Donald Trump’s picks for top jobs at the Justice Department are lawyers whose most notable recent experience is fighting to keep him out of prison. In an epic twist, they went from criminally defending the president-elect and fighting for his immunity from prosecution to helping lead the country’s law enforcement apparatus and representing his administration at the Supreme Court.
Trump wants Todd Blanche as his deputy attorney general — the DOJ’s No. 2 official — and Emil Bove as deputy attorney general. Trump said he wants his attorney general to be Matt Gaetz, whose main DOJ experience includes investigations by the sex trafficking division in an investigation that ended without charges last year. (He has denied all wrongdoing.) Whether or not Gaetz — who resigned from Congress this week — becomes the nation’s next top cop, the president-elect’s announcement of Blanche and Bove shows he aims to lead the department fill it with true loyalists.
Unlike Gaetz, both Blanche and Bove have DOJ experience as former prosecutors. They have also gained criminal experience in the past year defending Trump in multiple cases, including the trial in state court in Manhattan that ended with guilty verdicts against their client. In announcing the picks, Trump said Bove would serve as acting deputy attorney general pending Blanche’s confirmation by the Senate.
While Trump’s two federal cases are apparently wrapping up due to his election, the New York state case they lost at trial is still awaiting sentencing. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has until Tuesday to notify the court of its position on how it plans to proceed in light of Trump’s impending return to the White House. Trump has separate counsel in his fourth criminal case (in Georgia state court), Steve Sadow, who, in congratulating his fellow lawyers’ political promotions, said he “has never been a prosecutor and never will be.” Presidents cannot pardon or dismiss state cases.
Trump’s pick for attorney general — another high-level DOJ spot and the counsel to the federal government’s Supreme Court — is John Sauer. He argued the appeal in the case in which the Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court granted Trump broad criminal immunity. Sauer’s other Supreme Court argument, in 2018, was also a controversial appeal, a death penalty case when he was attorney general of Missouri. As in the immunity case, the court sided with Sauer’s client (the state) in a divided ruling in which Republican appointees were in the majority. His experience in Missouri also included unsuccessfully challenging the 2020 election results in key states.
If appointed attorney general, Sauer will regularly appear before a largely like-minded majority of justices to defend the Trump administration’s priorities. Unlike some of Trump’s non-DOJ picks, Sauer, aside from Gaetz, has some more traditional qualifications. In addition to his work as Attorney General of Missouri, as a prosecutor and in private practice, he clerked for two highly regarded judges in Republican circles: on the Supreme Court for the late Antonin Scalia, and on the Federal Court of Appeals for J. Michael. Luttig, the latter is better known these days for speaking out against Trump.
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal newsletter for expert analysis of the week’s top legal stories, including Supreme Court updates and developments in Donald Trump’s lawsuits.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
