Trump Labor Board Member Forgot About Conflict of Interest, Watchdog Says
National Labor Relations Board member William Emanuel violated a White House ethics pledge by participating in a closely watched case involving his former law firm, the NLRB’s inspector general concluded in a report obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Bloomberg reporters Chris Opfer and Hassan A. Kanu write that Emanuel told Inspector General David Berry that he didn’t realize former firm Littler Mendelson represented a business in the seminal Browning-Ferris Industries case, although he previously flagged the litigation for lawmakers as one that he might need to sit out, according to Berry’s report. Emanuel then joined the rest of the five-member board in directing its top attorney to ask an appeals court to drop the case.
They report that Berry said the inconsistency in Emanuel’s statements to Congress and the IG “is not sufficient to show that” Emanuel “intentionally lied.”
