Only in Washington would powerful people pay lawyers up to $1,000 an hour to comb through every aspect of their lives in search of potential career killers.

More than a dozen people who expect — or simply hope — to be tapped by Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump have already reached out to top D.C. lawyers for help in sifting through their finances and business dealings in anticipation of being nominated to a top post in the next administration, POLITICO has learned.


"More and more, people who are effective nominees are coming to see the wisdom of retaining people to help them," said one D.C. lawyer. "I talk to a lot of people who are interested in serving, and I tell them all they should get private counsel."

This need for private professional help — before an election is even over and the confirmation process has begun — has spawned a small yet influential cottage industry within big D.C. law firms of professional vetters, who can charge anywhere from hundreds of dollars to as much as $1,000 per hour to sort through a potential nominee’s convoluted finances, tax returns or even old arrest records. Total costs for this advance scrubbing, or “pre-vetting,” depend on the complexity of a potential nominee’s past.

“Fifty- or one hundred thousand dollars, I’ve certainly seen bills like that for a pre-vet,” said James Joseph, a tax law specialist at Arnold & Porter who has helped Democratic campaigns and administrations vet candidates for decades. “Sometimes they can be more expensive than that.”

“I always like to encourage them to think of it early,” said Joseph, who also helps individuals prepare for the process. By "early," he added, he doesn't mean six weeks, or even six months before a potential nomination, but ideally, a few years ahead "to clean things up and make sure that we know what’s missing — or we know what we would want to find if we were on the other side.”

Nomination killers can include working for major companies or sitting on boards that ran afoul of federal agencies or regulations; multiple bankruptcies or signs of financial trouble; or anyone unwilling to lay their personal lives on the table for Congress to examine.

“Those kinds of things would be deal-killers,” says Richard Painter, a former White House associate counsel under George W. Bush. “A candidate has to be willing to testify about personal affairs.” And some Senate committees, such as Foreign Relations and Finance, historically have been much tougher on nominees than others.

While the election is still two weeks away and the winner probably won't formally reveal his or her Cabinet picks for weeks, the early behind-the-scenes prep work is a reflection of the high hurdles facing a nominee. Anything from back taxes to shady business dealings to perceived conflicts of interest to a failure to pay taxes for household help can sink a nomination. And thanks to a hyperpartisan Congress, the next president's critics are certain to pounce on even the smallest impropriety.

"If you had a housekeeper for three weeks in 1992, and you didn’t know if they had a green card or not, that could be an issue," said one person who has helped prep Democratic nominees.

President Bill Clinton’s first pick for attorney general in 1993, Zoe Baird, was sunk for that very reason, withdrawing her nomination after it came to light that she and her husband paid their nanny, an undocumented immigrant, under the table.

Potential appointees are basically ordering up opposition research on themselves to catch problems like tax calculation errors or financial disclosure omissions early, when they can be fixed quietly.

Zoë Baird was nominated by President Bill Clinton to become the first female Attorney General of the United States before she withdrew her nomination. | AP Photo

It’s harder to deal with more significant personal issues, but if an aspiring public servant wants to proceed, the advice is usually to find a way to air the dirty laundry yourself, on your own terms — so it’s old news by the time the nomination and confirmation hearings come around.

Potential nominees have to complete a national security background check questionnaire that runs more than 100 pages, a detailed financial disclosure form for the Office of Government Ethics, dozens of questions from the Senate committee overseeing the nomination (some committees require nominees to submit federal and state income tax returns for the past three years), a waiver allowing the IRS to send tax information to the transition team, and a detailed questionnaire from the transition team itself. The Obama 2008 transition team’s questionnaire, for instance, asked potential appointees about everything from past marijuana use in college to embarrassing Facebook pics.

"You’re reconstructing your entire life," one lawyer said.

"It's massive — the amount of paperwork you have to fill out, the amount of work that goes into preparing," another D.C. lawyer who represents potential nominees told POLITICO. "By the time you’re hearing their names in the press, they’ve likely been working on it for weeks, if not months.”

Only a handful of D.C. firms specialize in helping nominees navigate the process. They include Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Steptoe & Johnson; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Wiley Rein; Jones Day; Arnold & Porter; and Covington & Burling.

As potential nominees huddle with private lawyers to prepare for the confirmation gantlet, the campaigns are simultaneously working with their own lawyers to vet the nominees.

People who worked on Barack Obama's 2008 transition said conversations about Cabinet nominations were kept quiet before the election. But lawyers working with the transition nonetheless did initial vetting, including researching potential nominees’ public statements, before Election Day. All told, roughly 30 volunteer lawyers, in addition to top transition team staff, helped to vet potential nominees for the Obama-Biden transition, according to an organization chart from the Obama-Biden transition.

Democrats suspect that the Clinton transition — which is being overseen by John Podesta, who led Obama's transition effort — is taking the same approach.

The law firm Perkins Coie is expected to play a key role in helping the Clinton team vet nominees. Marc Elias, chairman of the firm's political law practice, is the campaign's general counsel. Several other outside lawyers are expected to work with the transition team to assist with vetting, many on a volunteer basis.

For young law associates and partners, many of whom take leaves of absence to help the transition teams with vetting, it's a chance to build up political law practices — not to mention to position themselves for jobs in the White House Counsel's Office.

Trump's transition team has for weeks been working with top campaign officials in New York to develop short lists of nominees, people familiar with the effort said. Trump's campaign is expected to rely on Don McGahn, a lawyer at Jones Day who is also a lawyer for the campaign, for vetting help. Also playing a role is Arthur Culvahouse, a lawyer at the firm O’Melveny, who helped vet Trump's vice presidential candidates.

But outside of the campaigns’ formal transition operations, other firms are considering helping prospective nominees. Based on his experience vetting Obama’s second-term Cabinet appointments, Doug Graham, managing director of Investigative Group International, said he regards helping people make sure their documents are complete as a public service meant to get them confirmed quicker so the new government can get up and running.

Graham said it took almost 20 lawyers just to get through Obama’s second-term appointments, and he estimated it will take two or three times that for a new president. That’s partly because there’s so much more data to sort through — and not just social media postings.

“If I was putting together a methodology today to look at Democrats coming into the new administration, I’m not just looking to see if they’re a lobbyist or have any civil or criminal court cases,” said Graham. “I’m going to have to add to that searches of stolen content, like WikiLeaks.”

Potential appointees who may have had dealings with Democratic National Committee operatives, or Podesta for that matter, can expect to have their names searched for red flags in the hacked email collections. Tax returns will be checked against the Panama Papers.

Once nominees are announced, the transition teams usually assigns them "sherpas," who help them build relationships with lawmakers on relevant Senate committees.

"It helps for candidates to understand how the committee operates. Every committee has a different personality. Some committees are more partisan; some are less partisan," said Linda Gustitus, a former Senate aide who was a sherpa for former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Each committee also has its own questionnaire, and some are tougher than others. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is known to be especially interested in a candidate’s possible drug use, while the Senate Finance Committee — with its jurisdiction over trade, taxes and health care — will be particularly adroit at digging into tax returns and nominees who may lead agencies like Treasury or Health and Human Services.

Nominees are also advised to take stock of who their friends are. A Department of Justice candidate who has the support of the Fraternal Order of Police, for example, is less likely to be held up for a minor issue than someone less connected.

But these days, what a nominee may need most is something money can't buy: a thick skin.