Quotes from Neal Katyal

I think that the terms of the Affordable Care Act do give the states a fair amount of wiggle room and to do things as they see fit. The Affordable Care Act was not designed as some sort of one-size-fits-all solution from Washington. There's lots of discretion given to the states.

Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump's demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?

Presidents routinely testify in criminal cases. You know, George W. Bush did it with Valerie Plame. Bill Clinton did it three times with Ken Starr. Gerald Ford did it with respect to a testimony about a Charles Manson follower. And Ronald Reagan, I think, is perhaps the most important precedent.

Prosecutors use the conspiracy doctrine to punish two or more people who merely agree to commit a criminal act. They don't even have to actually perform the act; they just need to have agreed to do so.

No one wants a president to be guilty of obstruction of justice. The only thing worse than that is a guilty president who goes without punishment.

Justice Scalia was usually particularly challenging to me at oral argument, but I so respected his intellect and commitment to the pursuit of truth.

President Clinton invoked executive power a bunch of times... I think once he started doing that, the courts really pushed back on him. He couldn't use it for things that actually had a better basis. He used it for things that were personal, like the Lewinsky investigation, trying to block his aides from testifying.

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III's conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.

Merrick Garland was the most qualified nominee, not just in our lifetimes but perhaps in the history of the United States Supreme Court. The chief judge of the D.C. Circuit for 20 years, the nation's second-highest court. Never once been overruled by the Court in his 20 years. He was extraordinary.

I don't think that the Supreme Court really takes cases with kind of a theme in mind. They get about 10,000 requests a year, and what are called 'petitions for certiorari,' which are essentially 30 page documents which say, 'Hey, Court, hear my case.' And they don't take very many of them.

Firing the prosecutor who's about to get you or your campaign is kind of quintessential obstruction of justice.

No responsible scholar who thinks a sitting president cannot be indicted also thinks an attorney general can try to truncate a process of oversight - by Congress, for example - by 'pre-clearing' the president in advance.

In 2006, I argued and won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court case that struck down President George W. Bush's use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

Our founders recognized that 'men were not angels' and that checks and balances in government were critical to avoid threats to the rule of law.

Barr has thrown himself in with Trump in ways unbecoming to the nation's highest legal official. His conduct in trying to clear Trump is of a piece with his baseless attacks on 'spying' by the FBI and his defiance of Congress's subpoenas.

Appointing special counsel Robert Mueller to probe Russian meddling in the 2016 election (and any possible ties to President Trump's campaign) was the only choice the Justice Department had. This is the best way to deal with the conflicts and potential conflicts of interest these matters posed.

I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law. His years on the bench reveal a commitment to judicial independence - a record that should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.

Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace.

Even though Mr. Trump can give his campaign as much of his own money as he wants to, he can't ask other people to front the money for him and promise to pay them back later without reporting the arrangement in a timely fashion to the Federal Election Commission.

The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done.

The idea that the special counsel regulations, which were written to provide the public with confidence against a coverup, would empower an attorney general to restrict disclosure in an investigation of the president is a nonstarter.

When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress.

At times, President Trump has behaved far worse than Nixon did.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress, and the public.