Biden taps Ed Siskel to be White House counsel; Benghazi, Solyndra, Rahm Emanuel

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday tapped Ed Siskel to be the top White House attorney, picking a veteran of Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall and the Obama administration to be in place for election year GOP investigations and obstructive moves.

Siskel — nephew of the late Chicago film critic Gene Siskel and raised on the North Shore — is familiar with high-stakes congressional and other politicized probes.

He starts in September and replaces departing White House Counsel Stuart Delery.

As a deputy counsel in the Obama-Biden administration, Siskel was part of the White House legal team handling major controversies: the response to the 2012 Benghazi attack in which four U.S. citizens, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed; the collapse of the Solyndra solar panel company after receiving government loans; and the defense of President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.

In a 2017 profile, Siskel told Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman: “I learned the value of quickly mastering a set of facts and understanding how an investigator would view a set of facts so that you can help inform policymakers in an effective way of responding, cooperating in a thoughtful, responsible way, particularly in circumstances where things can get highly politicized.”

“It’s important in any investigation … to have a process that is thorough and rigorous and has real integrity to it. So much depends on your ability to work with the other parties involved. In that case, it was congressional committees. But it could be inspectors general or the Department of Justice.”

Siskel will arrive at the White House from Grosvenor Holdings, where he has been, according to his LinkedIn resume, the chief legal officer since June 2019.

Michael Sacks, Grosvenor’s board chairman and chief executive officer, is a major Democratic donor and fundraiser. Sacks also helped land the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and leads the Chicago convention’s host committee.

Biden said in a statement: “Siskel’s many years of experience in public service and a career defending the rule of law make him the perfect choice to serve as my next White House Counsel.

“For nearly four years in the White House when I was Vice President, he helped the Counsel’s Office navigate complex challenges and advance the President’s agenda on behalf of the American people, and first as a federal prosecutor and then as the top counsel for one of America’s biggest and most vibrant cities, his hometown of Chicago, Ed has shown a deep commitment to public service and respect for the law.”

Siskel served as corporation counsel under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who was tapped by Biden to be the U.S. Ambassador to Japan — from February 2017 to May 2019, his resume said, leaving a partnership at the Washington law firm Wilmer Hale for City Hall.  

Before private practice, Siskel was a deputy White House counsel for four years.

Siskel also worked in the Justice Department and was a Chicago-based federal prosecutor. He clerked for another Chicagoan, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. His undergraduate degree is from Wesleyan University with his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.

Spielman, in her 2017 Siskel profile, noted that besides having Gene Siskel as an uncle, Ed Siskel’s “oldest brother Jon won an Emmy award for his documentary about 9/11. His middle brother Charlie was nominated for an Academy Award for his documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier.”