Aaron Reitz

Announced as Trump’s nominee for Head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy

Aaron Reitz has been announced as Trump’s nominee to be Head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy (OLP). Reitz is currently chief of staff for Senator Ted Cruz, and prior to that was a Deputy to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. the. Reitz has asserted “our soldiers are lawyers and our weapons are lawsuits and our tactic is lawfare,” and lamented the “hyper-caution that [he] think[s] too often Republicans demonstrate.” Reitz’s approach has been described as “the mindset that would likely pervade a second Trump term,” by Axios, which also observed that “[t]he lawyers in Paxton’s office are a useful proxy for the type of attorneys Trump would likely recruit to fill a second-term administration.” Reitz is also on Stephen Miller’s list of lawyers who have the “spine” to deliver on their agenda in a second Trump administration.

Reitz has called Paxton “the most effective Attorney General in America” and reminisced on their efforts that, in his words, “protected precious unborn children,” “pushed back against woke corporations by thwarting their Environmental, Social, and Governance agenda,” and “resisted radical LGBTQ activists’ attempts to push their sexual agenda on kids.”

Nicknamed “Offensive Coordinator,” Reitz directed the Texas v. Biden litigation agenda, helping Paxton sue the Biden administration nearly 50 times, including in efforts to curtail abortion medicine access and on immigration, Covid-19 public health measures, climate change, and more. Ken Paxton’s Office of the Attorney General infamously attempted to overturn the 2020 election, and while Reitz’s name does not appear directly on the lawsuit the office filed against four battleground states, he is an author in the lawsuit’s metadata. Reitz boasted “remaining ever vigilant against the left’s attempts to corrupt Texas elections in 2020 and 2022.”

In July 2021, after Simone Biles withdrew from the individual all-around gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Olympics to focus on mental well-being, Reitz called her a “selfish, childish national embarrassment.”

Reitz is a current or former fellow of Alliance Defending Freedom, Club for Growth Foundation, the Claremont Institute, the James Wilson Institute, and the John Jay Institute, each of which are part of right-wing dark money networks. Reitz also chaired the Austin chapter of a Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was previously led by Kevin Roberts, who now leads the Heritage Foundation and is spearheading Project 2025.

Reitz graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 2017, where he was president of the Texas Federalist Society. He is a former clerk for the Texas Supreme Court’s Justice Jimmy Blacklock and onetime primary candidate for the Texas House of Representatives.

Notably, Sen. Ted Cruz praised Trump’s frequent appointments of Texas AG office alums to the federal judiciary at a 2019 Federalist Society event.

WHAT DOES PROJECT 2025 SAY ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Project 2025 calls for politicizing law enforcement and the U.S. judicial system, including:

– Terminating all FBI investigations/activities into Russian collusion, MAGA operatives, January 6th suspects, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) violations, and more.

– Curtailing the independence of the FBI, including by eliminating the agency’s General Counsel’s Office and pushing Congress to end the 10-year term for the FBI Director in order to make the FBI Director dependent on the President’s approval–abandoning a key Nixon-era reform.

– Pursuing “legal action” against local District Attorneys and officials that the Administration claims are “refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.”

– Expanding the investigation of leaks, including using powerful tools to identify records of unauthorized disclosures to the media.

PRECEDING CONTEXT FOR PROJECT 2025

– Trump tried to weaponize DOJ to overturn the 2020 election. Per CNN: “Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Trump’s attempted coup was how he relentlessly tried to weaponize DOJ to nullify President Joe Biden’s victory. The Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee investigated Trump’s conduct and concluded in a recent report that he ‘grossly abused the power of the presidency.’”

– Throughout his Presidency, Trump repeatedly called to prosecute his opponents. As reported in Vox: “He told Hillary Clinton that once he won, she’d be ‘in jail.’ He said that John Kerry ‘should be prosecuted.’ He wants Adam Schiff ‘questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.’ John Bolton, he says, should be ‘in jail, money seized.’ James Comey should face ‘years in jail.’” In July 2024, Trump also amplified social posts calling for televised military tribunals of Liz Cheney.

HOW ARE THESE POLICIES POSSIBLE?

– The President largely controls DOJ through the Attorney General, who is removable by the President without cause. DOJ could try to take legal action against local District Attorneys but would likely face challenges.

– Any sense of DOJ’s independence has resulted from presidents following norms that Trump began to unravel and could continue to erode.

– Federal and local prosecutorial discretion (the ability of prosecutors and law enforcement to exercise judgment in which cases and violations to pursue) is a bedrock principle that Trump could deploy to punish those he dislikes and favor what he prefers.

This profile has been updated.