Article III Project founder Mike Davis, on Monday’s broadcast of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, declared that the old guard of the Republican party legal establishment is gone. “President Trump doesn’t need the D.C. legal establishment anymore, especially after the D.C. legal establishment abandoned President Trump during four years of welfare,” Davis told Bannon. “They haven’t said much about the judicial sabotage that’s occurred since January 20th. I would say to the D.C. legal establishment, go to hell.”

STEVE BANNON: There’s MAGA, and there’s the America First, the populist nationalists, the MAGA, all this. We know it’s something that’s aborning, but these are pretty traditional, pretty big names in the traditional Republican Party. So how are we going to, I mean, do we have a deep enough bench to get judges, to get lawyers? Last time I looked, we’re barely hanging on by our fingertips over at Justice, and we’re taking our best guy, Emil Bovee, and we’re putting him on some federal court because we’re short of judges, and we’re certainly short of manpower in DOJ. So how are we going to get enough bodies that are kind of MAGA lawyers since it looks like the legal establishment is not with us, sir? MIKE DAVIS, ARTICLE III PROJECT FOUNDER: Well, I think that the legal establishment is going to move with some politics, and I just did a trip to Israel with several federal judges and a bunch of lawyers, and I’ll tell you, the bench is deep, and it’s very good for the Supreme Court, for the federal circuit courts. The difference this time is that President Trump is going to rely on people who are more based, like the Article III project, than the establishment people of the first term. You were there, Steve. You remember what happened. President Trump had to prove something to Republicans back in 2016. He had to prove that he was actually conservative, that he was actually acceptable to the establishment legal community, and President Trump more than delivered. He set records for the number of judges that he appointed. He shifted the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts significantly to the right, and he’s going to build on that in his second term with even more bold, even more fearless judges. I was the chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I broke every piece of China that I could get my hands on to confirm judges in the first term. It’s a lot different this time in the sense that we broke all the China. We don’t need to worry about blue slips for federal circuit judges anymore, where the home state senator is going to veto for federal appellate judges. We don’t have to worry about the 30-hour rule for the district court judges. It’s down to two hours. We have a different Senate Republican majority this time. We’re not hanging by a thread with people like John McCain and Jeff Flake and other wimps who were anti-Trump. We don’t have the Russian collusion hoax, which casts significant doubts even among Republican senators on President Trump in the first term. Most importantly, President Trump doesn’t need to prove anything to these D.C. establishment types. He has delivered on these D.C. establishment types. They abandoned President Trump after President Trump picked their judges in the first term. Many of them were very good. Some of them were bad. But guess what? President Trump doesn’t need the D.C. legal establishment anymore, especially after the D.C. legal establishment abandoned President Trump during four years of welfare. They haven’t said much about the judicial sabotage that’s occurred since January 20th. I would say to the D.C. legal establishment, go to hell.

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