Thomas Elliot Gaiser, known professionally as Elliot Gaiser or T. Elliot Gaiser, is an American attorney, former Supreme Court Clerk and incoming Solicitor General of Ohio set to take office on November 20, 2023.
Background and education
Gaiser is a Christian and credits his faith-based education as fundamental to his preparation for public service.
In 2012, Gaiser received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy and Speech Studies from Hillsdale College. Gaiser was the president of Hillsdale's chapter of Students for Free Enterprise during his senior year. Gaiser returned to Hillsdale during the fall semester of the 2022-23 academic year to teach a one weekend, one-credit course on constitutional interpretation.
Gaiser initially attended the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. After his first year, he transferred to the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a Juris Doctor in 2016.
Career
Gaiser clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during the 2016–2017 term, Judge Neomi Rao on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and finally for justice Samuel Alito of the United States Supreme Court during the 2021–2022 term.
Prior to clerking for Justice Alito, Gaiser practiced law as an appellate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Boyden Gray & Associates LLP. His notable work at includes authorship credit on an amicus brief filed in before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of economists supporting the successful efforts to overturn affirmative action policies at American institutions of higher education in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In 2022, after clerking at the Supreme Court, he joined Jones Day in their Columbus, Ohio office.
Connection with the efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election
Throughout 2020 and into 2021, Gaiser served as a Senior Associate on the Trump campaign legal team in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany testified that she considered Gaiser a trusted expert on constitutional law in her deposition to the January 6th Committee. Gaiser was one member of the small team of general counsel working on the campaign's 2020 election litigation from the day of the election.
Elliot shifted to occupy a strategic communications role after he produced a document for the campaign detailing allegations of fraud and abuse of processes by state officials, specifically accusing Former Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Kathryn Boockvar of wrongdoing. Gaiser presented the document with the intent that Trump use it as a speech and requested that McEnany circulated it amongst the staff. Afterwards, he became one of McEnany's primary consultants for her messaging strategy on the election until he left to clerk for Justice Alito.
See also
List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 8) Timeline of the January 6 United States Capitol attack