GOP Lawyers Dismayed At Trump Tweets

A cadre of notable Republican attorneys are warning that President Donald Trump’s recent flurry of tweets may undermine the chances of his immigration executive order surviving a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. Most notably, criticism came from George Conway, who was being considered until recently for a top post in the Justice Department, and is married to White House advisor Kellyanne Conway. “These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won’t help OS [Justice’s Office of Solicitor General] get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad,” Conway tweeted. Trump openly disparaged his Justice Department’s legal strategy in defending the immigration order, calling it a “watered-down, politically correct” version of what he originally intended to do.

Conway was joined by Jack Goldsmith, a top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush and professor at Harvard Law School. He wrote, in a 17-tweet thread, that Trump’s ongoing attacks on his own lawyers are seriously endangering his own political aims. “Given POTUS’s instability, it is not just courts that have reason to relax the presumption of regularity for this Prez,” Goldsmith wrote. “We all have reason to do so about everything the Executive branch does that touches, however lightly, the President… One thing DT behavior entails… is many losses in court and not just on the immigration Eos… Everything else Executive would normally win – reversing Clean Power Plan, terminating treaty, new regs, etc. – will be much, much harder.”