Trump lashes out at Catholic legal activist behind judge nominations
Leonard Leo, pictured speaking at Trump Tower in 2016 when he advised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press / Mazur
Leonard Leo was critical to the nominations of three justices to the United States Supreme Court: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
President Donald Trump took to social media to attack one of the United States’ most prominent conservative Catholic legal activists, Leonard Leo.
Trump called Leo “a real ‘sleazebag’”, and criticised the judges Leo had recommended to Trump during his first term. Leo is on the board of the Catholic University of America and active in various conservative Catholic groups.
During Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, Leo, then the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, provided him with a list of names of legal scholars he would name to serve as judges. Once in office, Trump appointed almost every name on the list. Leo was considered critical to the nominations of three justices to the US Supreme Court: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump has faced a barrage of lawsuits since he regained the White House in January, most seeking to restrain his use of executive orders to alter governmental power, policy or spending.
The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to secure the return of an El Salvadoran man who was deported and imprisoned by mistake. The court also ordered the administration to pay foreign aid contractors for work they had already completed, after Trump put a stop to all such payments by executive order in January.
Courts have been asked to rule on a range of other issues from tariff policy to the dismissal of government employees and the closure of programmes that had already been authorised by Congress on the orders of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The administration has won some cases but lost others.
In a statement, Leo said, “I’m 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.”
Meanwhile, the administration has failed to act on a February court order requiring it to admit those refugees who had already been cleared for resettlement in the US. Religious plaintiffs prepared to return to court to take action to enforce the earlier decision.
Will Donald Trump defy the US Supreme Court?
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