Kate Comerford Todd

Risk: Partisan Rule of Law, Democratic BackslidingBranch: ExecutiveExpected Agency or Office: Office of White House CounselCharacteristic: First Term Trump Admin Appointee

Kate Comerford Todd is a partner at Torridon Law, the law firm led by former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr and Trump’s former White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone. From 2019 until the end of the Trump administration, Todd was Deputy White House Counsel. Todd is currently on the board of directors, alongside Leonard Leo, at the Catholic Information Center, the Opus Dei’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In the Trump administration, Todd played a leading role working, “outside of public view and outside the headlines,” on getting activists tied to Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society confirmed to the federal judiciary. On her watch in the Trump administration, numerous very young, controversial, or poorly qualified candidates were appointed to the bench. These include Aileen Cannon (S.D. Fl.) who dismissed the federal case charging Donald Trump with crimes for his handling of classified documents relating to America’s national security, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a fellow Thomas clerk who blocked the nation-wide CDC mask mandate and whom the ABA rated “Not Qualified”, Lawrence VanDyke who was also rated “Not Qualified”, and Cory T. Wilson, who ruled that the funding structure for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional.

After Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September 2020, Trump included Todd on his shortlist to replace the late justice, the only name on the list without any judicial experience, although she was reportedly a favorite among White House lawyers.

Before joining the Trump administration, Todd was the senior vice president and chief counsel for the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Todd also clerked for Clarence Thomas during the 2000-2001 term when the Supreme Court issued the Bush v. Gore decision, which gave George W. Bush the presidency, even though when the votes were finally recounted he lost the popular vote in Florida and would have lost the Electoral College vote. She then went to work for Bush as Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office.