Greg Katsas, seen here in Washington in 2012, has served this year as a lawyer in the Trump White House. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Court nominee faces scrutiny over Trump White House role

Greg Katsas has spent more than three decades burnishing a high-powered legal resume that makes him a solid pick for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the biggest obstacle to his winning confirmation is the job he's had for the past nine months: serving as a top White House lawyer for President Donald Trump.

Katsas' position as a deputy White House counsel means he may have played a key role in White House deliberations on a series of hot-button topics from Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey to the travel ban to efforts to undercut Obamacare.


When Katsas goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, a little more than five weeks after being nominated by Trump, he's expected to face a flurry of questions from Democrats about which of the seemingly endless string of White House controversies he had a hand in.

"It's not an exaggeration to say that this president and this administration have taken some of the most troubling actions by any president in history and Katsas has an obligation to be forthcoming with the Senate as to what his fingerprints are on," said Dan Goldberg of the liberal Alliance for Justice, which is opposing Katsas' confirmation.

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So far, the nominee has been largely mum about which legal firestorms he's been tasked with fighting — or starting — since he began work at the White House in January.

"I am responsible for providing legal advice to senior staff in the White House Office, including the President and the Counsel to the President, managing legal issues involving executive-branch agencies, interviewing and recommending candidates for various executive and judicial appointments; and supervising approximately 15 Associate Counsels to the President," Katsas wrote in answers to the committee's standard questionnaire.

The Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, said Sunday that she's expecting Katsas to be more specific at his hearing.

"Given the range of issues he may have worked on, Mr. Katsas's tenure as a high-ranking lawyer in President Trump's White House Counsel's Office is of significant interest to the Judiciary Committee," Feinstein said in a statement to POLITICO. "If confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, Greg Katsas could hear cases involving issues he was involved in the White House counsel’s office, so it's critically important that he answer senators' questions pertaining to that work."

Asked by POLITICO whether Katsas has gotten the go-ahead from the White House to provide greater detail about his work there, the White House provided no on-the-record response. A White House official who insisted on anonymity commented only in the most general terms about Katsas' situation.

"The Trump administration is committed to filling all the U.S. attorney and judicial vacancies as quickly as possible. We are working with and extensively consulting all Senators nationwide in order to complete the nomination process. We look forward to Mr. Katsas being confirmed to the D.C. Circuit," said the official.

Conservatives close to the White House said they are bracing for Katsas to face an onslaught from Democrats about virtually every polarizing decision and action Trump has taken since he was sworn in.

"The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will not forgo an opportunity to play politics and will ask him about Russia and every conceivable political brushfire — because he’s there," said Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to the White House on picks for judgeships and legal positions in the administration.

"Members of both parties often attempt to use the confirmation process as an inflection point to obtain information and advance a partisan political agenda, even if it doesn’t relate to the confirmation itself," Leo said.

"They will treat him as guilty until proven innocent," Carrie Severino of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network said, referring to Senate Democrats.

Severino noted that as a deputy White House counsel, it's highly unlikely Katsas made a final decision on any major policy matters. "I can't imagine he had a significant decisional role in these things," she said.

Several Katsas supporters said he's limited in what he can say in response to senators' questions because of ethical rules that forbid lawyers — even those who work in government — from recounting confidential legal advice they gave.

"Especially in the role as White House counsel, he's really not going to be able to talk about virtually anything he has done," Severino said. "If they're going to ask questions they know he can't answer ethically, the question is really how long that back and forth can go on."

However, both liberal and conservative lawyers noted the strong parallel to another relatively recent D.C. circuit nomination: President George W. Bush's decision over a decade ago to tap Brett Kavanaugh for the D.C. Circuit.

At the time Kavanaugh was nominated, he was serving as staff secretary to Bush, but the Yale-educated lawyer's previous job was as an associate White House counsel.

Kavanaugh faced questions from both Democrats and Republicans about his work at the White House. In a rapid-fire series of questions, Sen. Arlen Specter got the D.C. Circuit nominee to confirm he was not involved in some of the highest-profile issues swirling around the Bush White House at that time, such as allegations of torture in U.S. custody, transfers of prisoners to Guantanamo and to brutal regimes, and the corruption scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

While Kavanaugh gave a general sense of what issues he'd worked on and was fairly definitive about what he had not worked on, he declined to get into the specifics of any advice he gave while in the counsel's office. He was eventually confirmed 57-36, three years after his nomination was first submitted to the Senate.

At the time, senators were particularly sensitive about legal skeletons that might be lurking in a nominee's closet because some felt burned by the nomination and confirmation of Justice Department official Jay Bybee to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003. About a year and a half after Bybee cleared the Senate on a 74-19 vote, it emerged that he signed a secret legal opinion in 2002 that took an unusually narrow view of what constituted torture under federal laws and international agreements.

That opinion was withdrawn by the Justice Department in 2004, after Bybee was already serving in a lifetime appointment. Many legal scholars have criticized the legal reasoning in the memo.

The scope of Katsas' legal work at the White House could have direct relevance to how he carries out his job at the D.C. Circuit, assuming he is confirmed. He may have to recuse himself from challenges to Trump administration policies. The duty to recuse seems most clear for specific lawsuits he had a role in responding to and a bit more open to interpretation if litigants target administration decisions he helped to craft.

But Severino noted that the recusal question tapers off over time and didn't seem like much of an obstacle in the case even of Supreme Court nominees like Elena Kagan, who'd overseen virtually all the government's appellate litigation as solicitor general.

"I don't think that swayed anyone in their vote on her," Severino said.

Some Democrats and liberal groups are also concerned that Katsas' nomination isn't getting the scrutiny normally given to picks for the D.C. Circuit, which is often considered the second most important court in the country. While it is technically no higher ranking than the 11 other circuit courts, the D.C. Circuit handles most of the critical litigation involving the powers of federal agencies.

Katsas' hearing comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is under intense pressure from conservatives to accelerate the confirmation of Trump's judicial picks. Katsas' hearing is also set just one day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to make his first appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee since he was confirmed in February.

Katsas, who got his undergraduate degree from Princeton and went straight on to Harvard Law School, has been considered as a potential Republican pick for the D.C. Circuit for years. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his first year on the high court and during the preceding year, when Thomas was on the D.C. Circuit. During the Bush administration, Katsas served in a series of senior Justice Department posts, including as the Senate-confirmed head of the Civil Division from 2008 to 2009.

Katsas also did two stints at Jones Day, a law firm that has provided a slew of attorneys for top administration posts, including White House Counsel Don McGahn.

Supporters say there's no way to dispute that Katsas is amply qualified for the D.C. Circuit job.

"It's just patently obvious to everybody," said Leo, who said he's known Katsas since 1990 and considers him "as honest and straightforward a guy as you're ever going to get."

Leo said he hopes senators will stay focused on Katsas' qualifications, without trying to force him to answer for every thing Trump has said or done.

"It's not an oversight hearing of the executive branch," Leo observed. "It's a confirmation hearing."