Leonard Leo constructed the court that gave Trump immunity for all his crimes and enabled him to destroy the nation, That little tantrum, a reprise of an earlier on last spring, is because Trump is worried that the Supreme Court is going to rule against his daft tariff scheme and he needs to blame someone and claim it was rigged because he never really loses.
This dialog between Dahlia Lithwick at Slate and Lisa Graves, legal expert and the author of Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights speaks to the reality we are dealing with:
Lithwick: Since Trump has taken office, that same Federalist Society–constructed majority is giving cover, sometimes even fighting lower court judges (including Federalist Society judges) to protect Trump’s prerogatives. The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention made news last month when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche did a little fireside chat where he more or less said that he and the Justice Department were at war against federal district courts and asked young members of the Federalist Society to join in that battle. The video of that chat now seems to have been taken down. So there is this public-facing “We’re just a debate society” FedSoc, but at the same time, what’s happening in the inside of that ballroom is someone is openly trying to foment a rebellion against Article 3 judges. How do you square that particular circle?
Graves: The president’s job is to faithfully execute the law. I was just finishing writing my book on Inauguration Day and John Roberts swore Trump in, and the president swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, to faithfully execute it. I wondered at that time, and I wonder even more so now, what that oath even means. It seems to have been rendered meaningless by John Roberts and his cohorts in the immunity decision, and in the series of unprecedented rulings this year that have allowed Trump to move forward with extreme actions that on their face look like they’re in violation of the Constitution, or statutes, or regulations, or rules, or contracts.
President Trump tapped out a few posts on Truth Social recently, “To Leonard Leo, Koch, and all of the countries and slimeballs that have ripped off the United States of America for years through the use of their own tariffs. We don’t have a court system that’s going to let you destroy our country any longer.” I think parsing Trump tweets—well, that way madness lies, but I do want to ask whether that signals to you a meaningful break between Trump and the conservative legal movement?
It’s clear that he has this notion of 100 percent loyalty and anything less is not OK. Charles Koch has gotten a huge amount of what he wanted from Donald Trump. The tax breaks from Trump’s first term were crafted by the Koch machine, pushed through in part with the help of Koch, and then they were made permanent. These are generational changes to our tax structure in ways that benefit billionaires like Koch, and Trump was more than happy to do it. The only time he’s not happy is if the Koch operation dares to issue a brief on the other side, as it has done in the tariff case.
The tariff case is an extraordinary circumstance where Trump has, yet again, claimed a power that is expressly committed to Congress. His lawyer has tried to expand a statute in order to basically shoehorn him into the ability to issue arbitrary and capricious and irrational tariffs. Some in the business community, like Koch, are objecting. Some groups that have lawyers who’ve been tied to Leonard Leo are objecting too—on that one issue. And it’s the one issue where the Roberts court, that’s so beholden to this right-wing agenda and also to Trump, may defect. It looks like they may say that this is the one bridge too far, along with perhaps Trump’s attempt to control the Fed, because it cuts against business interests. But on every other issue where our rights are at stake, where our future is at stake, where programs that Congress has funded to support our kids in schools, our health, cancer research, parks, the environment, on and on, this court has been putting its thumb on the scale of justice in a way that favors Trump and favors this right-wing movement. For an authoritarian, any daylight between someone and the regime is too much, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a meaningful, deep and wide difference between where Leonard Leo wants the court to head—unitary executive theory, consolidating the other gains on anti-regulation, moving forward when they think it’s politically expedient on assailing marriage equality, continuing to drive forward on limiting abortion access—these things are aligned, and Charles Koch, despite his libertarian roots, has been funding the groups that are all on board for that same agenda. Groups associated with Koch have announced that they will be spending big again in this midterm election like they did in the presidential, like they did in the midterm before that, to try to ensure that Donald Trump has a majority in both houses of Congress, regardless of the destruction that is unfolding for the rest of us.
They’re all getting what they paid for. Trump, as usual, thinks he deserves more than anyone else.
The tariff case was heard on a semi-expedited basis (at least in terms of these Trump cases) but they;re taking their sweet time with a decision. I would not be surprised if it goes Trump’s way. Why would they delay the decision for so long unless they wanted to pull one of those, “well, we might not agree with this but it’s too late now to reverse anything so maybe just don’t do it next time opinions?”
Who knows? But the idea that Leonard Leo has suddenly come to Jesus is ridiculous. He may be pretending that he isn’t a full-blown Trump lackey but for all intents and purposes he might as well be.