Federalist Society 'has failed': Right-wing attorneys plan legal group to fight 'anti-constitutional' Trump

Despite facing four criminal indictments and a variety of civil lawsuits, Donald Trump is showing no signs of losing his frontrunner status in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Trump leads the second-place candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 58 percent in a Harvard University/HarrisX poll released on November 20 and by 40 percent in a NBC News poll conducted November 10-14.

Moreover, some polls are showing Trump with narrow leads in a hypothetical Trump/President Joe Biden matchup.

The fact that Trump could return to the White House in January 2025 not only worries Democrats — some conservatives are sounding the alarm as well, including three legal experts: attorney George Conway, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig and former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Virginia).

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The three of them, The Guardian's Martin Pengelly reports, have proposed a new conservative legal group that would be called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute — which would challenge, from the right, Trump and his allies' "anti-constitutional" and "anti-democratic" actions.

In an op-ed published by the New York Times on November 21, Conway, Luttig and Comstock lament that the Federalist Society — a major right-wing legal group — "has failed to respond in this period of crisis," arguing that a non-MAGA "conservative legal movement" is badly needed.

"We need an organization of conservative lawyers committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States," the legal experts argue. "This new organization must step up, speak out and defend these ideals."

Read George Conway, J. Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock's full New York Times op-ed at this link (subscription required) and The Guardian's full report here.