President Donald Trump on Tuesday tapped conservative heavyweights with energy chops for top positions in his administration, including Jonathan Brightbill as the nominee for general counsel at the Department of Energy.
Brightbill is a partner at Winston & Strawn and affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society.
He was a lawyer in the Justice Department in Trump’s first term, ultimately taking on the role of acting assistant attorney general for the Environment & Natural Resources Division in the final weeks of the administration. Brightbill took that position after the departure of his former boss, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, whom Democrats linked to a Trump administration plan to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.
In recent weeks, Brightbill has been working with the Trump administration to reverse EPA’s endangerment finding, which is the legal foundation to regulate greenhouse gases.
