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Mike Davis
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Mike Davis
Trump Legal Adviser
Mike Davis is the founder and president of the Article III Project. He previously served as chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, advising on the selection of federal judges and executive branch appointees.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group's Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 4, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here.
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Trump’s Speech at the DOJ
One place we’re thinking of starting the film is when President [Donald] Trump goes to the Justice Department to speak at the Great Hall.What is he doing in that moment?What does it represent for you?
It represents for me that he beat the Biden lawfare and election interference of the last four years.They, the Biden administration, along with their allies in New York and Atlanta, and elsewhere frankly, threw everything they had at President Trump.They tried to throw him in prison for life four different times for non-crimes.They tried to bankrupt him for non-fraud.They tried to take him off the ballot in Colorado and Maine, and I think they even tried to take off his head when President [Joe] Biden intentionally underfunded his Secret Service protection1and then said we needed to put a bull’s-eye on him because he was the gravest threat to democracy.2
So President Trump’s return to the White House and then his visit to the Justice Department was triumphant for me.
What did he see in the Justice Department?As you said, he had been prosecuted by it.He uses the word “weaponization.”How did he see the Justice Department, or how do you think he saw the Justice Department when he went there that day?
I haven’t asked him how he saw the Justice Department, but I would imagine that he saw the Justice Department as a place that needs to be reformed.It has been politicized and weaponized.It started under [former President Barack] Obama.It was on steroids under President Biden, and we have seen for eight years this Justice Department politicized and weaponized against President Trump.His top aides, like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, who went to prison, his supporters on Jan. 6. …This Justice Department went after parents who were outraged by gender chaos in schools and the resulting rapes in high school bathrooms.3
This Justice Department targeted Christians, including putting a 75-year-old pro-life Christian in prison for praying at an abortion clinic, while this Justice Department turned a blind eye, gave amnesty to Biden and his corrupt family.4They failed to prosecute BLM [Black Lives Matter] and antifa and Hamas.It’s inexcusable how this Justice Department was politicized and weaponized, but frankly, it was a big reason that President Trump won the 2024 election.
4
So what was the message there that day?What was he saying, with that as the backdrop, about how it was going to be different?
This whole unitary executive theory that Democrats think is a theory is not a theory.It’s Article 2 of the Constitution of the United States.The president of the United States runs the executive branch.He has the executive power under Article 2, and every department and agency reports to the president, including the Justice Department.5
5
Legal Information Institute: Unitary Executive Theory(UET)
So you’re saying that the message that he was giving there was, “You work for me”?
I don't know what message he was trying to portray, but that is the message that I would give if I were President Trump after experiencing eight years of lawfare before that, that there is a new sheriff in town.The American people elected President Trump back into the White House, and that Justice Department works for President Trump, and there is going to be much-needed accountability in his second term.And I hope there are severe, and I mean severe, legal, political and financial consequences for a politicized and weaponized justice system.
For the critics who say, in that speech, he singled out individual people like Norm Eisen or Andrew Weissmann, calls them “scum,” and that isn’t the type of thing a president should do at the Justice Department, what do you make of that?
I don’t care.They are scum, and nobody is above the law. ...
Do you think that the message is, or is your message, that we’re not going to forget what happened?We’re not going to sort of move on?
There’s no chance.We’re not going to turn the other cheek this time, and we shouldn’t.President Trump, his top aides and his allies experienced republic-ending, unprecedented republic-ending lawfare by Joe Biden, his Justice Department and their allies.It took our country to the brink, and they almost succeeded in putting a former president in prison for the rest of his life, bankrupting him, throwing him off the ballot, taking off his head.That’s what you do in Third World Marxist hellholes, and we’re not going to let America become a Third World Marxist hellhole.Yes, there must be accountability for what happened.
Trump’s Executive Orders
Let’s go back to the first day in office and that first moment when he is signing a number of executive orders, and he’s at the Capital One Arena, and then he goes back to the White House, and there’s a number of them.A lot of presidents sign executive orders on the first day.He did in his first term.Was that day different than other presidents’?Was that different than President Trump’s first term?
President Trump, the first time he ran in 2016, had never run for office.He had never served in office.I don’t think he was as ready to lead the first time as he was this time, and that was very obvious.He was ready to lead on day one.He knew he made mistakes in his first term, including personnel mistakes.He’s not going to make those same mistakes in his second term.
Help me understand the breadth of executive orders, executive actions that happened that day.How do we make sense of all of those different things that were going on?
President Trump ran on very specific campaign promises, that he’s going to hire Elon Musk.He’s going to set up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.He’s going to reform our government to make our government work for real Americans and real America instead of the other way around.He’s going to secure our border.He’s going to get illegal immigrants, including dangerous terrorists, the hell out of our country, and President Trump is doing the unthinkable in Washington.He’s actually delivering on his campaign promises to the American people, and he’s doing it very fast.
From a legal perspective, you talked about the unitary executive theory.There’s a number of these actions that critics will say, “That wasn’t legal,” whether it’s birthright citizenship or creating DOGE or other things.Is he coming in sort of intentionally pushing the boundaries of his power, testing it or asserting it?
You call it the unitary executive theory.I call it Article 2 of the Constitution.The president has the executive power, all executive power.Congress writes the laws under Article 1, the president executes those laws under Article 2, and the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts decide cases and controversies under Article 3, cases and controversies of the parties before the court.President Trump is not stealing legislative power from Congress.He’s not stealing judicial power from the Supreme Court.He is exercising core Article 2 power, and he has not only the right to do it, he has the duty to do it.
But was it intentional that he was going to assert those powers, which maybe he didn’t in the first term fully or other presidents might not have?Was he laying down a marker in those first actions?
He came ready to lead on day one.He came ready to deliver on his campaign promises on day one.
Can you help me understand the process that might have gone on behind the scenes?When we talked to Steve Bannon, he talked about a meeting where the president said, that the president-elect said, “That’s not enough.I want to do more,” and he referred to you as the “viceroy” and said you were sort of integral to setting up this president.Can you help me understand the process that led to that day one?What was going on behind the scenes in either the days or years leading up to it?
I’ve been very public with what I’ve advocated President Trump to do.I put it on X, right?And I say it very publicly in my media hits, and I don’t say anything privately that I haven’t said publicly.So President Trump should be bold, he should be fearless, and he should save this country.We have been in decay for a long time, economic decay.Our middle class is getting destroyed.Real Americans and real America are losing their jobs to overseas trade deals with big corporations that benefit—President Trump is going to fight every day for real Americans and real America.
Like, I came from Iowa.My friends and family back in Iowa, he’s fighting for people like that.
Do you have a sense of how much work was done behind the scenes to lead to all of those actions and orders that happened on the first day?
I think that they were planning to govern on day one for a long time, and they’ve been working on these issues for a long time, long before day one.
That was another place that was different than the first term.Did they come in ready to go faster?
This time?Did they come in?Yeah, of course.I think Susie Wiles is a fantastic chief of staff at the White House.She is very well respected by President Trump.People in the White House respect her.People on the outside, like me, respect her, and she is no BS.She runs a tight ship, and she’s delivering a staff—she’s delivered a staff that’s executing very well for President Trump.
How important is Stephen Miller in the White House?
I think he is very important.He’s the deputy chief of staff for policy.He’s the point man on immigration.He’s involved on all policy.
He’s sometimes associated with the term “flood the zone.”Steve Bannon said it to us years ago in an interview, “flood the zone … with muzzle velocity.”6What do you make of that term?Is that part of the administration’s strategy?
I think it is very important to lead boldly and fearlessly and get your priorities in place very fast and govern.You have a mandate from the American people.President Trump won 312 electoral votes, all seven swing states, the popular vote.He has a broad electoral mandate.He kept the House.He won a comfortable margin in the Senate.The American people elected President Trump to lead, and he’s doing that.
When you say—the administration says, too, a lot, a “mandate,” when it comes to—that can mean a lot of different areas.It can be immigration or other things.What is your understanding of how they see the mandate when it comes to these issues, of executive power, of Article 2?What is their mandate?
I think Article 2 of the Constitution is their mandate.They have the executive power under the Constitution, and that’s all the executive power.He doesn’t share executive power with multi-member board and agencies.He doesn’t share the executive power with courts.He doesn't share the executive power with Congress.He has the executive power as the president, and he is governing boldly, fearlessly and decisively.
Do you think part of the reason that President Trump was elected was that there was a frustration with government not being able to do things?Immigration is a good example of sort of decades of trying to pass legislation, trying to do things?Was that kind of a frustration part of the mandate to do this kind of bold action that you are talking about?
Yes. I think that real Americans and real America have seen over decades that the federal government does not work for them, that they work for the federal government.They pay taxes, and the money gets wasted in Washington, D.C.—waste, fraud and abuse.It goes to political cronies.The government does not promote the common good anymore.
One other thing that happens on that first day is the pardons and the commutations of the Jan. 6 defendants, and some people, even inside the administration, thought he went farther than they expected, as far as it applying to everybody.What do you think the message was that was sent?Were you surprised that it was so broad?
I was very happy that it was so broad because that is what I was publicly calling for.I used to say that the president should pardon almost all Jan. 6 defendants and commute the sentences for the ones who were the most egregiously acting that day. …
What happened on Jan. 6 was bad.There are three categories of people who were there that day.There were people who were there outside and peaceful and not trespassing, and even if you think they’re wrong, even if you think they’re crazy, they have a First Amendment right to be there.There were people who trespassed, and they should have been charged with trespassing.There were people who were violent, and they should have been charged most, more harshly.
But what they did to Jan. 6 defendants is they lumped them all together and labeled them insurrectionists even though no one was charged with insurrection.How many insurrectionists go to a nation’s Capitol unarmed, get to the Senate floor of the nation’s Capitol, walk through velvet ropes, follow police direction, and don’t burn down the damn place, right?7
And so the fact that the prosecutions, persecutions of these Jan. 6 defendants was so politicized made it illegitimate, what they were doing.It was persecution.They suffered enough.They went through years of suffering.They had their lives destroyed, bankrupted, lost family members.Some people killed themselves.And so they suffered enough, and so I have no problem with President Trump pardoning almost all of those Jan. 6 defendants because they’ve suffered enough.They’ve paid the price.
Even the ones who were violent?
When the Biden Justice Department starts prosecuting the much more deadly and destructive BLM and antifa and Hamas rioters ... when people start shedding tears over BLM riots, I’ll start shedding tears over the Jan. 6 riot.
The Unitary Executive Theory
You’ve talked Article 2 and about the unitary executive theory.Help me understand where that comes from, the history of it, after Watergate.Just help me understand what the theory is and what you are pushing back against when you’re—
Well, people call it the unitary executive theory, which is Article 2 of the Constitution.It’s not a theory.It’s Article 2 of the Constitution that the president has the executive power, all executive power, under the Constitution, and starting about 100 years ago, we started to build up this Wilsonian model of government,where we’re going to have unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucrats who are not accountable to the president make all these decisions for us, and they’re going to legislate for us; they are going to execute the laws for us; and they are going to adjudicate cases and controversies for us.It’s the opposite of what founders intended in our Constitution.
And the development of this sort of pushback.As I understand it, it was after Watergate that a lot of the independent agencies, these sort of restrictions, develop.How did the pushback—was there some moment that encouraged you to focus on these Article 2 powers and pushing back?
Well, it is just a basic understanding of the Constitution.Think about what the Constitution is.The Constitution is a loan agreement between we, the people, and our government.It is a radically different concept from Great Britain, from which we escaped, right?In Great Britain we have a sovereign.We have God that gives power to the sovereign king or queen and then the sovereign king or queen gives power to its subjects through documents like the Magna Carta.America is radically different.We have God, and we are the sovereign people.
We, the people, are the sovereign.We loan power to our governments—federal, state, local, tribal governments—through our Constitution, which is a loan agreement, right?And the federal government is only supposed to have the power that we lend it in the Constitution, specific, enumerated, divided power.So we lend the federal government specific powers; we divide those powers between legislative power to Congress, executive power to the president, judicial power to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.
That has been flipped on its head, where the Constitution has gone from a shield that protects us from government to a sword the government uses to come after us, and we have power that the federal government is not supposed to have, that’s supposed to belong to the states and the people as confirmed by the 10th Amendment and then that power of the federal government is not supposed to have is being consolidated into unelected executive branch bureaucrats, this fourth branch of government, the deep state, and that’s unacceptable.They have too much power, and they abuse that power.
Trump’s First Term
How do you think his first term shaped President Trump’s views on issues like this?
Well, I don't know how it shaped his views.I know that he had to deal with this deep state, this fourth branch of government in his first term.They ran Crossfire Hurricane, Russian collusion bogus investigations against him.8
We had to deal with COVID lockdowns where we had the COVIDians worshipping their pope, [former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony] Tony Fauci, and thinking the guy was infallible and making these decisions that affect our lives like the six-foot rule that is not based in science or cloth-mask mandates that are not based in science that completely disrupted our lives.I think that the American people, through this COVID upheaval in our lives, I think that we are very awake to the fact that we should not have these unelected bureaucrats controlling so much of our lives.
There were even people who he appointed: Jeff Sessions, who recused himself before the Mueller investigation; there was Bill Barr, who pushed back after the election.Do you think those interactions with the Justice Department sort of shaped how he would go into the second term and who he would look for to staff the department?
Yeah. I hope so.I hope he is not going to make the same mistakes this term that he did in the first term on personnel.I don’t think he is.I think he’s picking people who are bold, who are fearless, who are going to carry out his policy agenda as the president of the United States elected by all Americans, and that includes at the Justice Department.
Tell me about the Justice Department, about Pam Bondi, what she brings to the job or what you see in her.
I like Pam Bondi a lot because she has eight years of experience as the Florida attorney general.She’s seasoned as an attorney.She’s smart. She’s bold. She’s fearless.She doesn’t care what the Washington insiders say about her.She is just going to do her job.She’s going to bring major reforms to the Justice Department, including the FBI, and she is already starting to do that.
… One thing I had meant to ask you about but I didn’t was—because we were talking about the power, the Article 2 power and the unitary executive theory, and obviously there have been different court cases along the way for and against.How important was Trump v. United States, the immunity decision?9And what did that tell you?
9
Oyez: Trump v. United States
It was hugely important.It was the difference between President Trump going to prison, after D.C. Obama judge Tanya Chutkan and Biden’s special counsel Jack Smith railroaded him in D.C. over Jan. 6 versus going back to the White House.It was hugely consequential.It was one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in our history.
And the description of presidential power in that decision of the president sort of being the head of the executive branch, of the kinds of immunities that he has, what did that tell you?
It tells me that the Supreme Court understood that if a president is able to indict and throw in prison his predecessor for his official acts for doing his job as the president of the United States, you’re going to destroy the presidency and therefore you’re going to destroy our country.
But did it reinforce your views about Article 2 and the powers the president has?
Sure. The president has the executive power, all executive power.
Another thing, the word “retribution,” when the president was running, that “I’m your retribution”: What did that mean?Because some of his advisers would say his retribution would be making America great again, and other people say it sounds more like vengeance.What did retribution mean to you?
I think retribution is a very important component of justice.It restores the victims, and it serves as a powerful deterrent to people who may commit crimes in the future that there are going to be consequences.
So when the president ran on retribution, and presumably that’s part of his mandate, what does that mean?
I think that he should—the president and his Justice Department team, should hold accountable those who waged this unprecedented republic-ending lawfare against President Trump, going back eight years to the Russian collusion hoax and Crossfire Hurricane.The people who perpetuated this republic-ending scam on the American people need to face the most severe—and I mean severe—legal, political and financial consequences for what they did.
And that’s part of his mandate?
Yes.
That is part of what he was elected to do?
Yep.The Democrats said he is going to do it, and the American people elected President Trump with a broad mandate.So, time to deliver.
Trump and the DOJ
OK. So the Justice Department.We’re talking about Pam Bondi.One of the things that she does early on is to send a memo saying, “The president interprets the law for the executive branch.”She’s the head of the Justice Department, and she does, too.10And if attorneys don’t agree with that, they don’t want to sign onto briefs, then it is time for them to leave.What was the signal that was being sent with that memo, and was that different than what the Justice Department had done before?
10
Department of Justice: Office of the Attorney General Memorandum
I think it sent a very powerful message to the Justice Department, particularly the FBI and these career officials who work at the Justice Department, that they work for the attorney general.Every federal prosecutor and every federal agent in the Justice Department works for the deputy attorney general, who works for the attorney general, who works for the president, who is elected by all Americans.
And because the other view, as you know, is they say, they are lawyers; they should interpret the law.Yes, the policy is set, and if they disagree with something, they should announce it.Was this different, what the memo was doing in saying, “You need to leave”?
They should leave.If you’re not going to follow the president of the United States and his attorney general, then you need to get the hell out of the executive branch.
With the firing of prosecutors who were involved in Jan. 6, what was the message?What was the decision that was made there?
I think the message that I took out of it was, if you persecute Americans as a Justice Department prosecutor or an agent, you are going to lose your job, and you should.
… And the list of FBI agents who were involved in some way in investigating Jan. 6, people say, sends a chilling message.What do you make of that?
I hope it does.I hope it sends a very chilling message that if you politicize and weaponize the FBI to go after political enemies, you’re going to lose your job and, hopefully, much worse.I hope they get prosecuted.
I wonder, because you say the president is the head of the executive branch, and if you work for the executive branch, you have to do what the president says.Why wouldn’t that apply to people who were in the Biden administration, that they were complying with a unitary executive theory?
You have to follow lawful orders, right?And if it’s a lawful order, you have to follow it, or you can resign or get fired.But if it’s not a lawful order, then you can’t follow it, and when you are contorting, politicizing and weaponizing a post-Enron obstruction of justice statute to go after corporate fraud, to go after your political enemies, that’s not following a lawful order.
But they did get their day in court, and the Supreme Court did rule on it, and those charges were dismissed.How was it unlawful?
Because they destroyed lives in the process.They ruined people’s lives based upon this novel application of a law that did not fit, and they did it because they didn’t like the political viewpoint of the defendant.
The Eric Adams Case
As you know, there is a lot of controversy over the Eric Adams case and conflict with the acting U.S. attorney.What do you make of that case, of the controversy?A number of people end up leaving the Southern District and the Justice Department.
Yeah. I would say to Danielle Sassoon and the others that they work for the deputy attorney general, who works for the attorney general, who works for the president, who is elected by all Americans, and if you don’t like that, then get out of the Justice Department.11
The allegation that’s in what she is saying is that she felt like it was using politics in a prosecution, which is what you said was the flaw of or the wrong thing that was done in the Biden administration, and she said—
No, I said that when you politicize the Justice Department for non-crimes—that’s what Biden did.It was non-crimes that they went after.They politicized our justice system, intel agencies and justice system, to persecute Americans for non-crimes.It’s not a crime, for example, to object to a presidential election.It’s allowed by the Electoral Count Act of 1887.It’s allowed by the First Amendment.It’s not a crime for a president to have his presidential records in the office of former president.That’s allowed by the Presidential Records Act.That’s not espionage.That’s allowed by the Presidential Records Act.So when you politicize, weaponize, contort statutes to go after your political enemies for non-crimes, that’s a problem.
Every prosecution has a political element to it.You have judgment.You have to figure out whether you’re going to charge this person or not charge this person, and politics is certainly a consideration—the small “p” politics.Like, how will this be perceived by the community?How will this affect the criminal justice system?How will this deter crimes?Those are political decisions, small “p” political decisions.
You’re saying it’s OK if the justification, which one of the justifications was offered was that the prosecution was going to interfere with the mayor’s ability to cooperate with the president on immigration, that that’s a fair reason to—
Absolutely.Yeah. If you’re indicting the mayor of New York and have him in a courthouse, he’s not helping you deport illegal immigrants the hell out of our country.
The last thing on this, because the danger I think that people are worried about is that you could prosecute somebody—there are lots of crimes people commit—that you could prosecute somebody, try to get something from them in exchange for dropping it—
Yep.
—and that what the people up here were objecting to, the acting U.S. attorney was objecting to and others, was that that was what they saw was happening and that that was a dangerous thing.Is it?
No, it’s not.You want the mayor to help get Tren de Aragua terrorists out of New York City, or do you want him to be prosecuted for taking Turkish Airlines business-class upgrades?
Elon Musk and DOGE
Help me understand what the role is of Elon Musk and DOGE in this administration because they are so unusual compared to anything I can remember.
I think it’s great.President Trump campaigned on the facts that he is going to hire Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet; they are going to set up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and they are going to reform our federal government to make our federal government work for real Americans in real America instead of the other way around.President Trump is delivering on his promise, and Elon Musk is pretty effective.He’s finding a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in our federal government.I think the American people are pretty disgusted that we’re funding, for example, transgender mice research in Kazakhstan or wherever the hell USAID is funding this.12
We’re funding Hamas terrorists who are killing Americans under the guise of Gaza humanitarian aid.13I think people were pretty disgusted how much money we’re spending in our federal government, and it’s being pissed away on things that don’t help America.
And the argument that somebody who has that much power should be appointed, should be confirmed by the Senate.What do you make of that?
He’s working for the president.He doesn’t have independent power.His power is derivative of the president’s power.It’s like having a White House chief of staff or any other White House official.They work for the president.They don’t have power separate from the president.
USAID and Inspectors General Cuts
When they take on USAID, and, as Elon Musk says, “Feed it into the wood chipper,” what are they doing?It’s a congressionally created agency.It has funding appropriated by Congress.
Sure.
What are they doing?
Obviously they would have to spend the money that Congress directs them to spend, although the president does have a separate constitutional duty to take care that our laws are faithfully executed.So, for example, if Congress appropriates $2 billion to go to a foreign country and then the president learns that that money is going to be misspent on waste, fraud and abuse, or that the president learns that that money is going to be used by Hamas to kill Americans, then the president has a separate constitutional duty to take care that that does not happen.
But it appears that the whole agency is shut down.
I think they left enough of the agency intact to fulfill the statutory requirement.
Do you think that that sent a message?That was one of the first cases.And we’ve heard that in Washington in the bureaucracy it was sort of a shocking moment.Do you think it was intended to be that?
I hope so.Because there are a lot of people in D.C. who are on the dole at USAID and we’re not fixing malaria in Africa at USAID like people think. ...
And the claim that it ignores Congress, the congressional—are you saying they are going to spend all of that money?Because it doesn’t sound like that, that they’re just moving—they’re saying we’re pulling these contracts.Is that what the plan is, that they are still going to spend the congressionally appropriated money?
God forbid they spend that money on Americans.God forbid that they spend that money on Americans in North Carolina, for example, who had their lives destroyed by floods, or in Ohio when their lives were destroyed by disasters.Why don’t we use that money that we’re going to piss away on the elites, travel planners, at USAID, and actually use it for real Americans and real America?
You talked about the separation of powers and the power of Congress.I think that’s what this goes to, right, is these two branches—
Sure.
—and what is their authority?It may be nice to change where it goes, and we may not agree with what USAID does or doesn’t, but that that’s a decision for Congress and not for the president.
Maybe Congress shouldn’t delegate so much discretion to the executive branch on its funding.If Congress wants the president to spend money on specific things, maybe they should do a better job of keeping the power of the purse.
When the president comes in and fires the inspector generals [sic] sort of en masse and then others one at a time, what is the message that he’s sending?Because that seems to be pretty consistent with what you were describing as Article 2, and it’s sort of a little bit of a test case with the way the Congress has set up the inspector generals [sic].
President Trump has been in office for three months, just over three months.Look at how much waste, fraud and abuse Elon Musk has found in those three months.Then you have to ask, “What the hell have these inspectors general been doing for the last 50 years?”That’s their job.The IG’s job is to find this waste, fraud and abuse, and if DOGE, a bunch of data dorks at DOGE, can find it in two weeks, maybe the inspector general system is waste, fraud and abuse.
But just structurally, is there something objectionable to you to the idea of an independent inspector general who doesn’t report directly up to the Cabinet secretary who issues their own reports?
I think everyone who works in the executive branch has to report to an officer created by statute.So if you’re an inspector general, you work for the agency head, and then that agency head reports to the president, and if that is not the case, then it is not constitutional.
Help me understand what happens in response to a lot of the things that are going on with the administration, from USAID to the inspector generals [sic], when it comes to the courts and lawsuits.How do you see it play out as he is taking these different things, actions that we’ve been talking about?
Well, we have these activist plaintiffs running to these activist judges, particularly in Washington, D.C., and they’re sabotaging the presidency.They’re sabotaging the president’s core Article 2 power under the Constitution.President Trump is not stealing legislative power from Congress.He’s not stealing judicial power from the Supreme Court.He’s exercising core Article 2 power, and these activist judges may have policy or political disagreements with the president, but they certainly don’t have the executive power the president does.And so if they want the executive power, I think they should probably resign from the bench and go run for office.
They say they are interpreting the statutes and that the administration is not in compliance with the statutes rather than that they are using executive power.But you don’t see it that way?
So, for example, you have Judge [Amir] Ali in D.C., a new Biden judge who got jammed through in the lame-duck session after the election.He ruled that the president couldn’t pause foreign aid.The president who is the commander in chief, the chief executive officer, couldn’t pause $2 billion in foreign aid for a brief amount of time so the president can do a national security review to make sure that we’re not funding Hamas terrorists, for example, under the guise of Gazan humanitarian relief, to make sure we’re not funding transgender mice research … that is a total waste of our taxpayer funds.14Judge Ali ordered the president to send out these checks before President Trump was able to do that review.
That’s unacceptable.The president of the United States has a duty as the chief executive officer to take care that our laws are faithfully executed, that we’re not misspending money on waste, fraud and abuse.The president as the commander in chief has a duty to make sure that we’re protecting our national security, that we’re not sending money to Hamas to kill Americans, and that’s the problem with Judge Ali’s order, is he is getting out of his judicial lane, and he’s sabotaging the presidency over policy disagreements.
Trump Takes on the Courts and Law Firms
… If you can help me understand what it’s like for the administration, for its allies, as these roadblocks are coming up, as these court orders are coming down.Help me understand, what is it like inside the White House?How do they view it?Are they talking to you about frustration?What’s the feeling?
I don’t want to get into my conversations I’m having with them inside the administration, but I would just say I’ve been pretty vocal with my public response to these judges who are issuing these lawless temporary restraining orders to sabotage the president and his use of his Article 2 power.I’ve been pretty vocal.I haven’t been hiding what I think about it.I think that this is sabotage.This is sabotage by these activist judges, and they are undermining the duly elected president of the United States exercising his core Article 2 executive powers that the American people elected him to exercise.
Do you think that they expected it, a battle in the courts?
This is just a continuation of the Democrat lawfare that started eight years ago with Crossfire Hurricane, with the Russian collusion hoax, impeachment hoax one, impeachment hoax two, four indictments, civil fraud for non-fraud, trying to throw Trump off the ballot.This is just a continuation of the Democrat lawfare against President Trump that he’s experienced for eight years.
Have you gone to any of the hearings or seen the Justice Department lawyers arguing in front of these judges?
I have not gone to the court proceedings, but I’ve been following them pretty closely through reading the news, reading the transcripts, listening to the proceedings online.Yeah, I think that these activist judges are making a concerted effort to sabotage the presidency because they have policy and political disagreements with the duly elected president.
How are they doing that?When you read the transcripts or look at it, how do you know that that’s what they are doing?What do you see?
Well, I know from my discussions with someone who is very knowledgeable with their thinking, including what they say inside of the D.C. courthouse.For example, when they don’t think anyone is listening, I know that these judges are very eager to issue temporary restraining orders against President Trump, and they are excited if they have the opportunity to issue a temporary restraining order against President Trump—an illegal temporary restraining order.It’s a political game to these judges, to these activist judges.
You think that they are excited to do it.
Yes.I think they are very eager and excited to do this.
Some of them are not necessarily Democratic appointees.
They’re mostly Democrats.There have been a few, just a handful of exceptions. ...15
How different do you think it is this term, what’s going on with the courts, than what happened in the president’s previous term or the [George W.] Bush administration, if they are mostly the Democratic judges?
Well, you’re seeing an unprecedented number of temporary restraining orders, where these judges are just telling the president—let’s look at a couple of examples.Like, for example, the president of the United States and his Treasury secretary cannot look at Treasury payments.Why would a judge tell the president and his Treasury secretary that they can’t look at Treasury payments to make sure that we’re not paying money to waste, fraud and abuse, that we’re not paying people on Social Security who are 150 years old?16
There are very basic things that the president and his team are doing to take care that our laws are faithfully executed, which is his constitutional duty, and these judges are telling the president and his Treasury secretary they can’t look at Treasury payments.Do they want fraud?What would be the reason that a president or his Treasury secretary couldn’t look at Treasury payments other than maybe this judge is very comfortable with our taxpayer money being wasted with fraud?
Why do you think they would do that?
Why do I think these judges would do that?Because I think a lot of these judges are corrupt, and they are part of the system. ...
Is it just the judges?Because the White House is also going to issue executive orders about some of the law firms.Is it just the judges, or do you see the lawyers as part of this?
Well, certainly the lawyers are part of the problem, too, right?You have the lawyers who are part of the problem.You have these plaintiffs they find are part of the problem.The judges are part of the problem.I think the D.C. judicial system is corrupt and needs to be revamped from the bottom up.
Do you think the law firms are corrupt who are filing these cases?
Yes.I think these law firms are partisan, oftentimes partisan actors, and they are coming up with plaintiffs to sabotage the president of the United States.And they are playing a game for a long time, and now President Trump is, he’s playing hardball against them to make this lawfare end.
When you say he is playing hardball, what do you mean?
Well, he’s telling these law firms that if they want to do business with the federal government, they’d better stop with their illegal lawfare against the Trump administration.
So tell me about the executive orders.Did you know that this was coming before it happened, or when that first one came out, was that a surprise to you?
I can’t talk about my discussions with the president or his team, but I think it’s a good thing.I think it sends a very important message to these law firms that if you engage in this illegal lawfare against President Trump, he’s not going to put up with it this time.
Tell me about what those orders say or why you think they are an effective tool.
Well, because you are going to see these lawyers and these law firms stop with their lawfare, right, their illegal lawfare.You’re already seeing it.President Trump is coming to settlements with these law firms where they are coming up with $50, $100 million for pro bono efforts to help people who—veterans and people who have been the victim of this lawfare, and they’re ending this lawfare.You’re not going to see these big firms participate in this lawfare going forward like you have in the past, because they want to keep their government contracts; they want to keep their government relations.
Just on their terms, tell me what’s in these orders.
It seems to be that the orders are, if you’re a law firm that’s engaged in lawfare against President Trump in the past, like Perkins Coie for example, you’re going to lose your security clearances for your lawyers; you’re going to lose your contracts for your clients; you’re going to lose your relationships with these government agencies.
Is it personal?He mentions specific lawyers who he feels like have done him wrong in the past.Are these orders personal for the president?
I hope so. I hope they are.I hope these people understand that their lawfare, their illegal, criminal conspiracy against President Trump, his top aides, his supporters, putting a 75-year-old Christian woman in prison for praying at an abortion clinic, when you do things like this, when you persecute Americans like they did to his Jan. 6 supporters, that there are going to be severe legal, political and financial consequences.17
Why not go through the system if the lawyers have done something illegal?Why not go to the courts or the bar association?Why go to an executive order?
Why can’t you do all of those?Why is it limited to just the courts and the bar association?Why can’t you do the executive orders, too?They don’t like to be on the receiving end of a political decision by the executive branch?So maybe they are getting a healthy dose of their own medicine.
They would say, “It’s hard to get due process in that kind of a situation.”
Yeah, it is.And it’s hard to get due process when you’re a Jan. 6 defendant who was persecuted under a post-Enron obstruction of justice statute that had no application to them.
So it’s sort of fighting fire with fire.Is that what the idea is?
It’s retribution.
And how effective is it?
It seems to be pretty effective.You see these law firms cutting checks or promising to cut checks for $50 million, $100 million.18They’re not bringing these lawsuits anymore.They’re not engaged in this lawfare.I always say two wrongs don’t make it right, but it makes it even.
What is it that they’re agreeing to, these law firms?Because there’s the terms of it—a certain amount of pro bono, and they’re going to do hiring in a different way.But you’re saying they are also agreeing to not engage in lawfare.What do you think that the firms are agreeing to when they settle?
Well, I’ll tell you what the firms need to understand is that their clients, these big, corporate clients maybe should think long and hard before they hire these law firms again, because maybe these big, corporate clients, just maybe may not get the result that they want with the executive branch that they are hiring these law firms, that have engaged in this lawfare.I think that if I were these clients, these big corporations, I would probably find new attorneys, because if you’ve made it on one of these lists, you’re probably not going to get a very good reception at the Trump administration for the next four years.
Why would the Trump administration not give a good reception to even the clients?
Lawfare has consequences, right?So I think it is to put pressure on these law firms to stop doing this.It is a major deterrent.When you hit these lawyers in their pocketbooks, that gets them to wake up. ...
And what effect do you think it will have on what we were talking about before, which was over 100 lawsuits filed against the administration, over all of these things?Is it designed to have an effect, or do you think it will have an effect?
I hope it does.
I hope it does.I hope that these law firms will think long and hard before they file lawsuits against the Trump administration and try to sabotage the president’s presidency like they did the first time.
And to the lawyers who say part of the justice system is having vigorous advocates on both sides and to battle it out and that this is a threat to that?
Yep. Good.That means you probably shouldn’t engage in lawfare like you did the first four years of President Trump’s first presidency.They’re not going to put up with it again, so if they want to play hardball, we’re going to play hardball.
And then if there is a client who might have a valid claim, and it’s harder for them to get—
Then you should hire a different law firm.You should hire different lawyers.
But if they have a claim against the Trump administration on something, and they might have done something that we can agree was not a good thing to do, but the lawyers are afraid to take on that case, is that consequence OK?
I hope that happens.I want these lawyers to understand that this is not the George W. Bush Republican Party.We’re not going to turn the other cheek.When you try to throw President Trump in prison for the rest of his life four different times for non-crimes, when you try to throw him off the ballot in Colorado and Maine, when you try to bankrupt him for non-fraud, when you throw his supporters in prison after you’ve contorted a post-Enron obstruction of justice statute after Jan. 6, when you put 75-year-old Christian women in prison, when you do these things, there are consequences.
I said this before the election.There will be severe legal, political and financial consequences, and the Democrats played that up extensively.The American people clearly liked what they heard because they gave President Trump a broad electoral mandate, so it’s time to deliver those severe legal, political and financial consequences for this illegal criminal conspiracy that the Democrats have run against President Trump, his top aides, his allies, his supporters.
And when courts rule against these executive orders, or they issue a restraining order, should that discourage the administration from issuing more of them?
Nope. Nope.And there are fewer Democrat lawyers challenging those now.
Why shouldn’t they be concerned about the court finding that those orders are not legal?
Because these are activist judges.These orders are illegal.These judges are sabotaging the president of the United States exercising Article 2 power.Look, if President Trump were stealing Congress’ legislative power under Article 1, courts should step in and stop him.If the president is stealing the Supreme Court’s judicial power under Article 3, the courts should step in and stop him.That’s not what’s happening here.
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants
Help me understand.A lot of the conflicts are going to be over immigration.Help me understand how important that is.Do you think this administration is sort of happy to take on the controversies on that territory?
Yeah, very much so.Because the American people—this is what the Democrats need to step back and understand, that President Trump is fighting these fights where he has 60, 70, 80% support from the American people.19I think the Democrat Party’s political polling is at like 21% right now.So keep fighting the president, keep fighting to keep Tren de Aragua terrorists in America.Go all the way to the Supreme Court.Fight this every day, Democrats, because not only will President Trump ultimately legally prevail in all of this, politically, this is gold.
Help me understand.Tell me the story as you understand it of that controversy over the flights to El Salvador and how it played out.
How did it play out?
Yeah. Just help me understand the story as you understand it.
What you’ve read in the newspaper is, you had President Trump rounding up Tren de Aragua-designated foreign terrorists along with MS-13 international gang bangers, loading them onto two airplanes, and getting them the hell out of America, which is where they should have gone.And President Trump has that power.He has that duty, not only under the statutes from 1798—it’s been on our books for 250 years—but he also has that power and that duty under Article 2 of our Constitution to repel an invasion.20
You have Tren de Aragua working with our enemy in Venezuela.They’ve sent many different Tren de Aragua terrorists in many different cities, and they are sabotaging America.They are terrorizing American cities.They are robbing, kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering Americans.They’re working hand in glove with the Venezuelan government.21The president has absolute statutory and constitutional authority to get them the hell out of our country.
And he tried to do that, and it think it was four Saturdays ago when Judge [James] Jeb Boasberg on the D.C. District Court ran to his courthouse on a Saturday, opened up his courthouse and exposed an ongoing military operation to get the most dangerous terrorists in the Western Hemisphere the hell out of America.And this judge exposed that operation, which put American and allied lives in great danger.
And this judge ordered the president to turn around planes that are in the air.This judge has no idea what the fuel levels are on these planes.He has no idea what the security footprint is in America.We saw this security footprint in El Salvador when they had hundreds of military law enforcement officials ready to receive over 200 of the most dangerous terrorists in the Western Hemisphere.Did Judge Boasberg understand what the security footprint would be in America if we didn’t expect to have to turn around planes?
And so those planes were in the air, and I’m happy those planes landed in El Salvador, because the president had a constitutional duty to ignore that lawless and dangerous order and land those planes in El Salvador, right?And I’ve never called on anyone to ignore a court’s order before this one, and not only was it completely lawless; it was extremely dangerous.And I’ve also called on the House to open impeachment proceedings on Judge Jeb Boasberg in D.C.I don’t care if we have the votes to impeach him.I want the process to be the punishment.
I want to send a very powerful deterrent to these judges that if you think you’re the commander in chief, and you meddle in an ongoing military operation and sabotage that operation by exposing it, you’re going to face hell.You’re going to face impeachment proceedings, and Judge Jeb Boasberg will be spending—I’d rather have him spending the next many months worried about impeachment than whether he could be the commander in chief.
And think about this message that it sends to foreign leaders.If an activist judge can go expose and sabotage an ongoing military operation, why would any foreign leader want to deal with the president of the United States and risk their people’s lives being exposed, their reputation being exposed, being humiliated if those planes didn’t land?And that El Salvador president had hundreds of military intel law enforcement people waiting for those 200-plus terrorists, and they don’t land, that embarrasses that foreign leader.That harms the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs, and that’s why Boasberg is completely lawless here.
Do you think that they disregarded the court order?
I hope they did.
Because a lot of people say that’s, as you know, a red line.
It’s also a red line for a judge to expose an ongoing military operation and put the lives of Americans and our allies in grave danger.That’s the red line.This Boasberg, the clown, thinks he’s the commander in chief.He thinks he can order the president to turn around military planes carrying terrorists.There’s recourse for these terrorists.They can file a habeas petition in El Salvador.They can file a habeas petition in Texas from where those planes took off.Judge Boasberg does not have the jurisdiction to do what he did.He did not have the power to do what he did, and what he did was lawless.So if you don’t have the power to order someone to do something, it’s not contempt if you ignore that order.
When you look back at those events, does it feel like the administration was trying to get out ahead of judges getting involved, when you look at how fast the executive order was issued, the planes getting into the air that fast?
When you run military operations, you have to do them fast, and you have to do them secretly.And you don’t expect judges to sabotage ongoing military operations.Judge Jeb Boasberg helped persecute American citizens for four years after Jan. 6.… Jeb Boasberg is more concerned about Tren de Aragua terrorists who rape and murder Americans than he is about some grandma on Jan. 6 who trespassed and took selfies.Jeb Boasberg can go to hell.
Do you have any concern about that issue of due process?Because that seems to be at the center of it.People we talked to said, “Well, if they are terrorists, if they are gang members, they can be deported.But the question is, are they?”And there’s allegations that there may have been mistakes made or a rush to judgment.
And if there are mistakes made, there’s recourse.They can file a habeas petition.But the solution is not to expose an ongoing military operation and turn around military planes during the middle of that operation.That is the red line that Jeb Boasberg crossed.That’s why that order had to have been ignored because what if we didn’t have enough fuel?We’re over the Gulf of America.There is not enough fuel.Those planes crash because Jeb Boasberg illegally tried to turn around those planes.What if we didn’t have the security footprint in America, and then people are waiting for those planes to land, and there is a terrorist incident to get those people off those planes?
Like what the hell is Jeb Boasberg thinking that he thinks he can expose and sabotage an ongoing military operation?He doesn’t have the jurisdiction.The jurisdiction would have been in the Texas district court, where you file a habeas petition, but these plaintiffs knew that a Texas judge is going to be sane, so that’s why they ran to Jeb Boasberg. ...This was a sabotage by Jeb Boasberg, and this is why Jeb Boasberg must face impeachment.
If he thought, though, if he looked at the law and he felt like this was not in compliance with the law, should he have not issued a restraining order?Should he not have gotten involved if he, as a judge, felt that what was going on was not legal and that these people were being deprived of due process?
OK. If he thought that something was happening was illegal, that does not mean he sabotages an ongoing military operation, putting American and allied lives in grave danger and try to order the planes to turn around.That’s not what judges do.Judges do not do that.And that’s why he crossed the red line, and that’s why he must face impeachment for this, so it sends a powerful message to these other judges: “You do not mess with the president’s commander-in-chief powers, especially during an ongoing military operation.”There’s recourse.When those planes land, when those terrorists go to that Salvadorean [sic] prison, they can file a habeas petition from there.You can resolve it then.You don’t expose the operation while it’s ongoing.
You’d advocated this view.You said this to us.You said it out loud.Are you surprised that the administration, the top leaders in the administration, have also expressed those views out loud, that they have criticized the judge or the president has called for impeachment of that judge?
He should be impeached.This is egregious, what this Jeb Boasberg did here.He exposed an ongoing military operation, and he’s tried to sabotage it by ordering planes turned around.There is no excuse for that.That is very dangerous, what he did, extremely dangerous.You have two planes full of over 200 of the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous terrorists.You do not turn around those planes during the middle of the operation.
And for the president to say that, to ramp it up, what does that say to the American people, to the judges, at that moment?Because it’s one thing for you to say that, and it’s another thing for President Trump to say that.
Yep.When you sabotage the president during an ongoing military operation, you’re going to get the wrath of the president, as you should.
What does that tell you about President Trump, about his approach to the judiciary in this moment?And we’ve talked about all of these other cases that were going on.We’ve talked about the approach to lawyers.What does it tell you that, rhetorically and maybe more than rhetorically, he ramps his criticism of this particular judge?
This was not judicial review by Jeb Boasberg.This was judicial sabotage, right?When this judge took off his judicial robe and climbed into the political arena, and threw political punches like he did, when he tried to commandeer the commander in chief duties from the president of the United States, Jeb Boasberg is the one who crossed the red line.
What do you think of Justice Roberts’ statement?22
I think Justice Roberts, the chief justice, needs to remember that he is a federal judge.He is not a politician.And when judges take off their judicial robes and climb into the political arena and throw political punches, they can expect political counterpunches, so it’s probably not a good idea for judges to make political statements like he does.The chief justice thinks that he is protecting the federal judiciary’s legitimacy, and all he is doing is harming it.
When the president gave the speech at the Justice Department, he said one of the things that they had done against him was playing the ref, that Judge [Aileen] Cannon had been attacked and criticized in an effort to change her decisions in his case.Is what’s going on here different than what he accused the other side of doing?
I don’t think he expects to get a different result.The judge has already ruled.He has already ordered the planes to turn around, so he is not going to get a different result of this.And I don’t remember Democrats being terribly concerned when President Obama criticized the Supreme Court justices at the State of the Union address.I don’t remember Democrats complaining when Joe Biden and his White House press secretary and his attorney general encouraged illegal obstruction of justice campaigns outside of the homes of Supreme Court justices while they were deciding the Dobbs abortion decision, leading to justices going to safe houses, leading to a 1:00 a.m. assassination attempt against Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, his wife, Ashley, and their two teenage daughters.23I don’t remember Democrats complaining when Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democrat leader, went to the steps of the Supreme Court and threatened Justice Kavanaugh and [Justice Neil] Gorsuch by name.It seems like we have selective outrage and selective defense of judges when President Trump makes statements that are a hell of a lot less problematic than what the Democrats have done.
23
The Washington Times: Psaki says Biden supports peaceful abortion protests outside justices' homes
And President Trump has said that he would abide by court order and that it was important to do so.It sounds like you may disagree with that in some cases.What do you make of the president’s statement?
I like that President Trump gets to be the good cop for once.
But what do you make of that, of him telegraphing that he’s going to comply with whatever the court order is?
He should always follow lawful orders.
So explain that.
A judge, running in on a Saturday, exposing an ongoing military operation and ordering two planes to turn around full of terrorists is not a lawful order, and you should not follow that order.
So this gets to the question, right, about who decides what’s a lawful order—
Yep.
—and what isn’t?And help me understand—
I hope Judge Boasberg and the chief justice understand that if they continue down this path of holding Trump officials in contempt for landing those planes full of terrorists in El Salvador instead of bringing planes back to America full of terrorists, I hope that the chief justice and Boasberg understand that they are going to light the judiciary’s legitimacy on fire, and once the federal judiciary loses its legitimacy, its support among the American people, it loses everything.Is Jeb Boasberg’s law clerks, are they Green Berets?Are they going to go commandeer those planes and bring them back?Are Jeb Boasberg’s law clerks going to go arrest Trump officials and put them in jail?I don’t think so.
If there is criminal contempt, I’m going to push President Trump to pardon immediately, and if there is civil contempt, I’m going to push his Justice Department to fight it and not follow the civil contempt.This is lawless, what this judge is doing.I’ve never said this before about any judge’s order, that this order that day should not have been followed.It was lawless; it was dangerous.And I’ve never said this before: That judge needs to be impeached.He’s the one who crossed the red line.
Jeb Boasberg is the one who endangered our American and allies’ lives, undermined the president of the United States as commander in chief carrying out a very sensitive military operation, undermined the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs with a foreign leader, because this judge, Jeb Boasberg, is a clown.Boasberg the clown thought he could go into his courtroom on a Saturday, expose this operation, and put lives in danger.This clown needs to be impeached.
The stakes are very high, aren’t they?Am I wrong in thinking this goes to the heart of Marbury [v. Madison]—
You can’t get any higher than this.I hope the chief justice understands this.You cannot get any higher than this, because once you start ignoring a judge’s lawless, dangerous order, it destroys the court’s legitimacy, and that destroys everything.
The other side, which says we’ve built up over hundreds of years the idea that it is the province of the judiciary to say what the law is, and if you disagree with it, you can take it all the way up to the Supreme Court and that the idea that you or the president would find a law, an order to be unlawful is fine to say, but to disregard that puts everything in jeopardy.
This is why judges do not meddle in ongoing military operations.This is why judges do not meddle with the president’s commander-in-chief power.This is why judges stay out of foreign affairs.They are not equipped to do this.This judge is the one who has taken our country to the cliff, not President Trump.It was Jeb Boasberg who has done this.
Do you think the president has it in him, if it’s a face-off between the judiciary and—over an issue like this, that he would be willing to pull that, whatever it is, the trigger, he would be willing say, “That’s not a legal order, and I’m not going to comply”?
I hope that the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, does not allow that to happen, because this would be squarely on the chief justice’s doorstep if it does.He needs to get his judicial house in order.Jeb Boasberg is way over his skis on this one.He is the one who is at fault here, dangerously, egregiously at fault, and it’s Jeb Boasberg who needs to check his ego and dial this back.He’s the one who is going to destroy the federal judiciary’s legitimacy over this.
Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court
So how important is the role of the Supreme Court in a moment like this?
It’s extremely important.This is a major test for Chief Justice John Roberts, major test.If he does not get his judicial house in order, I promise you Congress will do it for him.I’m already working very closely with Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the judiciary committee, my former boss on legislation.I’m working with other senators like Mike Lee.I’m working with members of the House.If this judicial sabotage does not stop, if these activist judges do not stop sabotaging the president’s core Article 2 powers, if the chief justice refuses to get his judicial house in order, I promise you Congress will do it for him through oversight, through legislation on jurisdiction, through funding, through impeachments.
So tell me what Congress could do.If you feel like, if they don’t get their house in order, what could the Republican Congress do?
They can defund these courts.Like, for example, the federal judiciary has a $10 billion annual budget right now, and you had Judge Ali, this new D.C. Biden judge who got jammed through in the lame-duck session after the election, ordered the president to send $2 billion in foreign aid over the president’s national security review.OK.Well, you want to play games, then why don’t we just take that $2 billion … take it right out of the federal judiciary’s budget, a 20% cut to the federal judiciary’s budget?
You want oversight?We’ll haul in these judges and make them explain how they think they have the jurisdiction to issue these temporary restraining orders that aren’t temporary, right?If you want to play hardball, if these activist judges want to play hardball, again, if they want to take off their judicial robes and climb into the political arena and throw political punches, they’d better expect powerful political counterpunches.And that—I will make damn sure that happens.
It sounds like a threat.
It is a threat.It’s a promise.
So the idea—is this a constitutional crisis, what you’re describing?
Yes. Yes.And these judicial activists are the ones who are election deniers.The American people elected President Trump with a broad electoral mandate, 312 electoral votes, all seven swing states, the popular vote.He’s doing exactly what he promised American voters he would do.He’s exercising core Article 2 power, and these activist judges are sabotaging him.So yes, it is a constitutional crisis created by activist judges with the chief justice of the United States John Roberts refusing to get his judicial house in order.
They say, right, that democracy is laws made by Congress.Also, it’s the courts.The whole system is required for democracy.The president was definitely elected and is the head of the executive branch, but we have all these different branches, so to people who see the constitutional crisis in the other way, of the executive branch infringing on the judiciary or laws made by Congress.
Yeah.
How do you square that?
I think I would say this: The Congress writes the laws; the president enforces the laws; and judges decide cases or controversies of parties before that court.That’s it.It’s a very crucial but modest job that these judges have, and if they think that they are the commander in chief who can order foreign aid to go out the door without doing a review, if they think they are the commander in chief, and they can order planes full of terrorists to turn around, they don’t understand their role.They are the ones who are creating the constitutional crisis.
Because it sounds like you’re saying that the big case for you is this Boasberg, is this case, but that it’s not just that case that you’re delivering this message on.
It’s to all these activist judges, that when you sabotage the president’s Article 2 powers, you are getting way too political, and there are going to be political consequences.
And it’s up to the Supreme Court.Is that how I’m understanding it, that if the Supreme Court knocks these down, the crisis as you see it will be avoided?
Yes.
But if they endorse it—so this really is a message to the Supreme Court that you are delivering.
Yeah. This is a message to one person, John Roberts.Get your judicial house in order, or Congress is going to do it for you, and it’s going to be ugly.You’re going to lose your power.You’re going to lose your funding.You’re going to be subjected to aggressive oversight.You’re going to be subjected to impeachment probes of these judges.
Do you think he will get that message?
We’ll find out. ...
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants (Contin.)
[Director Michael Kirk] I have just one clarification, or a little more amplification.You said that the immigration was, “Politically, this is gold,” you said.
Yep.
But you didn’t finish the sentence.What do you mean, “Politically, this is gold”?
We have Democrat activists, Democrat lawyers, Democrat judges going to the mat to try to protect Tren de Aragua, foreign terrorists and MS-13 international gang bangers, the worst people in the Western Hemisphere, who kidnap, rape, torture, murder Americans, including young women, and you have these Democrats doing everything they can to keep them in our country and coddle them.That’s not a winning—I promise you that’s not a winning message for the next election.So keep doing it, Democrats, and see what happens.
… What about the guy who doesn’t appear to be a member of the gang?What about the handful of people that seem not to be members of the gang, and I think the judge has just said, “You’ve got to send them home”?What about those people in this process, Mike?
Yeah, the people with the MS-13 tattoos all over their bodies are not part of MS-13.I’ve heard that sob story.They’re certainly illegal immigrants.24They’re all criminals.And there is a process.There is a habeas process.It’s working right now.The people think that they were wrongly deported, they can file a habeas petition like they’re doing right now, but the idea that an activist judge can run into his courtroom on a Saturday ... and expose an ongoing military operation and turn planes around is 100% dangerous and unacceptable and impeachable. …
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There is one other thing on Judge Boasberg, because people say he doesn’t have the reputation of an activist judge.He ordered the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails; he’s made rulings in favor of President Trump in the past.Is it just that you disagree with the ruling that you label him as an activist judge?Or the president says he’s a “radical left lunatic”?
I’ve never seen a more egregiously lawless and dangerous ruling in my life.I’ve never called for an order to get ignored.I’ve never called for a judge to be impeached until now.This is so dangerous what Boasberg has done by exposing an ongoing military operation, sabotaging it, ordering planes to be turned around, trying to embarrass the president dealing with a foreign leader, his foreign relations power; and now he’s doubling down.Now he is trying to hold people in contempt.He’s the one who needs to back up because he’s taking the federal judiciary’s legitimacy off the cliff.It does not come back.
Mike Davis and Trump’s Administration
[Producer Vanessa Fica] … People have said that you did a lot of work to help the administration kind of get to this point.
Sure.
And so when President Trump has come out swinging, especially on day one, was it a moment of pride as well, like of all the work that you had done as well?Can you kind of help bring me back to that moment, maybe on day one, like what you were also feeling with all this work you had done?
It was a very lonely time around Mar-a-Lago after the Mar-a-Lago raid nearly three and a half years ago.President Trump was essentially a dead political body left on the side of the road, and I knew what happened with the Mar-a-Lago raid was totally illegal.They were trying to say that the president having his presidential records in the office of a former president, which is allowed under the Presidential Records Act, is somehow espionage, and I knew it was about Crossfire Hurricane.25I knew that they were going to get the damning Crossfire Hurricane records back from President Trump.
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And I was the only person, it seems, who would go on Fox News every day and defend President Trump.I’ve done over 4,500 media hits supporting and defending President Trump since the Mar-a-Lago raid—constant social media, constant opinion pieces—because I knew what they were doing was so wrong and so destructive to the presidency that you can have a president throw his predecessor in prison for non-crimes.And that’s how we destroy our country.That’s how we become a Third World Marxist hellhole, and I was not going to let that happen.
And people laughed at me when I went out there and defended him.I don’t care if people laugh at me.When you grow up with red hair, you don’t really give a damn what people think about you.And I went out there every second of every day for over three years, turned lemons into lemonade and made damn sure that the weaponization of intel agencies and law enforcement was a front-and-center issue in this election, and I made this a referendum on that and helped put President Trump back in that White House.So yes, it was very nice to see President Trump back in that White House issuing these executive orders, bring much-needed reforms to our executive branch, particularly the Justice Department, including the FBI, and giving these Democrats much-needed—severe and much-needed legal, financial and political consequences for their unprecedented republic-ending lawfare.
And I hope it’s only beginning.The only way this will stop is if we give them very severe consequences.Retribution is an important part of our justice system, and they need retribution.
And it sounds like that was planned over those years leading up to coming back into office.
I was very public with everything that I advocated.I said it on X.I said it in my media hits.I’ve never said anything in private that I haven’t said publicly, and I want these Democrat prosecutors and agents and judges and other operatives to understand there are still going to be severe legal, political and financial consequences.… So lawyer up.Nobody is above the law.
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