Mark Paoletta

Mark Paoletta was General Counsel under Russ Vought in Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A major proponent of impoundment, Paoletta has called the Impoundment Control Act “unconstitutional.” While at OMB, Paoletta provided the legal framework Trump used to redirect congressionally allocated funds from the Pentagon to the border wall. Paoletta is a Senior Fellow at Vought’s Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member.

Paolleta is a close friend of Leonard Leo and a key defender of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni. He has assailed those who raise concerns about ethical issues about their luxury lifestyle that has been secretly funded by billionaires. He also represented Ginni Thomas when the bipartisan House January 6th Committee called on her to testify after news reports that she repeatedly texted Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadow, to stop the Electoral College votes from being counted and she urged numerous state legislators to overturn Biden’s election victory. He also objected to Congress inquiring into her email correspondence with John Eastman, who is facing disbarment in California over his role in trying to subvert the election.

Paoletta has also penned several pieces defending Justice Thomas or assailing his critics. In a recent WSJ op-ed, he attacked Fix the Court, a nonpartisan organization that “advocates for non-ideological ‘fixes’ that would make the federal courts, and primarily the U.S. Supreme Court, more open and more accountable to the American People.” This attack was prompted by Fix the Court’s finding that Thomas accepted more than $4 million in luxurious gifts, often secretly, since 2004. Many of these gifts, including luxury travel on private jets and super yachts owned by billionaire Harlan Crow, a Nazi-memorabilia collector and major GOP funder.

Paoletta helped get Thomas confirmed to the Court and was referred to as Thomas’ “sherpa.” When HBO’s film “Confirmation” about his nomination was in the works, Paoletta wrote a letter to HBO threatening legal action if the script were left unrevised. Leonard Leo–who also worked on Thomas’ confirmation, where Anita Hill testified about Thomas’ grotesque sexual overtures toward her, which he denied–steered almost $2 million on a PR campaign to support Thomas that lasted years. Paoletta confirmed this by saying “my good friend Leonard Leo’s group provided funding for this work,” which included a film supportive of Thomas. Paoletta was also directly involved in the Supreme Court selection process for Neil Gorsuch.

Paoletta’s ties with both Leo and Thomas was immortalized in the now infamous portrait commissioned by and including Crow, a portrait first uncovered by True North Research. Paoletta is also the co-editor of the book “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” a project promoted by the Judicial Crisis Network.

Paoletta is a fellow at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), a Project 2025 Advisory Board member that aims to provide “ideological ammunition to sustain” the MAGA movement. It was spearheaded by Russell Vought, who was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and whom Paoletta worked closely with as General Counsel. Vought, a key advisor to Project 2025, has claimed that Christians are under assault in America even though the Supreme Court has allowed religion to be used as a sword against anti-discrimination protections. A document drafted by CRA staff and fellows, lists “Christian nationalism” as a top priority for CRA in any second Trump term.

Paoletta is currently a partner at the D.C. law firm Schaerr Jaffe. The firm has become a go-to for Elon Musk, who has hired Schaerr Jaffe to represent numerous cases. In other notable cases handled by the firm, but not Paoletta, Schaerr Jaffe secured a dismissal in a case that abortion providers brought against the Louisiana Department of Health for its oppressive regulations that severely limited abortion access in the state; Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita paid the firm over $190,000 to aid his investigation of an Indiana doctor who provided abortion care to a 10-year-old rape victim; and the firm also defended Rokita in an ethics case filed against him by the Indiana Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Commission for disparaging comments he made about the doctor. The firm has also represented parties in high-profile Supreme Court cases like Dobbs v. Jackson, West Virginia v. EPA, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Carson v. Makin, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

This profile has been updated.