Trump faucets lawyer who argued his immunity case for solicitor basic

SCOTUS NEWS

D. John Sauer argued on behalf of Donald Trump earlier than the Supreme Courtroom in April’s Trump v. United States. (William Hennessy)

President-elect Donald Trump introduced on Thursday that he intends to appoint D. John Sauer, who efficiently argued within the Supreme Courtroom earlier this 12 months that Trump is entitled to broad immunity from prosecution, to function the solicitor basic of america.

Trump made the announcement in a press release on Thursday night, calling Sauer a “deeply completed, masterful appellate legal professional.”

The 50-year-old Sauer has lots of the credentials related to others who’ve served because the nation’s high lawyer earlier than the Supreme Courtroom. A Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Harvard Regulation College, he clerked on the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the 4th Circuit for Decide J. Michael Luttig, a conservative star who has since turn out to be an outspoken critic of the president-elect. Sauer then went on to clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia and spent 5 years as a federal prosecutor.

In 2017, Sauer grew to become the solicitor basic of Missouri, a job he held for six years – and one which allowed him to take conservative, and generally controversial, positions.

Throughout that point, he made his first look as an advocate earlier than the Supreme Courtroom. In Bucklew v. Precythe, he efficiently defended the state’s deadly injection protocol in opposition to a problem by an inmate who argued that executing him would violate the Eighth Modification’s ban on merciless and strange punishment due to the probability that he would find yourself choking on his personal blood.

In December 2020, Sauer led a gaggle of states in submitting a “pal of the courtroom” transient supporting Texas’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election in 4 battleground states received by Joe Biden. Sauer wrote that Texas’s allegations “increase necessary questions on election integrity and public confidence within the administration of Presidential elections,” however the justices concluded that Texas lacked a authorized proper, often known as standing, to convey its case.

And in 2022, Sauer (together with 9 different states) challenged the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandate for staff in federally funded healthcare amenities. The Supreme Courtroom declined to take up his petition for assessment.   

After stepping down as Missouri’s solicitor basic, Sauer fashioned his personal legislation agency, the James Otis Regulation Group. James Otis was a Massachusetts protection lawyer and legislator whom Smithsonian Journal describes as “probably the most influential protesters in opposition to Britain’s colonial legal guidelines.” The journal additionally noticed that though Otis is commonly credited with coining the phrase “Taxation with out illustration is tyranny,” it’s an “overstatement” to take action. (Otis largely disappeared from public life within the early 1770s attributable to psychological well being points.)

In non-public apply, Sauer has continued to litigate hot-button points. Final time period he represented Louisiana in its unsuccessful effort, joined by Missouri, to restrict the federal government’s capacity to speak with social media corporations about their content material moderation insurance policies. And he at present represents state officers defending an Arizona legislation that bars transgender ladies and women from competing in faculty and faculty sports activities.

However it was little doubt his work for Trump himself that helped Sauer to safe the job. Though Trump misplaced within the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in February, he appealed to the Supreme Courtroom, which agreed to take up his case and heard oral argument in late April. By a vote of 6-3, the courtroom dominated that former presidents have broad immunity from legal prosecution for his or her official acts, and so they despatched the election-interference fees in opposition to Trump again to a federal trial courtroom in Washington, D.C., for U.S. District Decide Tanya Chutkan to take one other take a look at the fees in opposition to Trump. With Trump’s victory on the polls this month, Particular Counsel Jack Smith has signaled that he’ll wind down the prosecution and step down earlier than Trump takes workplace.

Trump’s announcement that he intends to appoint Sauer got here shortly after Trump revealed that he additionally intends to appoint Todd Blanche, a legal protection legal professional who represented the president-elect at his state legal trial in New York for falsifying enterprise information, as deputy legal professional basic, the second-highest-ranking job within the Division of Justice.

This text was initially revealed at Howe on the Courtroom.