D. John Sauer

Dean John Sauer (born November 13, 1974) is an American lawyer who served as Solicitor General of Missouri from 2017 to 2023 and represented Donald Trump in his successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. United States.

Sauer was born on November 13, 1974. He attended Saint Louis Priory School, a Catholic secondary day school for boys in Creve Coeur, Missouri, run by the Benedictine monks of Saint Louis Abbey.

Sauer graduated from Duke University in 1997 with a double Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. He attended then Oriel College at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and received a Bachelor of Arts in theology.^[1][2]

After earning a Master of Arts in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, Sauer entered Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 2004 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude.^[3]

After law school, Sauer was a law clerk to Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2004 to 2005 and to U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia from 2005 to 2006.

Sauer worked as a litigation associate at Cooper & Kirk and then became an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. He later reentered private practice.^[4]

In 2015, Sauer defended a priest falsely accused of sexually abusing children. Sauer helped the priest sue his accusers and the police officers who were involved.^[5] Prosecutors had dropped all charges against the priest, and the priest's record has since been fully expunged.^[6][7] Sauer prevailed in the civil lawsuits related to the accusations.^[8]

In January 2017, then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley appointed Sauer Solicitor General of Missouri.^[9]

On December 10, 2020, as Solicitor General Counsel of Record, Sauer signed the "Motion of States of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, And Utah To Intervene And Proposed Bill of Complaint In Intervention" in an attempt to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.^[10] The motion sought to intervene and join the Texas Bill of Complaint (filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton), to prevent the selection of presidential electors based upon the November election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan.^[11]

In January 2023, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey appointed Sauer Deputy Attorney General for Special Litigation.^[12][13] Sauer resigned from his post less than a month later, on January 27, 2023.^[14]

In July 2023. Sauer testified before a U.S. House Subcommittee as the Louisiana Department of Justice Special Assistant Attorney General. ^[15]

On January 9, 2024, he represented former President Donald Trump in oral arguments before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit regarding the issue of presidential immunity in the criminal case of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.^[16]

At the hearing, in response to a hypothetical question posed by Judge Florence Y. Pan about whether a U.S. President could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and be immune from prosecution,^[17] Sauer argued that the impeachment clause in Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution^[18] implies that the Senate must first impeach and convict before a president can be criminally prosecuted, and that acquittal bars prosecution.^[19] Sauer stated that this type of prosecution of a former president "would authorize, for example, the indictment of President Biden in the Western District of Texas after he leaves office for mismanaging the border allegedly". ^[20]

In November 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he intends to nominate Sauer to serve as the next Solicitor General of the United States.^[21]

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 9)
• List of Rhodes Scholars

• Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court from the Oyez Project