, with which he would join list of sacked white House aides by Trump. An Indian American lawyer Uttam Dhillion who is special assistant to the president advising him on compliance and ethics issues, was reportedly so unnerved by the possibility that Trump would fire Comey (FBI Director)  and invite a Justice Department investigation that  would imperil the Presidency that he let President Trump believe he could not sack the FBI Director. It was reported in New York Times “Longstanding analysis of presidential power says that the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not need grounds to fire the FBI director. Dillon, a veteran Justice Department lawyer before joining the Trump White House, assigned a junior lawyer to examine this issue. That lawyer determined that the FBI director was no different than any other employee in the executive branch, and that there was nothing prohibiting the president from firing him,”adding, “But Dhillon, who had earlier told Trump that he needed cause to fire Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research.”

On  of message on social media also read Dhillon’s ruse, albeit in the interest of protecting the Trump presidency, made him some sort of hero among liberals even as many other predicted his imminent firing. “Uttam Dhillon, if you still work at the White House, there’s probably a FedEx envelope on the way,” “I wouldn’t want to be in Uttam Dhillon’s place for all the whiskey in Ireland,” read another.

Trump eventually fired Comey, but that is not expected to save Dhillon his job, particularly since it transpired that Dhillion once served under Comey.

Legal experts called the episode (of Dhillon misleading the President by withholding legal advice) “extraordinary” if it was made with intent to save him, and that he was “duty bound” to tell him the truth.

“This shows that the president’s lawyers don’t trust giving him all the facts because they fear he will make a decision that is not best suited for him,” one legal expert told NYT.

Dhillon, a graduate Boalt law school at University of California, Berkeley, is highly well-regarded in Washington’s political and legal circles, having worked as Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice, Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, Policy Director for the US House of Representatives Policy Committee, and as an Assistant US Attorney in Los Angeles.

He also served as chief of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement.

Meanwhile, another Trump aide, also a Sikh, could get fired for entirely different reasons. Michael Wolff’s controversial new book says Trump appointee Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to UN, considers herself in line for the White House Oval Office, and is seen in Trump’s circle as ambitious as and much smarter than Trump.

A top Trump aide worried that Haley is so much smarter than Trump, while others jumped in to protect Trumpism from the influence of the moderate-leaning Republican, Wolff writes in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a book that the US President trashed while his lawyers tried to suppress on Friday.

According to excerpts in the Times, Wolff says Haley decided by October 2017 that “Trump’s tenure would last, at best, a single term.” and thought she could be his heir apparent – something the president’s inner circle saw as a danger given her relatively moderate views.

Being seen as a challenge to Trump is sufficient for anyone to get fired by the mercurial President.

During her first year in the White House, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who was born Nimrata Randhawa to Sikh parents, befriended Ivanka Trump to be brought into the family circle., says Wolff She was also groomed by the president in a “notable amount of private time” on Air Force One, he claims.

Trump appointed Haley as his UN envoy after initially considering her for Secretary of State, a prospect that the President’s “chief strategist” Steve Bannon feared so much that he later pushed CIA Director Mike Pompeo for secretary of state if Rex Tillerson were to resign.

“This was all part of the next stage of Trumpism — to protect it from Trump,” Wolff writes.

Meanwhile, Trump himself has rubbished the book, saying he authorized “zero access to White House for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book,” while maintaining he actually turned Wolff down many times.

“Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” Trump tweeted in an apparent reference to Steve Bannon cooperation with Wolff in the book.

“Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!” Trump tweeted a few hours later.