Multiple news outlets are reporting that Teresa Burchfield was arrested after she and an inmate from a Virginia detention center were caught in flagrante delicto. This would simply be a strange and simply unfortunate story with little newsworthy merit if it wasn’t for the fact that Mrs. Burchfield is married to an ethics lawyer who works for the Trump Organization.
A criminal complaint says that she and a 23-year-old inmate were having sex when they were caught in the backseat by a deputy, according to the Fauquier Times.
The unidentified inmate, on “trustee status” and allowed to do work outside his center, had allegedly been meeting with Burchfield for a month, the report says.
The Fauquier Times lists Mr. Bobby Burchfield’s Republican bonafides.
Burchfield, 53, is married to Bobby R. Burchfield, a partner at Washington’s King and Spalding, who was appointed as an independent ethics advisor to the Donald J. Revocable Trust in January.
Burchfield, a longtime Republican attorney, served as counsel to President George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount.
The inmate was able to be just outside of the prison because he enjoyed a status that allowed a certain level of leniency in his prison job schedule. Clearly it was too much leniency in this case. The Times also reports that Mrs. Burchfield had allegedly given the inmate contraband (i.e. unauthorized items including vitamins, cigarettes, clothing) to smuggle back into the detention center. The fact that a lawyer brought on to handle ethical issues that might arise for our current national conflict of interest Donald Trump, has serious ethical issues in his intimate circle is depressing but not surprising. And even though working for Donald Trump puts ones ethics into question, hopefully Mrs. Burchfield gets the help she needs, because whatever drives someone into that kind of reckless activity is more profound than simply a tenuous connection to Donald Trump.