President Donald Trump’s latest judicial pick could hand senators an opening to pry loose secret legal memos behind his administration’s most controversial military operations.
Talking Points Memo called the move a potential “self-own for the ages” as Trump moved to nominate T. Elliot Gaiser, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, to a federal judgeship in the Northern District of Texas.
The timing is what makes the pick risky, TPM’s David Kurtz argued Tuesday. The House is moving toward a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in part over the Iran war, U.S. boat strikes and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Kurtz said Gaiser’s office approved each of those operations in legal memos that remain secret or partially redacted.
“Against that backdrop, nominating Gaiser to the bench is an especially aggressive move,” Kurtz wrote, arguing it gives senators new leverage to pry those memos loose.
Senators have played that card before. In 2014, the Obama administration handed over a secret OLC memo justifying the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, in Yemen just before the Senate voted to confirm David Barron, who wrote it as the office’s acting head.
Kurtz noted that a lifetime seat could shield Gaiser from further scrutiny of his Justice Department work. But the confirmation fight itself could force some of that work into public view.
“The nomination of Gaiser for a judgeship is also likely to be, in significant part, a self-own,” NYU law professor Ryan Goodman wrote on Bluesky Monday. “It will very likely yield the public release of Gaiser/OLC opinions on (a) the boat strikes and (b) whatever convoluted magic the OLC concocted to say the Iran war was legal.”