The White House’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), largely responsible as a type of Ombudsman for presidential decisions and conduct, has been placed on the sidelines—according to a report by Charlie Savage at The New York Times.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has traditionally been a powerful guardrail in American government. It has issued interpretations of the law that bind agencies across the executive branch, decided which proposed policies were legally permissible or out of bounds and approved draft executive orders before they went to presidents to be signed. But in Donald Trump’s second term so far, the office has largely been sidelined. As Mr. Trump issues policy after policy pushing legal limits and asserting an expansive view of his power, the White House has undercut its role as a gatekeeper—delaying giving it senior leadership and weakening its ability to impose quality control over executive orders.
via Charlie Savage, The New York Times
Since reviewing Executive Orders is traditionally part of OLC’s remit, Savage’s article speculates that sidelining that office cleared the path for some of Trump’s more radical EOs, like demanding probes of Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor; or his decree that effectively shut down the Department of Education.
Jack Goldsmith, Harvard law professor who led OLC for George W. Bush administration, told Savage that diminishing the office is simply a way for Trump to “do whatever he wants.”
The Trump administration has cut out the traditional check the Justice Department has played. OLC being cut out is a piece of a larger strategy designed to ensure that the president can do whatever he wants, without any internal executive branch legal constraints on his will.
via Charlie Savage, The New York Times
In February, Trump signed a different EO that effectively (and unconstitutionally) yanked back power from congress so that he could bring independent agencies like FTC and FCC under his control. Which is, at base level, another sign of Project 2025 influence being brought to bear on this administration.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
This is the latest installment of what I call the “No cops, no problems” operation, which has been a Trump/GOP joint effort for nearly a decade now. Donald didn’t disband the FBI’s public corruption unit because there were too many employees at the staff picnic. Thus, taken together with the benching of OLC, all arrows point to removing oversight and prying eyes on whatever corrupt/illegal scheme they cooked up on that particular day.
As I like to remind on Bluesky, despite Donald and his operatives’ stated “interpretation” of laws, they are still on the hook for federal laws as they are written—not as they wish them to be.
