Richard Painter

Richard William Painter (born October 3, 1961) is an American lawyer, professor, and political candidate.

Painter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1961.

He was raised outside Philadelphia, in Kansas City, Kansas, and in Champaign, Illinois.

He graduated from St. George's School, Rhode Island.

Painter received his B.A. in history summa cum laude from Harvard University and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation.

At Harvard, Painter became politically active, speaking out against President Reagan's decision to send aid to the right-wing government in El Salvador and founding the Harvard Radcliffe Democratic Club newspaper Perspective.

In criticizing Trump and his administration, Painter said, "We are well past the point where we were in 1973 (Watergate) with respect to clear evidence of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and other illegal activities."

Painter describes himself as a centrist, and has criticized the Republican Party's move to the right since 1980.

In 1982 he made his first appearance on national television during an episode of Firing Line with Reagan in which he called out Reagan's "reckless deficit spending and cuts to social programs".

During the 1984 presidential election Painter was the chair of Harvard Students for Walter Mondale.

Painter served as law clerk to Judge John T. Noonan Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

He then worked at the law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and Finn Dixon & Herling in Stamford, Connecticut.

Painter was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law from 2002 to 2005 and the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration from 2005 to 2007.

Upon leaving the White House, he returned to teaching, at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Painter has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2004.

From 2005 to 2007 Painter was the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

William K. Kelley, who was deputy counsel to Bush from 2005 to 2007, disagreed that Bush might have nominated Garland under such circumstances.

He is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota, and since 2016 has served as vice-chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government watchdog group.

A longtime Republican and self-described centrist, Painter announced that he would be a candidate for the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party endorsement in the 2022 Minnesota 1st congressional district special election to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Rep. Jim Hagedorn.

Painter finished in a distant third in the primary, losing the nomination to businessman Jeffrey Ettinger, who ultimately lost the special election.

In March 2016 he wrote in The New York Times that if George W. Bush had had the opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice during his last two years in office, with a Democratic-majority Senate, Bush would have chosen Merrick Garland, who was ultimately nominated by Barack Obama on March 16, 2016, as a consensus nominee.

In December 2016, Painter replaced David Brock as vice-chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Throughout 2017 he was involved in the CREW lawsuit against Trump, CREW v. Trump.

As of May 2017 he is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

In May 2017 Painter compared the Trump administration with Nixon's scandals, saying, "Nixon may have been a crook, but at least he was our crook. He wasn’t a Russian agent!"

In January 2017 CREW sued President Donald Trump for failing to sell off certain assets and place others in a blind trust.

Painter said, "If Obama had tried that, we would have impeached him in two weeks."

CREW alleged that certain foreign payments that Trump received violated the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.

The case was dismissed by the district court, which found that the plaintiffs lacked standing; CREW's appeal is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Painter was a longtime Republican, saying in 2017: "I've been a Republican for 30 years. There's no way that I would want to see the Republican Party stand up for covering up for Russian espionage and whoever in the United States has been helping the Russians. It's going to be a disaster for the Republicans. It's going to be a disaster for our country."

Painter previously ran for the 2018 Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party nomination for U.S. Senate, losing to recently appointed Senator Tina Smith in a primary.

Painter has been affiliated with the Campaign Legal Center, a group that is a frequent critic of the Trump administration.

In 2018 he said, “We know there was collusion.” In early 2019 Painter told German newspaper Deutsche Welle that the indictment of Roger Stone was "evidence of collusion between high-ranking officials in the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks to obtain documents stolen by the Russians in the 2016 election."

In March 2018 Painter announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, saying he was unsure whether he would seek office as a Republican, Democrat, or independent.

In April 2018 he announced that he would run as a Democratic (Minnesota DFL) candidate in the primary against the incumbent Senator Tina Smith.

Painter finished a distant second, with 14% of the vote to Smith's 76%.

In February 2022, Painter announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in Minnesota's 1st congressional district.

The seat became vacant after the death of Jim Hagedorn.

In May 2022, Painter lost the DFL primary, placing third behind Sarah Brakebill-Hacke and Jeff Ettinger.

In March 2020, his book coauthored with Peter Golenbock, American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender, appeared.