Former Solicitor General Ted Olson will not join President Donald Trump’s legal team, a partner of Olson’s legal firm said Tuesday.
Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the team was interested in adding Olson, but that his firm, Gibson Dunn, decided that there are too many conflicts with existing clients tied to the Russia investigation and did not support the move.
Ted Boutrous, a partner at the firm, tweeted that Olson would not be joining.
Gibson Dunn represents Fusion GPS — the firm that hired a former British intelligence officer to compile an infamous dossier of alleged ties between Russians and Trump and his campaign associates — and Facebook, which is currently mired in a controversy over its relationship with Cambridge Analytica, which a whistleblower claimed misused the personal data of about 50 million users of the social media platform.
Olson was also approached about joining the legal team last year and declined, according to sources familiar with the initial search.
Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, told CNN the legal team would “not comment about conversations with lawyers with whom we have or have not had conversations.”