The nominee for a top Justice Department job has left a digital trail of deleted social media posts that his critics say suggest fringe views on a number of issues, including an openness to defying court orders and acceptance of arranged marriages under certain circumstances.
In one deleted post verified by CBS News, Aaron Reitz, who has been nominated by President Trump to lead the department’s Office of Legal Policy, commented on a March 2020 ruling by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel temporarily blocking Texas from shuttering an abortion clinic during the COVID pandemic.
“Judge Yeakel has made his decision,” Reitz wrote on the social media site X. “Now let him enforce it.”
In another deleted post he appeared, possibly in jest, to embrace the anti-communist firebrand Joseph McCarthy. Above a picture of McCarthy, Reitz wrote, “Bring back the good ‘ol days.”
Reitz declined to comment.
Senators on the Judiciary Committee will be voting Thursday on whether to advance his nomination to become assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Policy, a low-profile but highly consequential post within the Justice Department.
Reitz is currently the chief of staff to Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, and before that was the deputy attorney general of Texas where he oversaw the office’s so-called “Biden Docket,” a barrage of more than 20 lawsuits challenging the previous administration’s policies, with a major focus on immigration
and the border. In announcing Reitz’s appointment on Truth Social, Mr. Trump praised him as a true MAGA attorney, a “warrior for our Constitution.”
The Office of Legal Policy advises the attorney general on key matters of policy and law, works closely with Congress to craft legislation and is often at the forefront of picking and vetting federal judges. Its roughly two dozen lawyers toil away on the department’s fourth floor, rarely drawing public attention and largely staying out of the political crossfire.
Reitz graduated from the University of Texas Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the law review. He clerked for a conservative member of the Texas Supreme Court before joining Bracewell LLP, a white-shoe law firm in Houston that once included former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a name partner. He is a member of the Federalist Society and also did a five-year combat tour in Helmand Province during the Afghan war.
Online, Reitz has for years been an active advocate for conservative views and an avid supporter of the MAGA movement.
“Friendly reminder that ‘birthright citizenship’ is not a thing,” he tweeted in 2021. He has called for rolling back reforms to mandatory minimum sentences, posting, “make mandatory minimums great again.” And he has inveighed against the federal right to an abortion, saying that “roe’s finding that there’s a const right to abortion is garbage.” In 2022, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, leaving the legality of abortion to the states.
But Reitz’s social media monologue has at times veered into more provocative terrain. Some of those views have attracted the attention of Democrats in Congress during the confirmation process.
Among them are comments he made suggesting it may be permissible in certain instances to defy a court order. At his confirmation hearing last month, Reitz was grilled by Democrats about what they saw as his online taunt of Judge Yeakel about his abortion ruling, challenging him to “enforce it.”
At his confirmation hearing, Reitz responded to questioning about the post, saying, “There is no hard and fast rule in all instances in which a litigant must comply with all or some or various parts of a judicial decision. It is so fact-law- and case-specific that one cannot speak generally.”
Some of his most extreme social media posts have eluded scrutiny until now. A review of hundreds of Reitz’s posts in the past few years reveal incendiary views on a number of legal, social and political issues. Ahead of his confirmation, at least 4,000 tweets were deleted from his X feed, though it is unclear when the scrubbing took place. The tweets cover a cross-section of hot-button issues, from abortion to the murder of George Floyd to false claims Reitz made about the 2020 election.
One of Reitz’s posts suggested openness to arranged marriages.
“The more one realizes that marriage is more of a public institution than a private one, the more ‘arranged’ marriages (rightly understood and coupled with some limited/guiding principles) makes a lot of sense,” he wrote.
And in September 2020, Reitz seemed to want to resurrect the reputation of McCarthy, the a American demagogue who launched a furious campaign to discover and blacklist suspected communists across American society and whose name became synonymous with political witch hunts.
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement, “Aaron Reitz is an eminently-qualified nominee, who will join our incredible Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure the Department of Justice delivers for the American people.”
Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee vote is scheduled for Thursday, and Reitz is expected to be approved on a party-line vote.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-justice-dept-nominee-aaron-reitz-social-media-trail/
