Mike Davis trolls the left online. He could also help Trump pick MAGA judges
Mike Davis attends the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland, United States on February 23, 2024. (Photo by Zach Roberts/NurPhoto via AP)
In the disheveled basement of a Capitol Hill rowhouse, amid piles of old newspapers and conservative tomes and computer equipment, Mike Davis leaned into a live microphone.
In front of the eagle-emblazoned backdrop familiar to fans of the far-right “War Room” podcast, the lawyer turned right-wing provocateur delivered his trademark tirade against Donald Trump’s legal and political opponents, whom he mocks as wild-eyed gluttons brandishing multiple indictments against the former president.
“They’re like the fat kids at the all-you-can-eat buffet. They just can’t stop eating,” Davis said in a recent interview with the Washington Post after the podcast. A beat later, he added: “I intentionally want to trigger people with that one.”
The boyish-faced 47-year-old in a jacket and tie—who baits Trump’s foes to “lawyer up” and his supporters to “arm up”—has become a popular guest on MAGA-rousing media outlets like the podcast typically hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, who is serving a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. But Davis has also positioned himself to be a key adviser on legal issues and judicial selection in a potential second Trump term by combining modern-day media invective with old-school know-how from working in all three branches of the federal government, including as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
If Trump again contests the results of the election, Davis is likely to be at the forefront of the legal battle.
“This guy is tough as hell,” Trump said, calling Davis out by name at a campaign event last week in Colorado, where he lives most of the time. “We want him in a very high capacity.”
During his term, Trump turned to the Federalist Society and its longtime leader, Leonard Leo—the traditional gateways for conservative and libertarian lawyers to the bench—for help finding nominees who would steer the courts to the right and forge a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. But as he strained to overturn his 2020 defeat and battled four indictments and a civil fraud case, Trump’s relationship with the conservative legal establishment frayed.
Davis eagerly stepped into the breach, amplifying the former president’s calls for “retribution” and vowing to help him pick “fearless” judges at a time when Trump complains even Republican-appointed judges are too “impartial.”
Trump, in turn, has embraced Davis, who as a Senate attorney helped move hundreds of his appointments to the federal branch, including the deeply divided confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The former president has shared Davis’s social media posts nine times this year, referred to him as a legal scholar and even privately floated his name as a possible attorney general. Campaign records show a political committee controlled by Trump gave $150,000 this year to one of Davis’s nonprofits, which has been airing Spanish-language television ads that evoke Trump’s threats against illegal immigrants.
Davis represents the kind of loyalist who could enable Trump’s pursuit of far-reaching executive powers to punish his foes in a second term—and could help him build a potentially more pliant judiciary that wouldn’t stand in the way. The potential retirements of the Supreme Court’s oldest justices, Samuel Alito, 74, and Clarence Thomas, 76, if Trump is elected again would allow him to expand his legacy to include five of the nine seats.
“A broad spectrum of conservatives were pleased with judicial selection in Trump’s first term, but I don’t think we can have faith that his nominees in a second term will live up to that standard, especially if he’s more likely to listen to a faction that wants a more aggressively right-wing judiciary,” said Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, a conservative group critical of Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric. “I do worry that in a second administration, Trump and his allies will be more willing to apply personal or political loyalty tests.”
Davis abides by what he calls the “dead chicken strategy,” which he says he gleaned over lunch several years ago with Thomas while clerking for Gorsuch. Davis often recounts Thomas’s story of growing up on a Georgia farm and his family wrapping chickens the dogs had killed around their necks.
“And as those chickens rot around those dogs’ necks, those dogs lose the taste for chicken,” Davis said in an interview this year with far-right activist Jack Posobiec. In a similar way, Davis asserts that Republicans should “take all these bogus allegations against Trump” and “wrap them around” the necks of his opponents with a storm of new indictments if he retakes power.
Davis has used his rising media profile to promote several nonprofits he started that serve as platforms for launching attacks on the left. The Article III Project and the Internet Accountability Project together raised about $1 million as of 2022, of which nearly $700,000 was routed to Davis or to a business he owns, according to IRS filings.
Davis said the money only went to the business he owns and not directly to him, and that he’s spent more than $2.5 million of his own money on the Article III Project over the past five years. He said he will file amended tax documents.
While the scope of Davis’s nonprofits pales in comparison to the sprawling network of conservative organizations tied to Leo, what he lacks in money and organization, Davis makes up for with the microphone. He says he has tallied more than 4,200 media hits in the past two years, and posted on X more than 22,000 times this year—an average of 77 tweets and retweets per day, according to a Post review.
“He’s a brawler who leans into the battle,” said Mark Paoletta, a lawyer in the Trump White House. “He is going to war, and he wants to win.”
Breaking some china
Davis grew up in Des Moines and attended Catholic schools. Starting in college, he gained wide experience in conservative politics, from campaigns to the courts.
As a University of Iowa undergrad, he landed a formative internship for House Speaker Newt Gingrich during the lead-up to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. In support of George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, Davis built the largest student group on a liberal campus. As a law school student there, he lodged a Federal Election Commission complaint over Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark receiving $30,000 in 2003 for what Davis deemed a campaign speech at a public university.
The FEC didn’t agree, but Davis’s complaint drew unflattering media coverage for a fledgling candidate who threatened Bush’s reelection—an early example of his brass knuckles leaving a mark.
His work for the Bush campaign greased his path to the White House before and after law school. While working in the Office of Political Affairs under Bush, Davis met with Gorsuch and helped him obtain a high-level Justice Department job in 2005. “I’d enjoy the chance to sit down over lunch and thank you personally,” Gorsuch said to Davis in an email released by the George W. Bush Presidential Library, marking the start of a key relationship.
Davis later shared Gorsuch’s resume with the White House as Gorsuch sought a seat on a Colorado federal appeals court, the emails also show. In 2006, Davis started clerking for him. When Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees during his 2016 campaign, Davis—who by then had founded his own law firm—said he “harassed every person I knew in Washington and in Trumpworld” to make sure Gorsuch made the next list. And when Trump tapped Gorsuch as his first nominee in 2017, Davis directed a public-relations campaign to make sure he cleared the Senate.
Davis clerked for Gorsuch during his first four months on the court.
“I never would have believed it,” said Sheldon Kurtz, one of Davis’s law school professors. “He was not the crème de la crème. … But he’s a big personality and very articulate conservative.”
His work for Gorsuch helped him land a job in 2017 as the chief nominations counsel for Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee.
That put him center stage as Trump blitzed the federal courts with appointments blessed by the Federalist Society. Davis oversaw floor votes for 278 nominees to the courts and administration, including a record number of circuit judges confirmed during Trump’s first two years in office.
After one year on the Judiciary Committee, Davis was tasked with spearheading the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh, whose ascension would cement the conservative majority long pursued by the right—and Davis’s reputation as a pro-Trump attack dog. But a shocking allegation threatened to derail the nomination: A psychology professor from California named Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of groping her and trying to take off her clothes when they were both in high school.
Davis became one of the nominee’s fiercest defenders. He told the Post that he didn’t believe Blasey Ford but also argued that Kavanaugh’s behavior as a teenager shouldn’t be disqualifying. “There was no way in hell I was going to let Kavanaugh fail, even if the allegations were true,” he said.
Democrats clamored to reopen the hearing so that Blasey Ford could testify, which Davis warned would be “a recipe for disaster,” according to an email to other staffers later released publicly. He posted a rallying cry on social media: “Unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh.” And after Blasey Ford’s compelling testimony left key Senate Republicans on edge, Davis offered the nominee some advice.
“You better come out swinging,” Davis said he told Kavanaugh as he entered the hearing room for his own testimony.
Meanwhile, another accuser had come forward. Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale University with Kavanaugh, said he had thrust his penis in her face at a dorm party.
Davis took a leading role in blocking Ramirez’s account from being closely considered by the Senate, first by repeatedly demanding that her attorney produce evidence and then by circulating an email that claimed Ramirez had probably confused Kavanaugh with another man, records show. That claim—which came from a friend of Davis—was later highlighted in a judiciary committee report that concluded there was “no verifiable evidence” to support Ramirez’s allegation. The Post confirmed the man was actually in high school during the school year in which the alleged incident took place, a detail first reported by the Guardian.
Davis said he could not explain how the mistaken identity claim ended up in the report.
As rumors surfaced about other, unverified incidents of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh, Davis manned an orchestrated counterattack, using a broad brush to impugn all of the accusers, including Blasey Ford and Ramirez. Kavanaugh denied any wrongdoing.
“Mike simply didn’t sleep,” said Michael Zona, Grassley’s communications director at the time. “He would update allies, reporters and other offices so many times a day with everything from talking points to data and analysis that it was tough to keep up—or manage.”
Zona added: “By the end of the Kavanaugh confirmation, there was no china left for Mike to break.”
Trolling the left
When Davis left the Senate Judiciary Committee in early 2019, he initially envisioned continuing to work closely with Federalist Society leaders.
Davis launched the Article III Project to counter what he called a “vicious” assault on the judiciary from the left and said he was “excited to work hand-in-glove” with the Judicial Crisis Network, a group with ties to Leo that donated more than $83,000 to the nonprofit. When Davis spoke to the Federalist Society’s Iowa student chapter in 2019 about his endeavor, he called Leo a “longtime friend” and “the godfather of the conservative judicial movement.” He described the Federalist Society as “critical” to building a judiciary stocked with constitutionalists and originalists.
But Trump and his allies began lashing out at the legal establishment after his own Justice Department appointees and courts nationwide thwarted his efforts to block Biden’s victory. As of early this year, the former president had stopped talking to Leo and other key allies who had helped him reshape the federal judiciary, the Post has reported.
Davis has also distanced himself from the Federalist Society. “I haven’t talked to Leo for a while,” he said during a podcast this year with former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka. When Gorka called the Federalist Society “a dud,” Davis chuckled. “The Article III Project is a bit of a different beast,” Davis said, vowing to play a “key role” in helping Trump pick “fearless” judges in a second term.
Davis declined to comment on his relationship with Leo. Leo also declined to comment but has said he expects the Federalist Society to continue to be influential.
“Republican Judges are very often afraid to do the right thing,” Trump said on social media in January. “They go out of their way to show they are totally impartial, to the point of making really bad and unfair decisions.”
In his interview with the Post, Davis said that if Trump is elected again, he should pick judges “who are even more bold, who are even more fearless” and unafraid of “the blowback from the liberal media and the outside groups.” On the right, where claims of a political vendetta by the Biden administration against Trump and his allies are eagerly embraced, Davis has become one of the most extreme voices.
“Mike Davis personifies Trump’s obsession with retribution,” said Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability, a progressive watchdog group critical of the high court’s majority. “Davis’s judicial choices would reflect the same priorities, putting political and personal loyalties—and grudges—over faith to the Constitution.”
Referring to Trump’s illegal immigration policy that separated families, Davis declared, “We’re going to put kids in cages. It’s going to be glorious.” He routinely threatens to throw journalists into the “gulag.” Special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for allegedly trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 vote, leads a long line of people with targets on their backs.
“I would say to Jack Smith that right now, you guys are the hunters,” Davis tweeted over the summer, adding that after Trump’s inauguration, “on January 20th, you’re going to become the hunted.”
Then, Davis has suggested that as “acting attorney general,” he will oversee a “three-week reign of terror” to indict Trump’s opponents and purge them from the federal government.
Davis insists those statements are a “troll” to rile up the left and attract attention, acknowledging he would be a long shot for any Justice Department job that required Senate confirmation. “My extreme rhetoric and hyperbole is to make my point that the politicization and weaponization of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies is very bad for our country,” he said.
His rhetoric, though, matches Trump’s own campaign promises of government purges and partisan prosecutions. Davis has been kicked off social media multiple times for “hateful conduct” and has turned those suspensions into fundraising appeals for his nonprofits.
The foundation arm of the Article III Project and an anti-cancel culture group called Unsilenced Majority raised less than $50,000 a year between 2020 and 2022, according to the latest IRS filings. Records also show most of the $1 million collected by the Article III Project and the Internet Accountability Project between 2019 and 2022 was paid to Davis, either as compensation for being president or to his business, MRD Strategies, as an “independent contractor.”
Davis said all the money actually went to the business, which he used to pay “his team.” In addition to promising to amend his tax filings, Davis said he would update the Virginia-based organization’s charitable registration after the Post notified him that it has not been authorized to raise money in the state since August 2022. Most states require organizations that solicit from the public to register and provide financial records.
“This isn’t an enrichment endeavor,” he said. “This is a passion project.”
Davis is much more concerned with the message than logistics. Before Bannon went to prison, he noted Davis’s busy schedule on his “War Room” podcast. “You’re out there giving talks, conferences. … Davis is everywhere … as the next attorney general of the United States.”
Davis played along.
“I’m going to be Trump’s viceroy of D.C. because I don’t like democracy,” he quipped. “I want more authoritory powers.”
Bannon laughed out loud as Davis directed listeners to his X account. It would soon be time to troll.
Aaron Schaffer and Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.
