Trump's anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues - WaPo

Donald Trump’s once-transactional relationship with the conservative legal establishment has splintered in recent years, and his frustration toward the court system has grown — potentially heralding more volatility in how he would navigate judicial issues in a second term.

Now the dominant front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination, Trump has broken with many of the leaders and allies of the Federalist Society, a powerful conservative legal organization that boosted his campaign eight years ago and helped him stock the federal bench with their preferred picks. It is unclear how he would seek to fill judicial vacancies and make other related decisions should he win a second term, and he has not offered such a potential list of potential judicial nominees as he did eight years ago.

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Trump now rails against the Federalist Society privately, according to advisers. He no longer speaks to many lawyers who were once instrumental, including former Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, former White House counsel and Federalist Society board member Donald McGahn, or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — the triumvirate who propelled much of his judicial record in the first term.

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Trump is running on a campaign focused, at least in part, on vengeance and retribution. The former president has made it clear that loyalty would be a key criteria in how he makes decisions if returned to office. Trump has signaled that he wants the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, and his associates have drafted plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, which would allow him to send the military against civil demonstrations. Near the end of his time in the White House, he repeatedly complained that his White House Counsel’s Office wasn’t doing enough to help him overturn the election results. His attorney general resigned after he would not back up his claims.

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