Conservative Legal Superstar John Yoo Declares Trump Would ‘Be in Jail Right Now’ Without The Federalist Society

LEFT: John Yoo (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) RIGHT: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Conservative legal expert John Yoo rebuked President Donald Trump over his attacks on Leonard Leo and The Federalist Society in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal. Yoo asserted Trump would be “in jail right now” without the conservative legal organization.

While Leo and The Federalist Society played a key role in helping Trump pick out judicial nominations during his first term in the White House, the president recently slammed Leo and “FedSoc,” as it’s referred to colloquially in a Truth Social post that saw him call Leo “a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America,” and declare that he’s “so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.”

On the Journal‘s “Potomac Watch” podcast, Yoo told host Paul Gigot that it “was truly outrageous to accuse Leonard Leo, one of the stalwarts of the conservative movement, of being something like a traitor and using judicial appointments to advance his own personal agenda,” and asked why Trump would “turn his back on one of his greatest, if not his greatest achievements from the first term.”

“He turned his back on it for, what? 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,” added Yoo, answering his own question.

After Gigot observed that Trump’s frustrations with The Federalist Society stem back to its members’ lack of support for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Yoo sounded off.

“Can I just throw in though that I think he’s getting bad advice? He was never going to win any of those January 6th cases. I looked at the evidence very closely. I’ve debated John Eastman, a friend of mine, repeatedly all over the country for the last four years. They just didn’t have a case. But Donald Trump should realize that an independent judiciary is to his benefit too, because if it weren’t for Federalist Society judges, he would be in jail right now because it was the Roberts Court that said former presidents just can’t be prosecuted for crimes,” submitted Yoo. “And I think because Roberts, because Thomas, Alito, because particularly Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch are not seen as just rubber stampers for Trump, the Supreme Court makes that decision that debate is over and Donald Trump can run for office and win in the 2024 election. He appoints some people now that we were [sic] he’ll appoint to the bench, former defense lawyers on his team, former friends who helped him legally when he was a casino owner. And he may not win that case. He might be sitting in jail right now, and Joe Biden, or whoever his successor would be president right now.”

Yoo also recently argued that if Trump suspended the writ of habeas corpus, it would be “grounds for impeachment.”