it's greg katsas. and he did after all that badgering at his confirmation hearing, all the efforts to pin him down, he did pledge to senators that he would recuse himself from anything that he had worked on in the trump white house including specifically anything that he had worked on in the russia investigation, although he would not say exactly what that was. remember he said he didn't work on the manafort part of the russia investigation. he didn't work on the james comey being fired part of that investigation. but he did work on some other stuff that involved him advising the president about mueller's probe. and for whatever reason, he is the one judge who is recused now from this mystery case that today was the occasion for a roughly 30-page-long brief just getting filed by the mystery lawyers. there's the lawyers from mueller's team on one side, there's mystery lawyers on the other side representing whoever this mystery person is, who is in a big secret fight with the special counsel over a matte

when the trump administration started, greg katsas work the white house. he worked as a deputy under don mcgahn who also worked in the george w. bush administration, who also worked at that republican law firm, jones day. gregory katsas was not particularly more controversial than any other trump nominated judge. if you squint, he kind of look likes all of them, but with his kind of resume and the kinds of connections that he had and his 100% hard-line conservative record, he really was the kind of guys that republicans in the trump administration have been living to put on the courts. and in this case, the reason katsas' nomination was little more high profile than most is they wanted him for a particularly important court. they wanted to put katsas on the federal appeals court that sits in washington, d.c. there is federal appeals courts all around the country in all the different geographic circuits. but the one that sits in d.c. is sometimes called the second highest court in the land because that appeals court that sits in d.c., that's the one that he