Photograph courtesy of peteking.house.gov.

If Congressman Peter King gets his way, Hollywood filmmakers will have a harder time making movies about events that relate to national security. He’s asked the Pentagon and the CIA to come up with a stricter method of dealing with the entertainment industry.

What prompted the New York Republican’s concern is a film in production by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow about the killing of Osama bin Laden. King says he heard the Obama administration was giving Bigelow access to sensitive information about the raid, leading him to demand an investigation by the Department of Defense and the CIA.

King says the preliminary investigation must have found something relevant, because the DOD inspector general decided to move forward with a formal investigation, which, according to King, is underway now. Neither Bigelow nor her screenwriting partner, Mark Boal, has commented publicly, but it’s well known that they were working on the bin Laden film even before the Al Qaeda leader was killed by a team of Navy SEALs in May 2011.

Minnesota representative and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann at the Ames, Iowa, Straw Poll. Photograph by Gage Skidmore

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann touts her experience as a federal tax lawyer with the IRS, a job she says gave her the insights she needs to simplify the US tax code. But Bachmann is curiously silent about another part of her legal career—perhaps because it didn’t amount to much.

In the mid-’90s, five years before she entered a career in politics, Bachmann hung out a shingle as a legal mediator, a specialist who helps parties settle conflicts out of court. The company, Michele Bachmann Mediation LLC, “was formed to offer a service to people seeking mediation tax services,” said Bachmann’s congressional spokesperson, Becky Rogness. But it’s unclear what clients—if any—Bachmann had.

Bachmann took all the steps one would expect from an aspiring small-business owner. She incorporated the company with the state of Minnesota, listing her then-home address in Stillwater. She took a series of state-sanctioned courses in order to have her name placed on a state roster of qualified mediators. Bachmann even advertised—in 1995, she adopted a stretch of highway in her company’s name, which was printed on a road sign.

But four other mediators in Stillwater said they never saw Bachmann in professional circles or heard of her taking clients. Most were surprised to learn she’d had a mediation business at all. There is no official account of any work Bachmann may have done—mediation proceedings are confidential and Minnesota doesn’t keep records of them, a state official said. Bachmann also didn’t disclose any income from the business on her financial disclosure forms after she was elected to the state senate in 2000.

Kurt Bardella, left, with Republican California Representative Darrell Issa. Photograph courtesy Kurt Bardella

Just six months after being tossed from Capitol Hill in disgrace, controversial GOP press operative Kurt Bardella has been rehired by the very congressional committee that fired him.

The news that the House Commmittee on Oversight and Government Reform rehired Bardella was first reported by FishbowlDC’s Betsy Rothstein early Wednesday morning.

Photograph by Scott Gries (PictureGroup)

In our July issue—on stands now—we told you about Washington lawyer Trevor Potter, who has been shepherding Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert through the process of forming a super PAC. Check out our piece below on how Potter, a longtime counsel to clients such as Sen. John McCain, became Colbert’s lawyer.

Potter has earned those legal fees. As of Thursday, he, along with the help of Matthew Sanderson, an associate at his law firm, achieved success when the Federal Election Commission approved Colbert’s Super PAC. For the second time, Colbert visited the FEC, bringing throngs of screaming fans and reporters to the typically quiet agency.

During remarks to the crowd, Colbert thanked his legal team: “We owe a debt to my lawyers Trevor Potter and Matt Sanderson of the heroic law firm Caplin & Drysdale. Two names that will go down with the great American duos—Lewis and Clark, Sacco and Vanzetti, Harold and Kumar.”

It’s a safe bet that two DC lawyers have never before been compared to Harold and Kumar. 

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What do Republican senator John McCain and Comedy Central’s faux pundit Stephen Colbert have in common? Their lawyer, Trevor Potter.

Fans of The Colbert Report have seen Potter—head of Caplin & Drysdale’s political-law practice and a lawyer in its Washington office—make four appearances on the show as he counsels Colbert on how to set up his super PAC, a new type of political-fundraising apparatus that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

Though the legal work is playing out before a TV audience and, in usual Colbert fashion, is meant to highlight the absurdities of campaign-finance rules, it’s not just entertainment. Colbert is a real client; Potter says he got the legal work the same way lawyers get much of their work—by referral. When Colbert decided to tackle federal-election-law issues, the show asked a New York attorney and former guest for recommendations. The attorney suggested Potter.

First, the conservative superlawyer became an unlikely gay-rights advocate when he agreed to represent couples challenging California’s same-sex marriage ban. Now the man who won George W. Bush the presidency is a Barack Obama appointee. 

The girls were trying to control nervous giggles—no small task with DC mayor Adrian Fenty greeting them onstage and 150 child-welfare advocates, a US senator, and BET in the audience. But when Stacie Scott Turner announced that Dell was giving laptops to the youngsters—they’re girls in DC foster care whom she’s taking to South Africa for a service, education, and World Cup-watching trip as part of her Extra-Ordinary Life charity—their composure vanished into a flood of hugs and exclamations. Oprah never had a more appreciative audience for a giveaway. And Turner proved that there’s at least one Real Housewife of DC who can create a spectacle and draw a crowd of influential Washingtonians without crashing a party.

“We consider you our family,” she told the crowd, praising DC Child and Family Services Agency staffers and family-court judges, many of whom were in the audience. Turner herself was born into the city’s foster-care system and adopted as a child. “Family isn’t just the people who had you,” she said. “It’s the people who care about you.”