Trump Announces Mark Paoletta as Top OMB Lawyer in White House

WASHINGTON, DC – President-elect Donald Trump announced Monday that prominent D.C. lawyer Mark Paoletta will return to the White House as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under returning Director Russ Vought, the tip of the spear for reversing the direction of federal regulations and spending, building the border wall, and implementing recommendations from Elon and Vivek’s DOGE to overhaul the federal government.

“Mark is a brilliant and tenacious lawyer, who worked tirelessly to advance my Agenda in the First Term,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “As OMB GC in my First Administration, Mark led the charge to identify funding to build the Southern Border Wall, and worked with then-OMB Director Russ Vought to rein in woke and weaponized Government spending.

Trump noted that Paoletta is currently a partner at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe and a senior fellow at Vought’s nonprofit organization, the Center for Renewing America.

Paoletta is widely regarded as one of the toughest lawyers in Washington, a battle-hardened political veteran of over 30 years. That started as a junior lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office during the Bush 41 years (1989-1993), where a young Paoletta ended up as the primary workhorse on the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas and Paoletta have been close friends ever since, and Paoletta’s success in the Thomas fight in 1991 made him a go-to for Republican White Houses in judicial confirmation fights. An unflinching conservative who is among the most vocal supporters of Trump’s MAGA agenda, Paoletta is embraced both in elite law circles and in the Federalist Society, while also celebrated among grassroots activists and anti-establishment groups.

During the Clinton years, Paoletta led dozens of investigations for the Republican-controlled House, gaining a reputation as a no-holds-barred Doberman when teeing up subpoenas and planning congressional hearings.

He then went to the private sector as a partner at a major law firm, DLA Piper, where he was highly sought after by organizations and corporate executives who had to deal with Congress, especially for those being dragged into confrontational hearings by Democrats.

Paoletta returned to the White House when Trump was first elected, serving as counsel for the vice president and then as general counsel at OMB. Also while serving in the Trump White House, Paoletta played a major role in confirming two of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and well as scores of lower-court nominees.

During his tenure at OMB, as Trump noted, Paoletta crafted the legal strategy that successfully directed billions of dollars to begin construction of Trump’s border wall even while congressional Democrats were blocking appropriations for that signature Trump issue, designating funding from the military construction budget and also interdicted drug money. Vought acted on Paoletta’s legal analysis, and once wall funding began flowing from OMB, Democrats couldn’t hold the middle of their opposition to the wall. Billions more were then explicitly appropriated by Congress, and the Trump administration built hundreds of miles of wall.

Vought also took to social media yesterday, posting that he “could not be happier” with Paoletta’s return to OMB, and advising everyone to, “Buckle. Up.”

OMB is the operations center of the White House, and is one of the most powerful actors in government, though most Americans have never heard of it and even many inside the Beltway do not understand how it works. OMB approval is required for all changes in federal regulations. It develops the president’s budget each year, controls the dispersing of all federal funding after Congress passes its annual spending bills, and is the clearinghouse for countless governmental processes.

And OMB will be regularly in the news over the next couple years as it implements recommendations from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Rather than a literal department, DOGE will actually be a presidential advisory commission, serving as an ideas factory to revolutionize the size, scope, cost, and functional efficiency of the federal government. As Trump decides which recommendations to adopt, Vought’s OMB – including Paoletta’s Office of General Counsel with more than 20 lawyers – will have the primary role in implementing those massive changes to how the federal government works, including finding creative legal theories to make many of those changes when Congress cannot muster the will to change current law.

While Vought requires Senate confirmation as director and thus cannot be running OMB on Day One, the general counsel position is a direct appointment without the Senate, so Paoletta will be able to get to work on January 20. OMB occupies much of the second floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) in the White House campus, with nonstop traffic between its many offices and the West Wing.

Given the incoming president’s aggressive agenda, Americans will likely not be waiting long to see big changes, courtesy of the team President Trump is bringing back to OMB with Vought and Paoletta.

Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski is a lawyer who served in the White House Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought and Mark Paoletta. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @kenklukowski.