# Steven Engel Assistant Attorney General for the [[Office of Legal Counsel]] for the entire first Trump term (2017–21) and the author or signer of its most protective opinions — the Barr obstruction memo, the Ukraine whistleblower opinion, the absolute-immunity opinions that stonewalled congressional oversight. Engel's tenure shows OLC operating as presidential defense counsel; his final act (standing against the [[Jeffrey Clark]] coup plot) shows where even a loyalist drew the line — a line his successors have since erased. ## Background Yale Law School; clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy; Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC during the George W. Bush second term — where he had a hand in reviewing the 2007 Bradbury interrogation opinions. Partner at Dechert LLP before and after his OLC tenure (rejoined May 2021, where he remains). [[Federalist Society]] regular. ## Tenure highlights, 2017–21 - **Travel ban and beyond (2017)** — OLC form-and-legality review under Engel cleared the early executive-order blitz; the [[Sally Yates]] firing established that objecting to OLC-cleared orders was career-fatal. - **Barr obstruction memo (March 2019)** — co-signed with Ed O'Callaghan the memo concluding the [[Mueller Report Release]] evidence wouldn't support an obstruction charge against [[Donald Trump]]; courts later found DOJ had already decided not to charge, calling the memo a "thought experiment" and ordering it released. - **Ukraine whistleblower opinion (Sept. 2019)** — concluded the intelligence community whistleblower complaint was not an "urgent concern" requiring transmittal to Congress, bottling up the complaint at the start of the [[Trump-Ukraine Scandal]]; 67 inspectors general called it wrong as a matter of law and policy. - **Testimonial immunity** — opinions asserting absolute immunity for senior presidential advisers (McGahn and others), the doctrinal spine of the "fight all the subpoenas" strategy during the [[Trump First Impeachment]]. ## January 3, 2021 At the Oval Office showdown over installing [[Jeffrey Clark]] as acting AG to weaponize DOJ behind [[Stop the Steal]], Engel told Trump that he and the department's leadership would resign en masse, leaving Clark "leading a graveyard." The threat worked. Engel later cooperated with the [[January 6 Committee]] — making him, with Rosen and Donoghue, one of the institutionalist loyalists whose resistance the second-term personnel project was explicitly designed to screen out. ## Why he matters here Engel defines the first-term equilibrium: an OLC that would bless nearly any defensive use of executive power but balked at overturning an election. The second term's answer was not to persuade lawyers like Engel but to replace them — the through-line from Engel to [[T. Elliot Gaiser]] is the vetting, not the doctrine. ## See Also - [[Office of Legal Counsel]] - [[Mueller Report Release]] - [[Trump-Ukraine Scandal]] - [[Jeffrey Clark]]