Trump to Pick Ohio's Solicitor General for Top Justice Department Legal Post
President Trump intends to nominate T. Elliot Gaiser, the conservative solicitor general of Ohio, to be the assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, according to a Justice Department official. That position has traditionally often had the final say on legal debates within the executive branch.
The Office of Legal Counsel issues authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch through courtlike opinions. Its view of what the law permits is binding on other agencies and officials unless the attorney general overrides the office or the president opts not to take its advice.
The office was at the center of many legal and policy fights during Mr. Trump's first administration. Led by the Trump appointee Steven Engel, it signed off on the ordering of the targeted killing of a top Iranian official and the Treasury Department's withholding of Mr. Trump's tax returns from Congress.
Mr. Gaiser, whose selection as the forthcoming nominee was provided by the official on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not yet been announced, has a strong conservative legal résumé.
He clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. during the Supreme Court's 2021-22 term, when Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overruling the Roe v. Wade abortion rights precedent.
Mr. Gaiser had previously served two clerkship years with prominent conservative appellate court judges, Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit, while alternating with short stints at law firms.
He did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment late on Tuesday.
A native of Ohio, Mr. Gaiser attended Hillsdale College, a Christian liberal arts college in Michigan, and graduated in 2012 with a degree in political economy and speech studies. He spent a year at Ohio State University's law school before transferring to the University of Chicago to finish his degree, according to his LinkedIn profile.
After his Supreme Court clerkship, Mr. Gaiser spent a year as an associate at the law firm Jones Day before the Ohio attorney general, Dave Yost, appointed him as the state's solicitor general, representing the state government in appellate matters. Mr. Gaiser had clerked in that office after his second year in law school.
In announcing the appointment in October 2023, Mr. Yost called Mr. Gaiser 'a master craftsman of ironclad legal arguments rooted in originalist principles and constitutional restraint.'
He argued before the Supreme Court in February, defending a state agency in a discrimination case brought by a heterosexual woman who twice lost positions to gay colleagues.
His arguments attracted puzzlement from the justices because he disavowed lower-court rulings in favor of the state that had turned on the idea that a member of a majority group must provide extra evidence of discrimination, compared to a member of a minority.
Mr. Gaiser told the Supreme Court that the plaintiff could not establish that she was discriminated against based on her sexual orientation so should lose the case — but also that the state agreed with her that 'it is wrong to hold some litigants to a higher standard because of their protected characteristics.'
That prompted Justice Elena Kagan to ask whether the appeals court — which had ruled for Ohio — was wrong. Mr. Gaiser said it was.
'The idea that you hold people to different standards because of their protected characteristics is wrong,' he said.
The website for the Federalist Society, the conservative legal network, shows that Mr. Gaiser has participated in numerous events sponsored by the group in recent years. And the Heritage Foundation, where he was an intern in the summer of 2013, honored him last December as a distinguished alumnus.
He told a Heritage Foundation-linked online publication in December that Ohio was suing the Biden administration in 44 cases, while expressing conservative views on issues like environmental regulations, illegal immigration and transgender rights.
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