Trump Needs a Legal General, Not Just an Attorney General

Pam Bondi was not the attorney general President Trump needed, although she was a welcome and significant improvement over Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first (and truly awful) pick. The president needs more than what he’s sought so far to head the Justice Department.

Yes, Trump needs someone who’s committed to the success of his presidency and who has already earned the president’s trust.

Yes, he needs someone who won’t wilt under the scorching blasts from the president’s legions of haters.

Yes, the president needs someone who will work to roll back the leftward tilt in the law generally and in the criminal justice system in particular, someone who will work relentlessly to restore balance to a system thrown out of whack by two generations of legal activism and, more recently, partisan “lawfare.”

Yes, the president needs someone skilled in public communications, who can articulate simply and persuasively the legal grounds for his policies and legal initiatives.

The White House needs all of this in an attorney general – and more: The president needs a great lawyer who thinks and executes like a great military general.

Not a Roy Cohn kind of lawyer who, while loyal and brilliant, skirts ethical disasters. Not a Michael Cohen, a pseudo-tough guy and boneheaded “fixer” who creates trouble where none need exist. Not a Jeff Sessions, who was neither tough nor brilliant, and who proved to be just another D.C. pol.

Donald Trump needs an ethical, resilient, smart, forward-leaning lawyer fluent in legal nuance, articulate and persuasive. One with the judgment and strategic acumen to anticipate how to deploy the Department of Justice’s legal resources to achieve victory in Trump’s multi-front struggle to change the economy, education, environment, culture, and the government.

The president needs a wartime consigliere on par with the Pentagon’s best warfighting generals, because the war for American freedom, the war against the stultifying “woke” left, the war for pragmatic realism against Marxist nihilism, the war against systemic fraud in the welfare state – yes, the war to make America great again – is an ongoing, grinding, constant struggle in state and federal courts around the country, where more than half the judges believe it’s their duty to oppose everything and anything Trump.

This president is unlike any other in recent memory, and so he needs more out of his legal general than other recent presidents who operated within the established status quo in Washington. Institutional change is much harder than mere policy change; an out-of-the-box activist like Donald Trump needs a legal general that sees where the president wants to drive change and is adept at creating, driving, and successfully implementing the legal theories and strategies to facilitate his success.

Hopefully, the president perceives the shortcomings of the lawyers he has chosen to assist him so far and is now ready to choose a lawyer who’s truly a legal general.

Perhaps Todd Blanche is that man; the president knows him well. Blanche is a graduate of American University and Brooklyn law school, cut his teeth as a prosecutor in the prestigious Southern District of New York, and represented Trump in the lawfare cases brought against him while he was out of office.

Similarly, the president has seen EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in action – the former New York congressman in the process of dismantling the climate hysteria hustle and regulatory architecture that permeates the agency. Until Trump’s second term, the EPA was devoted to targeting energy generation projects, targeting the automobile sector, and generally impeding industry and development across the country. Proving he has strategic vision and tactical skill as an administrator, Zeldin has turned the EPA around. One drawback, however: He has not practiced law in many years. A successful AG needs exceptional legal skill and confidence to drive legal theory in a department filled with skilled practitioners.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is also poised to play a bigger role. Could she be the one? Dhillon graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School. After a stint in big law, she started her own law firm in San Francisco. She’s a successful litigator and a resilient fighter who never wilts under the constant blast of enmity and hate she receives for driving civil rights reform in hostile territory. As AAG for civil rights, she’s on offense, pressing the president’s agenda in bastions of progressive intolerance and antisemitism, including the city of Chicago, California’s educational system, and the Ivy League schools. She’s smart, fearless, thinks strategically, acts with sound legal tactics, communicates confidently and persuasively. And she truly believes in the president’s mission.

Acclaimed legal mind Robert Giuffra is also in Trump’s orbit. Co-chair of the estimable Sullivan and Cromwell firm in New York, Giuffra is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School and clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court. A well-known conservative in a legal market that leans sharply left, he proves his legal acumen pursuing and winning major cases for American businesses. He is currently appealing numerous lawfare cases brought against the administration. An Attorney General Giuffra would serve as a bridge between reformers and the legal establishment.

There are other legal thought leaders who would serve the country well. Their ranks include Georgetown Professor Jonathan Turley (who demonstrates his broad-based legal acumen and devotion to the First Amendment chops on Fox News); U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton; and U.S. Solicitor General (and former Trump lawyer) John Sauer.

Whomever President Trump chooses, his criteria should be clear: He needs a great lawyer who thinks strategically, implements skillfully, communicates persuasively, believes in both the mission and the president – and who will accomplish the former while protecting the latter. 

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.