Stephen Miller

Announced as Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy

Stephen Miller was Trump’s senior advisor and the shaping force behind Trump’s draconian anti-immigration policies. After Trump left office in 2021, Miller launched America First Legal (AFL), a litigation group whose activities include filing lawsuits against “woke corporations” and defending Trump’s immunity claims. AFL is a Project 2025 Advisory Board member, AFL’s Executive Vice President Gene Hamilton wrote the Project 2025 Department of Justice chapter, and Miller appeared in a Project 2025 “presidential administration academy” video. Per Axios, Miller also leads an effort to assemble lawyers to “aggressively implement Trump’s orders.”

Miller’s work with Trump began in January 2016 when he joined the Trump campaign as a speechwriter and warm-up act at rallies. Miller wrote Trump’s speech for the 2016 Republican National Convention and his inaugural address in January 2017. In the White House, Miller and Steve Bannon shaped Trump’s immigration policies and were a driving force behind the travel ban and the policy that led to family separations at the border, a policy that traumatized children and parents and ultimately resulted in a legal settlement.

Miller and Bannon also helped end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provided a way for immigrant children raised in the U.S. to apply for lawful status. Miller disregarded public outcry over the hardship created by ending DACA.

Miller’s involvement in the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election has also come under scrutiny. In December 2020, he appeared on Fox News to promote the scheme to send an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors to Congress, claiming there was still a way for Trump to be certified as the winner of the election. Miller was questioned by both the Department of Justice’s Special Counsel investigation and the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he refused to answer questions, citing Trump’s executive privilege.

Post insurrection, Miller has continued to push debunked claims of election fraud, including asserting that non-citizens could vote in the next election simply by “checking a box.” AFL claimed the Biden administration worked with the National Archives and Records Administration to trigger the Special Counsel classified docs investigation of President Trump. Miller also called the New York hush-money trial, in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, a “communist show trial.” Miller has also accused Biden of funding the Iranian regime and criticizes his immigration policies.

In 2021, Miller launched AFL, an offshoot of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), known as the “nerve center” of the MAGA movement. AFL’s activities include defending Trump’s extreme claims of immunity, organizing Republican state attorneys general against the Biden administration, filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and filing lawsuits against so-called “woke” government and educational institutions. AFL has also partnered with CPI and Turning Point USA to create the “Center for Legal Equality,” which describes its agenda as aiming to “to defeat the bureaucrats who weaponize ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ offices to impose a radical, discriminatory, and illegal ideology.” AFL also runs the so-called “Woke Wagon,” a database on Biden’s political appointees. It also runs “Biden Family Corruption,” a hub that hypes claims against Biden while ignoring Trump family corruption.

In addition to running AFL, Miller leads an effort to “identify and assemble a list of lawyers” who will “aggressively implement Trump’s orders and skeptically interrogate any career government attorney who tells them their plans are unlawful or cannot be done,” per Axios. According to former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb: “they’re looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding. Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.” As reported in the New York Times, such lawyers include: Chad Mizelle, Jonathan Mitchell, Reed Rubinstein, Aaron Reitz, Brent Webster, and John Zadrozny.

Miller started his career in D.C. working as a press secretary for Representatives Michele Bachmann and John Shadegg. Bachmann was known for peddling anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, specifically the unfounded claim that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government. On the recommendation of his mentor, David Horowitz, who runs the anti-Muslim Freedom Center, Miller was hired by U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions. Sessions, an ally of anti-immigrant groups, later became Trump’s first attorney general. He once said, “I thought those guys [the Ku Klux Klan] were OK until I learned they smoked pot,” which he later claimed was a joke.

During his time working with Sessions on the Hill, Miller became known for sending mass emails on immigration to fellow Republican staffers, often sharing links from “fringe websites.” In 2013, Sessions and Miller played a key role in causing the failure of a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill known as the Gang of Eight bill. To orchestrate the bill’s downfall, Miller used Breitbart to propagate his anti-immigrant agenda, working closely with Steve Bannon.

Miller also shared, shared with Breitbart links from VDare, a far-right, white nationalist website that traffics the “white genocide” and the “great replacement” myths. VDare is designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Miller also argued that the “The Camp of the Saints”—a racist, neo-Nazi French novel–paralleled the Pope’s statements about a more open and free West. A few weeks later, Breitbart published a piece titled, “‘Camp of the Saints’ seen mirrored in Pope’s Message.”