At Senate hearing, Trump Justice Department nominees are cagey on whether they’d follow court orders

Two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for senior Justice Department positions – including his former personal attorney – deflected questions Wednesday from senators on whether they would adhere to all court orders against the administration.

Two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for senior Justice Department positions – including his former personal attorney – deflected questions Wednesday from senators on whether they would adhere to all court orders against the administration. An overriding question of the Trump administration, already facing a raft of litigation against the president’s executive orders, is whether it would abide by court decisions. Trump and some of his top advisers have suggested they might not be constrained by adverse court rulings. “There is no hard and fast rule about whether in every instance a public official is bound by a court decision,” Aaron Reitz, who has been tapped to serve as the head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, said in response to repeated questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee. “There are some instances in which he or she may lawfully be bound and other instances in which he or she may not lawfully be bound,” Reitz added. Reitz appeared alongside D. John Sauer, Trump’s former personal lawyer, nominated to be the solicitor general, the government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court. Some of the tensest exchanges between Sauer and Judiciary Committee Democrats were over Sauer’s defense of Trump’s claim of immunity that went to the high court last year. “There’s a great fear among many people — academics and people in the legal profession – as to whether or not this president would defy a court order, which basically would put him above the law, at least in his own eyes,” said the panel’s top Democrat, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.