by WorldTribune Staff, June 1, 2025 Real World News
President Donald Trump launched a Truth Social broadside at the Federalist Society and its longtime leader, Leonard Leo, on May 29 after one of the society’s handpicked judges issued a ruling which blocked Trump’s tariffs.
Though an appeals court reinstated the tariffs, Trump slammed “sleazebag” Leo in what one analyst called “a shocking rupture between America’s preeminent conservative legal group and the Republican president.”
President Donald Trump took the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo to task in a May 29 Truth Social post.Team Trump is less than pleased overall with the slate of judges he appointed in his first term, many on Leo’s advice and members of the Federalist Society.
Unanswered questions abound about those judges. Were they honest brokers after well-funded lawfare threatened and continues to threaten to obliterate Donald Trump for good? No one including the president will say.
“One of the signal achievements of Trump’s first term, in the eyes of conservatives, was how he appointed scores of conservative judges — at the district, circuit, and Supreme Court tiers — at an unprecedented pace, securing their confirmations to the federal bench with lifetime appointments,” A.R. Hoffman wrote for The New York Sun on May 30.
Trump said in his post to Truth Social that he now regrets taking advice on judges from Leo and the Federalist Society.
“Leo, the chairman of the Federalist Society’s board of directors and its former vice president, is by many measures the nation’s most powerful conservative legal activist,” Hoffman noted. “He is widely credited with a role in placing Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court.”
The Federalist Society has a presence at more than 200 law schools and counts some 70,000 members. Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were all placed on the court during Trump’s first term.
“They were, moreover, all recommended by Leo and the Federalist Society, part of whose remit is developing a pipeline of conservative judges and a list of prospective Supreme Court justices to aid the president in filling vacancies on the high court as well as across the federal judiciary,” Hoffman wrote.
Trump’s post to Truth Social:
“Nobody knew who Leonard Leo was before President Trump gave him a key role picking judges,” Mike Davis, a key Trump ally on judicial nominations who now runs the conservative advocacy group the Article III Project, said. “Leonard Leo took too much credit from President Trump and he got filthy rich then he abandoned President Trump, especially during the lawfare against Trump.”
Separate from his work with the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982 during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, Leo also chairs conservative public relations firm CRC Advisors.
Politico reported that CRC “touts close ties to Trump — the firm’s clients are involved in White House policy discussions and several of the firm’s employees have left in recent months to join the administration with Leo’s ‘blessing and support,’ said a person familiar with Leo’s operation, granted anonymity to discuss private dynamics.”
Davis, who advises the White House on judicial nominations, contended that Leo and his allies have sought to undercut Trump. He pointed to the recent nomination of Emil Bove, a top Justice Department aide, to sit on the Third Circuit as a flashpoint in the MAGA judicial wars.
Hoffman noted that the nomination of Bove is “one indication that Trump could be prepared to go his own way on judicial appointments. Bove served as one of Trump’s defense attorneys during the criminal prosecutions of the 45th president, and took the lead in the Department of Justice’s bruising — and ultimately successful — effort to dismiss federal bribery charges that were handed up against Mayor Adams.”
Trump’s “ambivalence could be exacerbated by the intermittent resistance to his agenda mounted by the Supreme Court — in particular by the last justice he appointed, Justice Barrett. She voted with the court’s liberals to block his freezing of federal expenditures and to enjoin his use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act,” Hoffman added.
For his part, Leo declared in a statement after Trump’s broadside that he is “very grateful for President Trump 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.”
Hoffman concluded: “The true test of Leo’s influence — or lack thereof — could be if Trump is presented with another Supreme Court vacancy. The president’s broadside against Leo could, possibly, deter even a conservative justice close to the judicial kingmaker from retiring — and leaving a space open for Trump to eschew the Federalist Society’s recommendations altogether.”
Trump denounces Federalist Society founder, regrets taking advice on judges added by Editor Two on June 1, 2025
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