Michael Dreeben, left, and AKMD’s Mike W. Dreeben, right.
Conservatives questioning the impartiality of Russia special counsel Robert Mueller got new ammunition this week, when CNN and The Hill reported that one of his newly enlisted deputies, Michael Dreeben, had donated hundreds of dollars to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Records of one 2006 donation listed his employment status as deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department, Dreeben’s job at the time.
But there’s a catch: It was the wrong Dreeben.
Michael W. Dreeben, a designer of high-end furniture in Chicago, confirmed this week that he—not Michael R. Dreeben, the top Washington, D.C., government lawyer—was behind the Democratic donations.
As for the incorrect employer listing in 2006, “That’s a mashup. I did give money to Hillary in ’06,” he said. The Justice Department also said the former deputy solicitor general hadn’t made the donations.
Chicago’s Dreeben said he first learned that he shared a name with a top Washington lawyer about five years ago, when the then-deputy solicitor general emailed him out of the blue to see if they might be related. (As far as they know, they are not.)
It was a tenuous acquaintance, made briefly across the Internet years ago. But for a moment this week, their common name spiraled into political conspiracy. A donation like that from a government official could have implied Dreeben has a conflict of interest in his work on the Trump campaign investigation.
Michael William Dreeben, a 45-year-old Chicagoan who goes by “Mike,” said that in 2006 a friend of his from college had raised funds for Clinton, and he donated $1,000. The next year, as Obama was challenging Clinton, Dreeben gave his campaign $500.
“I guess I wasn’t feeling as flush in ’08 as I was in ’06,” Mike Dreeben said.
In more recent years, business has been good for Mike Dreeben. In 2011, he started a new furniture company with a friend, also a designer, named Ayush Kasliwal. Together they design furniture mostly sold through interior designers, and his work is in fancier showrooms than before, he said.
Politics hasn’t kept his attention in the same way. “I have to admit, I’ve sort of stopped [following it] in the last several months. It sort of makes me want to throw up,” he said.
And the mix-up over the Mueller investigation and his name doppelganger? Said the designer: “It’s been really a big nothing, other than a half dozen of my smart-aleck friends sending me notes.”
Katelyn Polantz is based in Washington, D.C., and writes about government and the business of law. She can be reached at [email protected]. On Twitter: @kpolantz.
