On Wednesday, February 26, Chief Justice John Roberts gave the first indication of the Supreme Court becoming involved in the ongoing legal battles over the Trump administration’s federal spending freeze. Roberts temporarily blocked a lower court’s ruling that ordered the release of nearly $2 billion in foreign aid assistance, opening the door for the full Court to weigh in on the issue.
As we wait (needlessly wrong, as Law Dork points out) to see if the Court does the right thing and commands Trump to comply with the lower court’s order, we should keep in mind that connections between key personnel in the Trump administration and the Supreme Court may play a role in this ongoing constitutional crisis.
Mark Paoletta, Trump’s general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), reportedly drafted the OMB’s original spending freeze memo.
Reporting suggests Paoletta and Justice Clarence Thomas have a close, personal relationship, going as far back as Thomas’s confirmation in 1991. Paoletta has been a staunch defender of Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas, even representing Mrs. Thomas in her appearance before the January 6th committee. The committee interviewed her regarding text messages she sent to Mark Meadows after the 2020 election.
Thomas has a history of failing to recuse himself from cases in which personal connections have created a conflict of interest—including two January 6th cases, one of which involved his wife’s text messages—making this potential showdown with a close friend, Paoletta, something to watch.
Paoletta has connections to others in Thomas’ inner circle. Leonard Leo—the right-wing operative who has funded numerous conservative groups that regularly lobby the Court—paid Paoletta hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a public relations campaign for Thomas, which included a documentary on the Justice. Harlan Crow, Thomas’ billionaire benefactor, underwrote the film. Paoletta has vacationed with both Thomas and Crow.
Before returning to the OMB, Paoletta was a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), a far-right think tank founded by current OMB director Russell Vought. Vought himself has been front-and-center in the constitutional battle over impoundment. CRA has filed several amicus briefs in the Supreme Court.
Paoletta’s involvement in illegal directives that will likely come before the Supreme Court, and thus his buddy Clarence Thomas, is something we all should be watching closely.
UPDATE 3/4/25
Paoletta is also involved in a lawsuit at the CFPB, where employees are receiving conflicting messages about resuming their work. One day after Paoletta sent an email instructing that legally required work should resume, employees claim that other senior officials reportedly contradicted this message, stating work should not restart. This confusion arises amid legal challenges to the Trump administration’s alleged efforts to reduce the agency’s workforce, despite U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s order blocking mass firings.