Grassley Opens Executive Business Meeting on DOJ Nominations of John Sauer, Harmeet Dhillon and Aaron Reitz

Good morning. Today we’re meeting to consider the nominations of John Sauer to serve as the Solicitor General, Harmeet Dhillon to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and Aaron Reitz to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy.

Each of these nominees is highly qualified for their positions. I spoke about their qualifications at their hearing, and I won’t repeat myself today. I think the President made good choices for these positions, and I’ll support them.

I do want to address an issue that was raised during the hearing and in the weeks after. My Democratic colleagues and the liberal media keep suggesting that President Trump and his attorneys won’t follow court orders.

Let’s review the facts. In the few weeks since he’s been in office, President Trump has been overwhelmed by decisions from individual district judges that encroach on his core constitutional powers. Nevertheless, he and his administration have worked diligently to abide by those orders, no matter how outrageous, by appealing them and challenging their scope and reach. And the President has been explicit about his views. He’s said, “I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we’ll appeal.”

At their hearing, my colleagues badgered the nominees with vague hypotheticals. They criticized Mr. Reitz for saying there’s no “hard and fast rule” in determining the scope of a lawful court order and applicability of court orders to nonparties. 

As Mr. Reitz explained in his testimony, his response was about “the role of the courts and their ability to bind parties that are not litigants to the case.” Another attorney who makes this exact same argument was President Biden’s Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, who wrote, “a court of equity may grant relief only to the parties before it.”

I didn’t hear any concerns about a constitutional crisis when President Biden’s attorneys made the same point that Mr. Reitz did.

The nominees expressed a legal argument – a correct one, in my view – that judicial decisions are limited to the parties before them, and that there are limits to a court’s jurisdiction.

I think we all agree that parties, including the President, are generally bound by federal court orders. But surely my colleagues aren’t taking the extreme position that our system of checks and balances allows for no room to challenge the scope of rulings, or ones that encroach on constitutional rights or separation of powers.  

Our history teaches that, in extreme cases, there may even be grounds to defy a court decision. After the infamous Dred Scott decision, President Lincoln defied the Supreme Court by issuing passports and patents to black Americans. Federal courts have also issued direct orders to federal marshals ordering the return of fugitive slaves. If an official refused to follow that order, I would call that justice, and a feature of our system of checks and balances. I’m sure my colleagues would agree, which shows that this issue isn’t as binary as they suggest.

All three of the nominees should be supported.

I also want to take a moment to update my colleagues about my investigative work.

Last Congress, I opened an investigation about the Obama-Biden administration’s obstruction of FBI efforts against Iran’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.  

That investigation was based in large part on whistleblower disclosures.  

On Tuesday last week, I released a committee report with my results.  

My report highlighted the following: