Latest news with #LeonardLeo
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Amy Coney Barrett and the Secret Legal Agenda That Played Trump Like a Chump
President Trump is facing more legal challenges than ever as his administration runs roughshod over law and precedent. As his policy moves are challenged as legal overreach or outright violations of the Constitution, he is, understandably, paying particularly close attention to what happens in the courts, including the decisions rendered by the hundreds of judges he appointed during his first term. And he is not happy with what he sees. After a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, including one judge he appointed, ruled against him unanimously in a tariff case, he flew into a rage on Truth Social. In a message, he condemned the conservative Federalist Society—long the preeminent right-wing legal group—and labeled one of its former officials, Leonard Leo, 'a real 'sleazebag'… a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.' He went on: 'I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.' According to reports, Trump is particularly perturbed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom he appointed to the Supreme Court after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for siding with the court's liberals in a couple of cases. Barrett is ideologically very conservative but not a complete partisan, which means she won't always do whatever a Republican president wants. This is proving to be a particularly bitter discovery for him. That's the bad news, Mr. 'Art of the Deal.' The chips are in and you got played. The Federalist Society wasn't your servant. You were its tool. In early 2016, Trump made clear that he was outsourcing the task of selecting judges. 'We're going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society,' he said that March after a meeting with Leo, then its executive vice president and guiding force. What could go wrong? But for the Federalist Society, Trump was a vehicle (dare we say a clown car?) to achieving the goal of a transformed judiciary. Its loyalty wasn't to him, or to Trumpism, but to a vision of the American system remade. In that new system, conservative judges are the prime shapers of policy and power, ensuring that social conservatism and unfettered business interests reign. The Federalist Society has to be considered one of the most successful political organizations in American history, and much of that success is due to its patience. Founded in 1982 as, ostensibly, a law school debating society with a conservative bent, it quickly became an incubator of ideas and, most critically, a network for ambitious lawyers looking to climb up the ladder and implement a right-wing legal vision. Nearly every prominent Republican legal figure, including all the conservatives on the Supreme Court, has ties to the Society. Membership is a stamp of approval for Republican judges filling clerkships and Republican politicians filling their administrations: They're on the right team. Capturing the judiciary and reshaping the law would be the work of decades, spread across multiple presidencies. But all the right's legal victories of recent years—overturning Roe v. Wade, outlawing affirmative action, making campaign finance law all but meaningless, weakening the ability of labor unions to organize—can be directly traced to the Federalist Society. All of that sounds—or sounded—fine to Trump, whose first and only consideration is his own interests. He cares deeply about loyalty, but it only runs one way: from everyone else to him. Once you give someone a lifetime appointment, however, they may no longer need to scratch your back. Let's not kid ourselves: Trump has gotten the vast majority of what he wants from the courts, which during his first term he filled with a collection of partisans and hacks. But there are limits to how far they'll go; Politico reports that Trump has been incensed that the Supreme Court didn't overturn the 2020 election for him. Don't give them too much credit. The Supreme Court's most important recent ruling is probably Trump v. United States, in which it said that the president is almost completely immune from prosecution. (Somehow the republic managed to survive almost 250 years without the president being allowed to do all the crimes he wants.) That may have been what Trump had in mind when at his address to Congress in March, he said to Chief Justice John Roberts, 'Thank you again. Won't forget.' Trump is always keeping score, and his thanks will again turn to anger the next time a ruling doesn't give him what he wants. But the Federalist Society already has its victory. And if Trump doesn't like it—this time or any time? He'll be gone eventually, but the right-wing legal movement will go on.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
From friends to foes: how Trump turned on the Federalist Society
The world's attention last week was gripped by Donald Trump's abrupt fallout with the tech tycoon Elon Musk. Yet at the same time, and with the help of a rather unflattering epithet, the president has also stoked a rift between his Maga royal court and the conservative legal movement whose judges and lawyers have been crucial in pulling the US judiciary to the right. The word was 'sleazebag', which Trump deployed as part of a lengthy broadside on Truth Social, his social media platform. The targets of his wrath were the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization, and Leonard Leo, a lawyer associated with the group who has, in recent years, branched out to become one of the most powerful rightwing kingmakers in the US. In his post, Trump said that during his first term 'it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions. He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court – I hope that is not so, and don't believe it is!' Founded in 1982, the Federalist Society is an important player in the conservative movement. Many conservative lawyers, judges, law students and law clerks are members of the group, attend its events or run in its general orbit. Republican presidents use its recommendations to pick judges for vacant judicial seats. In the days following Trump's Truth Social harangue, people in the conservative legal world, which is centered in Washington DC but spans law schools and judge's chambers across the country, are wondering what this rift portends. Is this a classic Trump tantrum that will soon blow over? Or does it speak to a larger schism, with even the famously conservative Federalist Society not rightwing enough – or fanatically loyal enough – to satisfy Trump? 'I don't think this will blow over,' Stuart Gerson, a conservative attorney and a former acting US attorney general, said. 'Because it's not an event. It's a condition … He thinks judges are his judges, and they're there to support his policies, rather than the oath that they take [to the constitution].' In recent months, Trump has been stymied repeatedly by court rulings by federal judges. His rage has been particularly acute when the judges are ones whom he or other Republican presidents appointed. The Maga world has turned aggressively against Amy Coney Barrett, for example, after the supreme court justice voted contrary to the Trump line in several key cases. The immediate cause of Trump's recent outburst was a ruling by the US court of international trade against his sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. In this case, his anger appears to have had less to do with the judges than with the fact that a group of conservative lawyers and academics, including one who co-chairs the board of the Federalist Society, had filed a brief in the case challenging his tariffs. Trump is probably also aware that the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), an anti-regulation, pro-free market legal group affiliated with Leo and the billionaire Charles Koch, has sued, separately, to stop the tariffs. John Vecchione, an attorney at the NCLA, noted that the Federalist Society is a broad tent, with conservative jurists of many different inclinations and factions, including free marketeers and libertarians who do not subscribe to Trump's economic nationalism. Members often disagree with each other or find themselves on different sides of a case. This February, a federal prosecutor affiliated with the group, Danielle Sassoon, resigned after she said the Trump administration tried to pressure her to drop a case. The 'real question', Vecchione said, is what diehard Maga lawyers closest to Trump are telling him. 'Are they trying to form a new organization? Or are they trying to do to the Federalist Society what they've done to the House Republican caucus, for instance … where nobody wants to go up against Trump on anything?' he said. 'I think that some of the people around Trump believe that any right-coded organization has to do his bidding.' A newer legal organization, the Article III Project (A3P), appears to have captured Trump's ear in his second term. The organization was founded by Mike Davis, a rabidly pro-Trump lawyer, and seems to be positioning itself as a Maga alternative to the Federalist Society. On its website, A3P claims to have 'helped confirm' three supreme court justices, 55 federal circuit judges and 13 federal appellate judges. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Davis recently asserted in the Hill that the Federalist Society 'abandoned' Trump during his various recent legal travails. 'And not only did they abandon him – they had several [Federalist Society] leaders who participated in the lawfare and threw gas on the fire,' Davis said. Although Leo was a 'a close ally' of Trump during his first term, the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump and Leo 'haven't spoken in five years'. Leo has responded to Trump's outburst delicately. In a short statement, he said he was 'very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts, and it was a privilege being involved', adding that the reshaping of the federal bench would be 'President Trump's most important legacy'. Yet this Tuesday, a lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal – pointedly titled 'This Conservative Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You, After Getting Dumped by Trump' – argued that Leo is 'unbounded by the pressures of re-election or dependence on outside money', and is the 'rare conservative, who, after being cast out of Trump's inner circle, remains free to pursue his own vision of what will make America great again'. In 2021, a Chicago billionaire gave Leo a $1.6bn political donation, thought to be the largest such donation in US history. As a result, Leo has an almost unprecedented power in terms of dark-money influence. The article also noted that much of Leo's focus has shifted to the entertainment industry, where he is funding big-budget television series and films that channel conservative values. Vecchione thinks that Trump's tendency to surround himself with sycophants and loyalists will work against him. 'If you have a lawyer who only tells you what makes you happy, and only does what you say to do, you don't have a good lawyer,' Vecchione said. 'That's not a good way to get lawyers. Not a good way to get judges, either.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump torched the American Bar Association. Then the Federalist Society. Who's left?
The number of U.S. judges who have either barred, delayed or criticized actions made by the Trump administration in the almost six months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House is an extensive list. And Trump appears to be at his wits' end about it. A week ago, in a post on Truth Social, Trump used choice words to go after conservative and libertarian legal organization The Federalist Society and the chairman of its board of directors, Leonard Leo. Leo and the Federalist Society were deeply influential in judicial nominations during Trump's first term, including on Judge Timothy Reif — who recently, on a three-judge panel, ruled against Trump's tariff agenda. In his post, Trump said that during his first term, when he was 'new to Washington,' the Federalist Society was recommended to him to help select judges to appoint. 'I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,' he said. On the same day, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a letter to the American Bar Association's president William Bay that the Department of Justice would no longer give them 'special treatment' like 'some administrations, (where) the ABA received notice of nominees before a nomination was announced to the public,' she wrote. 'Some administrations would even decide whether to nominate an individual based on a rating assigned by the ABA.' Though the attack on the Federalist Society came as a shock to critics and supporters of Trump, giving the ABA the cold shoulder was not a surprise. Utah Sen. Mike Lee has been very outspoken against the American Bar Association, accusing it of being more favorable towards Democratic policy. In a social media post on Thursday, he accused the ABA of being 'practically the lawyers wing of the Democratic National Committee.' During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, he also defended his ties with the Federalist Society, arguing that unlike the ABA, 'It's an open forum for discussion among lawyers and law students. (An) open forum in which multiple viewpoints are, in fact, welcome.' 'It's not an advocacy organization,' Lee said, 'quite unlike the American Bar Association.' In a Wall Street Journal opinion podcast on Monday, John Yoo, a law professor and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said Trump's words against Leo and the Federalist Society were 'outrageous.' 'That was truly outrageous to accuse Leonard Leo, one of the stalwarts of the conservative movement, of being something like a traitor and using judicial appointments to advance his own personal agenda,' Yoo said. He also said he doesn't understand why Trump would do something like that. 'Why would President Trump turn his back on one of his greatest, if not his greatest achievements from the first term, appointing three justices. ... Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, which reinforced Justices Alito and Thomas on the Supreme Court in building a really solid originalist majority, not a conservative majority, not politically Republican majority, but a majority that believes in interpreting the Constitution based on its original meaning.' Despite the insults, Leo told the New York Post in a statement that he's 'very grateful' to Trump for his work in 'transforming the Federal Courts, and it was a privilege being involved. ... There's more work to be done, for sure, but the Federal Judiciary is better than it's ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump's most important legacy.'
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
The Trump foe behind Amazon's Biblical epic
Leonard Leo won his decades-long crusade to reshape the US legal system when he helped Donald Trump appoint three conservative Supreme Court justices, securing a Right-leaning supermajority in the nation's highest court. While he has since fallen out of favour with the president who last week branded him a 'sleazebag', the Federalist Society leader has quietly been fighting another battle: giving pop culture a Godly makeover. 'I just said to myself well if this can work for law, why can't it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now,' Mr Leo said in a promotional video for Teneo, a conservative networking hub he helped fund. He went on: 'Entertainment that's really corrupting our youth – why can't we build talent pipelines and networks that can positively affect those areas as well?' So far, the Christian power player's campaign to litter the streaming charts with conservative programming is another success story. Mr Leo, 59, secretly helped bankroll the studio behind House of David, a biblical retelling of David and Goliath, according to the Wall Street Journal. Like the story of its protagonist, it defied the odds by leaping to the coveted number one spot on Amazon Prime. It has already been commissioned for a second season. Mr Leo, who joined the Federalist Society as a student in the 1980s, reportedly has not spoken to Mr Trump in five years, but as his scope for influencing the president dwindled, he began yielding another power playing tool. In 2020 Barre Seid, the Chicago billionaire, donated all of his shares in his electrical manufacturing firm Tripp Lite to one of Mr Leo's conservative non-profits. It was then sold for $1.6 billion. This funding allowed him to plough millions of dollars into amplifying religious and conservative filmmakers, the newspaper reported. Mr Leo is said to have helped fund Wonder Project, a Texas-based studio founded by Jon Erwin, the Christian director, which created House of David. The studio's tagline is: 'Restoring faith in things worth believing in.' In an Instagram post announcing it had achieved number one on the Amazon Prime chart, Wonder Project said 'all glory to God for this one'. Mr Erwin is a member of Teneo which has a subgroup focused on entertainment. Its annual conference is understood to have become a nerve centre for Christian filmmakers where creatives pitch to conservative investors. The network is understood to invest in studios rather than individual movies to achieve an ongoing impact on culture, rather than producing one-hit wonders. Wonder Project has received funding from Sovereign Capital, a Christian investment firm. John Coleman, its leader, said its objective is 'to love God and love our neighbour through investing'. Mr Leo has also reportedly given money into Sycamore Studios, which focuses on children's entertainment free of views of diversity, gender or homosexuality. 'We're not going to be the Ford Foundation to be around forever,' Mr Leo told the Wall Street Journal. 'The goal is to do our work, and at some point in time to decide that we've done what we can do and move on.' The success of House of David, which more than 22 million people streamed in the first two weeks, comes amid a surge in appetite for Christian films – one of which Mr Erwin has helped spearhead. He was the mastermind behind Jesus Revolution, a 2023 film which is based on the true story of the early days of the 'Jesus People' hippie subculture in the 1960s. It left out that the protagonist, Lonnie Frisbee, who really did kickstart the Jesus movement, was gay and died of Aids in 1993, after he was excommunicated and outcast from the movement he had founded. It made more than $50 million at the box office and when it was released it was the highest-grossing film released by the Lionsgate studio since 2019. It was the 48th highest grossing film in the US in 2023. Mr Erwin's previous works include October Baby, about young mothers finding God in an abortion clinic, and Woodland, which features young mothers finding God on an equalities march. 'Within the entertainment industry specifically, I think there's an uprising on the behalf of Christianity,' Mr Erwin previously told Christianity Today. 'I think there's a resurgence in belief and a sudden increase in spirituality in America, even though church attendance is going down. It's an exciting moment to be in the business. We're at the forefront of a return to God.' He added: 'We've only scratched the surface on what faith-based entertainment can be. We're wondering, 'How can we make the Bible a cinematic universe?'' Key players continue to make inroads. In April, Angel Studios released King of Kings, an animated film in which Charles Dickens, voiced by Kenneth Brannagh, tells the story of Jesus to his son Walter, played by Roman Griffin Davis. The film made over $60 million at the box office and is number 11 of the highest grossing films so far this year in the US, according to IMDB. Angel Studios also helped launch Biblical drama The Chosen, a series about Jesus's life. When the fifth season was released this year, they put out a three-part cinematic release. All three are in the top 50 highest-grossing box office releases so far this year, bringing in more than $43 million collectively. Mr Erwin's next directing project with Angel Studios, is Young Washington, a film about the origins of America's first president. Trump attacks Leo When it comes to the origins of Mr Trump's initial electoral success, Mr Leo was certainly a player. During the 2016 election campaign he gave Mr Trump a list of potential justices he could appoint to win over support from the Republican base. He advised Mr Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But last week, Mr Trump, who reportedly believes Mr Leo took too much credit for the judicial appointments, went from simply banishing Mr Leo to his close confidantes to publicly attacking him. 'I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges,' Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social after a US court blocked the majority of his tariffs. 'I did so, openly and freely, but then realised that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.' Responding to the jibe, Mr Leo praised Mr Trump 'transforming' the federal courts, which he said amounted to Mr Trump's 'most important legacy'. As Mr Leo moves on from Maga and begins to flex his soft power in the entertainment industry, it is clear Mr Trump was just one episode in his multi-part series on his own crusade to reshape America in his conservative, Christian vision.
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Donald Trump Needs the Likes of Leonard Leo
Does Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse have President's Trump ear? It sounded like it when Mr. Trump strangely accused the conservative lawyer of having 'his own separate ambitions' ('Trump vs. His Own Judges,' Review & Outlook, May 31). Mr. Leo's only goal is to defend human dignity, which in America means supporting the structural limitations on government power built into the Constitution. You don't have to be Leonard's friend to understand what motivates him. His work at the Federalist Society has been focused on cultivating lawyers and judges who understand that individual freedom depends on the separation of powers and checks and balances. Leonard is also a man of deep Catholic faith, and he values the Constitution precisely because it enables people to enjoy the freedom that God gave humanity.
