According to prosecutor Jack Smith, one of the most seasoned American Supreme Court lawyers has joined the prosecution’s battle against Trump.
According to the legal website Law360, Michael R. Dreeben went down in history as one of only seven attorneys to argue over a hundred cases before the Supreme Court in 2016.
In two separate petitions filed by Smith on December 11 and December 30 regarding the same subject, Dreeben is listed as a “counselor to the special counsel” in relation to the Trump federal indictments and Smith’s request for the Supreme Court to hear the president’s immunity case.
Smith’s brief before the Court of Appeals “is some of the greatest lawyering you will read,” said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on her blog Civil Discourse on Monday.
The role of “counselor to the special counsel” in this Trump case is not new to Dreeben.
Dreeben looked into allegations of obstruction of justice and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election as a consultant to special counsel Robert Mueller in 2017.
As Smith and his colleagues take their case to the Supreme Court, Dreeben will continue to serve as a legal counselor.
Much of the Supreme Court’s judicial style is familiar to Dreeben. Medical fraud was Dreeben’s first case before the Supreme Court, with John Roberts—now the chief justice of the court—representing the other side, according to the legal website SCOTUSblog.
Dreeben spent time in the United States Department of Justice’s Office of the Attorney General, rising through the ranks of assistant attorney general and deputy solicitor general, according to a biography on the Georgetown Law School website in Washington, D.C., where he now teaches.
Before his current position, Dreeben oversaw the US criminal docket at the US Supreme Court during his tenure as deputy solicitor general (1994–2019). The statement states that Dreeben has represented the United States in 105 cases heard by the Supreme Court and has briefed hundreds more matters heard by the same court and lower federal courts.
