Trump DOJ Legal Counsel: Small Unit Backing Big Policies
Deep inside the Justice Department sits a little-known legal unit that has become one of the most powerful levers in Washington — the Office of Legal Counsel, whose legal blessings have underpinned some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial moves.
A Small Office With Enormous Power
The Trump DOJ legal counsel office is small by federal standards, yet its opinions carry extraordinary weight. Across the government, an OLC opinion functions as near-binding guidance: officials who act on its advice are generally treated as having followed the law. In Trump’s second term, the office has signed off on sweeping tariff actions, the administration’s refusal to spend money Congress had already appropriated, and expanded deployments of the National Guard — all policies now facing legal and political challenges.
The office is no stranger to controversy. Under President George W. Bush, it produced the legal reasoning that permitted so-called “enhanced interrogation” methods against terror suspects, including waterboarding.
Critics See a Personal Legal Shield
Critics argue the office has strayed from its traditional role. Where it once answered active policy questions from the White House and federal agencies, it now sometimes tackles legal questions that look designed to address Trump’s own personal legal history, they say — such as an opinion on the Presidential Records Act issued after his indictment in Florida over allegedly mishandling classified materials.
A former Biden-era Justice Department official who worked closely with the office said the style of advice was not unusual for OLC under any president. What is different, he argued, is the office’s apparent willingness to weigh in on theoretical questions that are not genuinely before it.
The Man at the Top
The unit is headed by T. Elliot Gaiser, a 37-year-old former Ohio solicitor general described by colleagues as a constitutional originalist with an expansive view of presidential power. Gaiser was nominated in April 2025, confirmed by the Senate that July, and sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi in August.
Gaiser previously represented Trump’s losing 2020 presidential campaign and has declined to say Joe Biden won that election. In a rare interview, he insisted his job is to deliver candid legal analysis rather than push outcomes. His office, he noted, sits at a desk he believes once belonged to former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who led the Office of Legal Counsel under President Gerald Ford.
Source: The Washington Post