Adam Schiff. Jeffrey Goldberg. Leonard Leo. What do all three men have in common? While they may span the ideological spectrum, these three men were all crowned with the title “sleazebag” by the President of the United States.
Adam Schiff being called one makes sense. He is a Democratic Senator from a staunchly blue state; he was the lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial, and he has repeatedly expressed his disapproval with the current administration. He does not sound like the type of guy Donald Trump is looking to embrace.
For Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, being called a “sleazebag” also makes sense. Even without his breaking coverage of the Signalgate fiasco, the magazine he edits does not have the most favorable reputation among MAGA folks.
But Leonard Leo? The leader of the Federalist Society, advisor to legally conservative legends like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and staunch Republican Leonard Leo? What could Leo have possibly done to warrant this type of repudiation from the President of the United States?
On May 28, a three-judge panel from the United States Court of International Trade put down Trump’s “liberation day” tariff plan, a plan which would have (seemingly randomly) placed massive tariffs on over a hundred countries. President Trump attempted to go through with these tariffs under his assumption that the International Emergency Powers Act of 1977 allowed the Executive to declare and impose unilateral tariffs on trading partners around the world. The panel noted that the President does in fact, not have that power, and effectively put a block on Trump’s ability to upend global trade. In response, President Trump went on a massive tirade via his social media platform “Truth Social,” effectively calling these judges “traitors” and acting out of hatred, rather than a deep understanding of the power of the Executive. He writes:
How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of “TRUMP?”
While we can safely answer “no,” President Trump’s tirade touches on another aspect of this saga, one showcasing his disdain for the restraints placed upon his office and the breakaway of the new era Republican Party from traditionally conservative values. Donald Trump went after Leonard Leo, the leader of the conservative legal activist group The Federalist Society. The Federalist Society hosts thousands of conservative lawyers and believers in traditional conservative jurisprudential ideas. Five members of the current Supreme Court were part of The Federalist Society before they were placed upon the bench; Leonard Leo himself sat alongside Clarence Thomas during his tumultuous confirmation hearings.
The President feels like he has been tricked by the Federalist Society into appointing judges who do not have the President’s agenda in mind. And he might be right — Federalist Society lawyers span widely in their views of the President; some are currently in jail for assisting Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and others are issuing universal injunctions to stop Executive actions they view as illegal or unconstitutional. Trump, in his tirade, writes:
I was new to Washington, and 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.
Calling Leo a “sleazebag” might not be the most inapt characterization of his political and legal career, but the accusation coming from the mouth of the President is a bigger deal than most are willing to admit. There is no doubt in my mind that Leo recommended lawyers and judges who he felt like could have played a part in Trump’s conservative revolution; Leo probably felt like originalist judges tend to serve Republican agendas better, and by recommending originalists, they would be able to usher in a new era of Republican rule. In part, Leo was correct. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was not just a massive victory for Republicans and conservatives, but it also highlighted a true step forward for the originalist movement — one who views certain Supreme Court decisions as “legislating from the bench” rather than diligently interpreting the Constitution.
But what Leo might not have expected is that in Trump’s return to the White House following the 2024 election, anything goes. Constitutional restraints, judicial review, and attempts to stay within party lines were all thrown out of the window in the first one hundred days of the administration. Donald Trump learned from his first term the exact actions he had to take in order to make his second term much more legislatively impactful. In Leo’s attempts to subdue the Supreme Court’s power to “legislate from the bench,” he emboldened a President to legislate from the Oval Office; by coming after judges, signing outrageously unconstitutional executive orders, and subduing the power of the Legislature, President Trump is effectively coalescing governing power into one place, the Executive. Whoever stands in his way, including Leo and the Federalist Society, are enemies of the regime and obstacles to be destroyed.
This signals more than just a break-up between the President and one legal advisor. This is a mask-off moment for the Republican Party, and a truly defining episode in their acceptance of totalitarian rule from conservative politicians in Washington. If the current Republican party does not seek policy prescriptions and legal opinions from the tenets of conservatism, where do they seek them from? Is it solely the word of President Trump? It increasingly seems like that might be the case.
The Society and Leo
The Federalist Society has a few major goals they aim to accomplish. Firstly, their commitment to the legal philosophies of textualism and originalism puts them at the forefront of conservative legal communities, often recommending judges to Republican administrations that they believe will further this jurisprudential theory. They attempt to shape the federal judiciary in a way that resembles a traditionally conservative one; by pushing for overturning liberal staples of the court, they inch our country towards a vision of the future that, they believe, is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. Their massive legal network of conservative judges and lawyers puts them in a key position to act as a legal advisor to Presidents and members of Congress, intermixing the Republican Party with legal conservatives around the nation.
In theory, Donald Trump should not be opposed to this. He has spoken highly of originalist pioneers such as Scalia, nominated textualists such as Gorsuch and Barrett to the Supreme Court, and has used the philosophy as a guiding light in his relationship with the Judiciary. But theory is one thing. The President has shown an outright disdain for the Constitution, arguing to suspend it when he sees fit. He has levied attacks against originalist judges who defy his agenda. He has signed and supported executive orders that go against core constitutional rights such as birthright citizenship. While on paper, President Trump should be a supporter of the Federalist Society and their attempts to usher in an era of originalism, his actions show that the only guiding light he seeks is that of his own authoritarian disposition.
For those of us who have seen HBO’s hit show, Game of Thrones, Leonard Leo plays a role in Washington that is analogous to that of Tywin Lannister. While Tywin has a much more formidable role in Casterly Rock, his ability to play puppet-master from the shadows is what defines his similarity to Leonard Leo. Leo is the puppet-master of legal conservatism in Washington D.C. His access to a network of judges and lawyers from around the nation puts him in a position to advise the President on who should be nominated to federal judgeship positions. And for the most part, presidents take his word into account and appoint judges who match up with their agenda; Leo worked with Clarence Thomas when he was being appointed by H.W., Leo worked with Bush in the nomination hearings for Justice Alito and Justice Roberts, and Leo advised President Trump during all of his Supreme Court nominations.
So a life-long Republican, who started Cornell’s chapter of the Federalist Society, devoted his whole life to legal conservatism, and advised multiple other Republican presidents is now in the President’s crosshairs because some of his judges followed their textualist framework and halted the usurpation of Executive power. Why are Republicans not up in arms about this? Why are constitutional conservatives and originalists not speaking up about the degradation of conservative values in the Republican Party?
One might say they are scared of Trump and his pushback. This can overwhelmingly be seen in the debates in the halls of Congress regarding the inaptly named “Big Beautiful Bill.” Republicans who hold true to their right-wing values have come out against the abomination, only to be told to quiet down and heed to the demands of President Trump. And while this explanation holds weight, it only really extends to supporters of the bill and Congressional Republicans. This does not explain why as of yet, even the Federalist Society itself has not responded to the affronts to their institution, as well as the values they hold dear.
It is my summation that the Republican Party, at least jurisprudentially, is not a conservative party. It is not the party of textualism or originalism or whatever ideology comes out of the minds (and wallets) of the Koch Brothers. It is the party of Trump, and the legal philosophy of the party is Trumpism. Trump’s agenda takes precedence over traditional conservative values. This is not only shown in the consistent 5-4 or 6-3 results of major SCOTUS cases in which constitutional questions are the main subject. This is shown through the silence of the Republican Party, en masse, regarding their response to attacks on jurisprudential conservative values. And even more intrinsically, this comes from the office of the Attorney General in her attempts to distance the American Bar Association from their duties in vetting federal judicial nominees.
Pam Bondi and the American Bar Association
The Department of Justice recently rescinded the ability of the American Bar Association to vet judicial nominees. This is a task that they have been undergoing since the mid-20th century, and have enjoyed access to non-public information in order to attest to the high-quality of judges. Attorney General Pam Bondi seems to be remiss to the fact that they have vetted and approved every single one of Trump’s SCOTUS picks and only rejected three of his over fifty federal judicial nominations. She speaks of the ABA with scorn and disdain, writing to the President of the ABA:
Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic Administrations
While this is obviously untrue, it just goes to show that the current administration is committed to working within the restraints put upon it in order to ensure constitutional legitimacy.
Furthermore, by furthering the ABA from the process of vetting judicial nominees, Pat Bondi and the Department of Justice are signaling that future nominations might not go to conservatives who believe in the values of the Constitution and are willing and able to uphold it. Instead, we may see sycophants who see the Judiciary as an obstacle that needs to be reduced in order to allow Trump to push his agenda.
This is a defining moment in our country. Are we a nation of laws? Are we a nation of tyrants? We learn in school about the ideologies that the framers of the Constitution upheld and defended — do these values no longer matter? I, by no means, align with the jurisprudential ideologies of originalism, but I can see the value in regarding the Constitution with the respect and reverence of those like Scalia and Roberts. These values are gone. They are no longer staples of the Republican Party or of American conservatism in general. The Republican Party has turned into a cult of personality, where the limits placed upon the cult leader are obstacles to be squashed, not borders to be respected. And by distancing neutral organizations like the ABA from the process of vetting judicial nominees, the Republican Party has shown its true colors.
Cult or Party?
The Republican Party, for a while now, has been willingly giving President Trump more and more legislative powers. From supportive SCOTUS decisions to allowing the President to act as a whip in Congress, a large amount of power in Washington has flowed to Pennsylvania Avenue.
This is one of the classic patterns we see while studying authoritarian takeovers of governments. Adolf Hitler vilified Weimar judges, calling them communists and leftist traitors — when the institution of the Weimar judiciary was weakest, the Nazis developed parallel courts called Volksgerichtshof which acted as a kangaroo court in order to further the Nazi agenda. Mussolini destroyed the independence of the Italian courts and created a fake “Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State” which purely acted out of fascist pressure to prosecute political opponents. Erdoğan in Turkey has purged thousands of members of the judiciary and created “terror courts” which are currently being used to jail journalists. The pattern is the same throughout history. We cannot allow the President to lead us down this path.
And while the President is known to burn bridges and cut off key allies, something feels more nefarious about this interaction with Leo and the Federalist Society. It is not like a very public (and embarassing) spat with Elon Musk regarding their egos. It is not forcing someone out because their scandal is too politically damaging. Trump is coming after Leo because Leo is committed to conservative values. Leo’s commitment to conservative values (that many of us disagree with) will invariably get him in trouble with the President purely because of the fact that Donald Trump is not a conservative president. He does not look to the guiding principles of Buckley and Reagan as policy indicators. He does not believe in originalism and textualism. He believes in one thing and one thing only: himself.