Joe Biden’s transition team announced today that Dana Remus will be Biden’s White House counsel. Remus was general counsel to Biden’s campaign, served in the White House counsel in President Obama’s administration, and was general counsel for the Obama Foundation.
Interestingly, Remus was also a law clerk to Justice Alito during the Court’s 2008-2009 Term. Notably, in a 2013 letter to the Washington Post, she (and a fellow signatory) strongly defended Alito against a “snide piece”—that should be enough for you to guess the author—that insinuated that Alito has (in Remus’s summary) “some deep and abiding disrespect for women.” Remus responded: “This suggestion is offensive and couldn’t be further from the truth, as his many female clerks can attest.” Alito, she added, “is a good man who serves every day with humility, dedication and incredible intelligence and insight.”
Further to her credit, Remus submitted letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of President Trump’s nominations of her co-clerks, Andrew Oldham (Fifth Circuit) and Michael Park (Second Circuit). (Park and the other clerk in the Alito chambers, Jack L. White, co-signed the Oldham letter, and White also co-signed the Park letter.)
Remus endorsed both Oldham and Park “enthusiastically and without reservation” and attested to their outstanding characteristics: “There is not a lawyer in the country that a Republican President could nominate with greater ability, character, and potential to uphold the quality, integrity, and legitimacy of the federal judiciary than Mr. Park.” And: “Mr. Oldham has the ability, character, and temperament to be an excellent federal circuit court judge.”
It’s worth highlighting that the Left vehemently opposed the nominations of Oldham and Park. The Alliance for Justice, for example, condemned Oldham as “an ideological warrior bent on curtailing critical rights and protections for everyday people,” and contended that Park had “dedicated his career to advocating for ultraconservative causes” and had “nothing in his record to suggest he will be a fair, unbiased jurist.” Oldham was confirmed by a 50-49 vote (with all 49 Democrats voting no), and Park by a 52-41 vote (with no Democrats voting to confirm).
A conservative clerk from another chambers who clerked the same year as Remus tells me that she “never held herself out as especially ideological” and was a “very, very nice person.”