Trump’s War With Leonard Leo Could Expose a Conservative Legal Scam

Though Bove is undoubtedly conservative compared to, say, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he is not one of the rising stars that the conservative legal establishment had groomed for future judicial vacancies and is not part of that powerful social network. The pick prompted significant pushback from legal conservatives on social media. “Whether the White House wants to acknowledge it or not, the caliber of its early judicial nominations will affect the number of vacancies it gets to fill,” Jonathan Adler, a William & Mary law professor, wrote on Twitter last month. “This is why the Bove nomination was a risky pick (even apart from the merits).”

Ed Whelan, a prominent legal conservative who played a role in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight, shared Adler’s post and added more commentary in favor of it. “Just yesterday, a very conservative appellate judge told me that s/he wouldn’t take senior status because of concerns over who would be picked as successor,” Whelan claimed. In a later National Review column, he described Bove’s personal and professional faults at length. He also warned that Bove could be in line for the Supreme Court if another vacancy occurs during Trump’s second term. “Republican senators who have the foresight and sense to prevent this scenario should defeat Bove’s nomination,” Whelan concluded.

The conservative legal movement’s problem is that Trump does not really need them anymore. His grip over the Republican Party is ironclad. His various legal troubles have exposed him to a wide range of lawyers to install in the Justice Department, the White House counsel’s office, and the federal bench without deferring to Leo’s Rolodex. Trump values personal loyalty over ideological purity, so he does not really care what his appointees think about the nondelegation doctrine or Humphrey’s Executor or originalism, except insofar as it benefits Trump.