Top Justice Department Nominees Face Scrutiny Over Court Orders

Nominees for two senior Justice Department positions expressed support for following court orders generally amid questions about whether the Trump administration believes doing so in all circumstances is required.

Stanley Woodward, selected for the agency’s No. 3 position, and Ohio Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser, picked to head the office that drafts legal opinions for the attorney general, said at their Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that they’d never advise a client to ignore a federal court opinion.

“I would advise clients to follow applicable court orders,” Gaiser said. He also said that he didn’t believe any executive official could lawfully defy a court order.

Woodward said that “in general, court orders should be followed and respected.”

Both also said during questions by Republican and Democratic lawmakers that they couldn’t imagine a circumstance in their planned roles in which they’d be asked to defy a federal court.

Trump and other administration officials have suggested that the executive branch doesn’t need to follow what it sees as unlawful judicial actions. And Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court last week at argument that the government will “generally respect circuit precedent, but not necessarily in every case.”

Democrats expressed concern with some of Woodward and Gaiser’s responses to their hypothetical scenarios, suggesting they were evasive at times, and raising the specter of a brewing constitutional crisis.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel, said “there should be no equivocation” as to whether court orders should be followed.

“If we cannot agree on this as a basic premise of our rule of law where in the world are we headed as a nation,” Durbin said. “It should be a clear answer.”

But Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) appeared satisfied with the nominees’ responses to his questions on whether they’d ever advise clients to ignore district, appellate, or Supreme Court decisions. They said no.

“I think you understand where a lot of these questions are coming from,” Kennedy said.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) called the extended back-and-forth ridiculous “straw man arguments,” and said the administration was abiding by court orders.

He said Democrats were pushing a “constitutional crisis that doesn’t exist.”

Woodward joined the White House in January as an assistant to the president and senior counselor. A former counsel at the law firm Akin Gump, he ran his own Washington law firm since 2020, according to his Senate questionnaire.

If confirmed as associate attorney general, Woodward would join other top DOJ officials who entered their role after representing Trump or his allies.

His firm advised figures in a House committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by Trump supporters. Woodward also represented Walt Nauta, a former White House aide indicted in the now-dropped Trump classified documents case.

Gaiser’s been nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel. He represented Ohio in multiple cases in state and federal courts on topics ranging from gun restrictions to employment bias to transgender care for minors.