About
Stephen Miller, who worked as a congressional staffer for several years before being recruited by Steve Bannon for the 2016 Trump campaign, is among the most extreme of the extremists to serve as a senior policy advisor to the former president. With strong backing from white supremacists and nationalists, he was the driving force behind Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. His xenophobia and unrelenting demonization of immigrants made him the focus of the 2020 book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Four years later, he’s still stirring up fear and hatred at Trump rallies.
As a member of the administration when Trump lost the 2020 election, Miller helped spread the Big Lie and played a key role in trying to overturn the results through the fake electors scheme, a plan he vigorously embraced and defended well after all states certified their results and determined that Biden had won the election.
As far back as 2016, Miller was already speaking at Trump rallies, firing up crowds with the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that still motivates the MAGA base in 2024. Speaking at a rally in Dallas, he said, “You’ve seen what [the influx of undocumented immigrants] does to living standards. You’ve seen what it does to wages. You’ve seen what it does in terms of transnational cartels. You’ve seen what it has done to the innocent victims of illegal immigrant crime.… You have seen the death. You have seen the needless destruction because we can’t secure this border.”
After exiting the White House with Trump, Miller launched America First Legal (AFL), which bills itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” It is an offshoot of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), considered to be the “nerve center” of the MAGA movement. Since its founding in 2021, AFL has waged ongoing legal battles against almost every proposal made by the Biden administration. It has defended Trump’s brazen claims of immunity from all prosecution, organized the Republican Attorneys General Association (MAGA RAGA) to fight the Biden agenda, and filed countless Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and lawsuits against “woke” government and educational institutions. AFL has also partnered with CPI and Turning Point USA to create the Center for Legal Equality, with a mission “to defeat the bureaucrats who weaponize ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ offices to impose a radical, discriminatory, and illegal ideology.”
In addition to pulling in a high salary as president and executive director of AFL, Miller is leading 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,” as Axios reported. 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 [to] the rule of law.”
The Big Lie
- Miller has long pushed the lie that noncitizens vote in presidential elections, upholding Trump’s widely debunked claim that as many as 5 million noncitizens voted illegally in the 2016 election, as Time reported in 2017. “We know for a fact you have massive numbers of noncitizens registered to vote in this country,” he insisted on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud.”
- On December 14, 2020, Miller appeared on Fox & Friends to tout the fake electors scheme. “We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner,” he claimed. “As we speak (today), an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote, and we’re going to send those results up to Congress.” Miller’s appearance showed there was “still a way for Trump to steal the election,” Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent observed at the time.
- On April 11, 2023, the grand jury working with Special Counsel Jack Smith on the Department of Justice investigation of the insurrection again questioned Miller about his conversations with Trump, but as during his previous appearance before the grand jury, he refused to answer, citing Trump’s executive privilege.
- Miller has continued to push debunked claims of election fraud, including asserting that noncitizens could vote in the 2024 election simply by “checking a box.” He also continues to promote the former president and come to his defense, accusing the Biden administration of working with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to manufacture the classified documents case against Trump. Miller also dismissed the New York case in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsified business records as a “communist show trial.”
- In 2024, Miller’s anti-immigrant vitriol has been a driving force behind the latest iteration of the Republicans’ “Big Lie”—namely that if Trump loses again in November, it’s because Democrats stole the election by allowing noncitizens to vote.
Election Subversion
- In terms of elections, Miller’s AFL has been challenging election and voting policies in Arizona and Pennsylvania—two key swing states considered essential to winning the White House in 2024. In Pennsylvania, the group filed lawsuits in 2022 challenging the use of drop boxes in Chester and Lehigh counties. Although both lawsuits were ultimately dismissed, they illustrate just how AFL is able to continue to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the U.S. and legally disrupt the voting process.
- In Arizona, AFL is challenging election administration procedures in three key Arizona counties: Coconino, Maricopa, and Yavapai. The lawsuit alleges that election officials in all three counties are violating numerous state laws and regulations concerning signature verification, voter registration cancellation and drop boxes, among other alleged election administration infringements.