Lawyers for President Trump in line to take top jobs at the Justice Department sparred with Democrats on Wednesday over whether the administration could simply ignore some court orders — an early skirmish in a larger fight over the White House’s efforts to claim more sweeping presidential powers.
The debate, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, unfolded as three nominees testified during a confirmation hearing to join the upper ranks of the Justice Department. Two of the nominees, Harmeet K. Dhillon and D. John Sauer, have long worked as personal lawyers for Mr. Trump.
The third, Aaron Reitz, selected to lead the Office of Legal Policy, was questioned about an old social media post in which he suggested that Mr. Trump follow the example set by President Andrew Jackson, who ignored a Supreme Court order in 1832.
“There is no hard and fast rule about whether, in every instance a public official is bound by a court decision,” he said Wednesday. “There are some instances in which he or she may be lawfully bound and some instances where he or she may not be lawfully bound.”
Mr. Sauer, who has represented Mr. Trump before the Supreme Court and is the solicitor general nominee, was pressed on the same point. He replied, “It’s hard to make a very blanket, sweeping statement about something without being presented with the facts and the law.”
The back-and-forth came as dozens of legal challenges have been mounted against the Trump administration on several issues, many of them revolving around the president’s efforts to fire thousands of federal employees as he seeks to overhaul the government. Democrats have questioned whether Mr. Trump might simply ignore rulings against his favor.
The senior Democrat on the panel, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, called Mr. Reitz’s answer “an incredible statement by someone who wants to be part of the Department of Justice.”
Some conservative legal scholars have long complained that the federal court system should not allow, as it currently does, trial court judges at individual districts to issue nationwide injunctions restricting government actions. At the same time, conservative activists have often sought such injunctions when they might end or limit a practice by a Democratic administration whose policies they do not like.
In the current debate, however, Democrats have raised concerns that the Trump administration might ignore not just lower court decisions, but also appellate decisions or Supreme Court rulings. Those concerns only grew after Mr. Trump recently posted on social media that “he who saves his country does not violate any law.”
Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said some Supreme Court decisions were wrong and should have been fought more vigorously by government officials.
Another Republican, however, tried to short-circuit the entire discussion with a blunt admonition.
“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court. Ever,” the lawmaker, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, said. “Now you can disagree with it, within the bounds of legal ethics, you can criticize it, you can appeal it, or you can resign.”
To many questions about how they would handle improper demands from the president, the lawyers said they simply did not believe such a thing would happen.
“The president has never asked me to do anything that I found to be objectionable, immoral, unlawful or illegal,” said Ms. Dhillon, who, if confirmed, would oversee the civil rights division. A longtime supporter of Mr. Trump, Ms. Dhillon is better known for her work challenging the results of the 2020 election. Should she be confirmed, she would oversee a division that often deals with voting rights.
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