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When Donald Trump and his team hired attorneys to work in the White House, they didn’t exactly turn to the ACLU or the American Constitution Society for applicants. The then-president and his aides hired exactly the kind of lawyers one would expect to find in a modern Republican administration: conservative legal professionals, with predictably partisan backgrounds, and associations with groups such as the Federalist Society.
In theory, this should’ve worked well for everyone involved. In practice, Trump repeatedly clashed with his own legal team for the worst of all possible reasons: The attorneys told the then-president it was important to honor legal limits and acknowledge legal guardrails, and he didn’t want to.
Indeed, these lawyers annoyed Trump greatly, not only by reminding him of laws he didn’t like, but also by threatening to resign and occasionally even ignoring his demands. It led the then-president to turn to attorneys who’d tell him what he wanted to hear, rather than give him sound legal advice.
It’s a problem Team Trump is eager to prevent in the event that American voters reward the Republican with a second term. The New York Times reported:
Close allies of Donald J. Trump are preparing to populate a new administration with a more aggressive breed of right-wing lawyer, dispensing with traditional conservatives who they believe stymied his agenda in his first term. The allies have been drawing up lists of lawyers they view as ideologically and temperamentally suited to serve in a second Trump administration.
According to the Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Team Trump’s vision for a second term involves hiring lawyers — for the White House and other agencies throughout the federal government — who’d be willing to embrace “theories that more establishment lawyers would reject.”
Under this approach, conservative Federalist Society attorneys simply aren’t radical enough. From the article:
Hard-right allies of Mr. Trump increasingly speak of typical Federalist Society members as “squishes” too worried about maintaining their standing in polite society and their employment prospects at big law firms to advance their movement’s most contentious tactics and goals.
Russell Vought, Trump’s final budget director, told the Times, “The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it is.”
Evidently, Team Trump believes it’s time for a right-wing administration staffed with unrestrained lawyers who’ll smile and nod every time Trump concocts radical plans without regard for the rule of law.
John Mitnick, who served as a Trump-appointed general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, told the Times that “no qualified attorneys with integrity will have any desire to serve” in a second term. Perhaps not, but therein lies the problem: Is there any reason to believe Team Trump is eager to find qualified attorneys with integrity?