Conservative lawyer and former Bush administration attorney John Yoo didn’t hold back when he slammed Donald Trump for attacking Leonard Leo and The Federalist Society — the very people who helped him shape the federal judiciary.
Speaking on The Wall Street Journal’s “Potomac Watch” podcast, Yoo said plainly: “If it weren’t for Federalist Society judges, he would be in jail right now.”
Trump recently tore into Leo and the conservative legal group on Truth Social, calling Leo “a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America,” and saying he’s “so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.”
Yoo fired back, calling Trump’s words “truly outrageous,” and defended Leo as “one of the stalwarts of the conservative movement.” He questioned why Trump would attack what many consider his biggest achievement as president — reshaping the federal courts.
“He turned his back on it for, what?” Yoo asked. “Because he lost an opinion down at the Court of International Trade, which is a very small, unimportant federal court on his tower schedules, which he’s going to get to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court eventually.”
The root of Trump’s frustration, according to Yoo and host Paul Gigot, seems to be the Federalist Society’s unwillingness to back Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Yoo didn’t mince words on that either.
“He’s getting bad advice,” Yoo said. “He was never going to win any of those January 6th cases. I looked at the evidence very closely… They just didn’t have a case.”
Yoo stressed that an independent judiciary isn’t just good for the country — it’s protected Trump himself.
“Because Roberts, because Thomas, Alito, because particularly Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch are not seen as just rubber stampers for Trump,” Yoo explained, “the Supreme Court makes that decision, that debate is over, and Donald Trump can run for office and win in the 2024 election.”
“He might be sitting in jail right now, and Joe Biden, or whoever his successor would be, president right now.”
Yoo added a warning, too: if Trump ever tried to suspend the writ of habeas corpus — the right to challenge unlawful detention — “it would be grounds for impeachment.”
