Trump announces new picks for roles at OMB and DOJ

President-elect Trump announced new picks for roles at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday.

The president-elect said in posts on Truth Social that his pick for OMB general counsel is Mark Paoletta, and his choice for assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is Harmeet Dhillon.

Paoletta previously served as OMB general counsel during the first Trump administration and has recently worked to help the president-elect plan for transition at the DOJ. He was also former Vice President Pence’s chief counsel during Trump’s first time in the White House.

“Mark will work closely with our DOGE team to cut the size of our bloated Government bureaucracy, and root out wasteful and anti-American spending,” Trump said in one of his Truth Social posts, referencing the “Department of Government Efficiency” panel, which Trump has selected tech billionaire Elon Musk and former GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead.

Last month, Paoletta said on the social media platform X that DOJ employees who are against Trump’s point of view on how the department should operate should leave.

“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave. Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy,” Paoletta said.

Dhillon currently serves as a managing partner at her law firm, Dhillon Law Group, which worked for Trump when he was fighting efforts to push him off the ballot via the 14th Amendment during his most recent presidential bid. She also tried and failed to challenge former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel for her role in 2023.

“Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers,” Trump said Monday on Truth Social.