One of President-elect Donald Trump’s top advisers on judicial and legal matters stepped away from a University of Iowa alumni advisory board late last year. Mike Davis has long been an aggressive Trump ally, known for his “combative presence on right-wing media.” Some of his posts on the X/Twitter platform prompted calls in November for the university to remove him from the political science department’s alumni advisory board. But in a statement provided last month, Davis said, “With President Trump’s victory on November 5th, I will not have the necessary bandwidth to serve on this important volunteer board, so I decided on my own to step down.”

The Article III Project, which Davis leads as founding president, told Bleeding Heartland that no one from the university asked Davis to resign from the advisory board or take down any of his social media posts.

Communications staff for the University of Iowa declined to comment on the situation. Professor Brian Lai, the interim department chair listed as the point of contact for the alumni advisory board, did not respond to inquiries.

INCENDIARY RHETORIC NOT NEW FOR TRUMP’S “TROLL-IN-CHIEF”

Born and raised in Des Moines, Davis received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Iowa. He worked in the George W. Bush White House, clerked for then U.S. Appeals Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, and spent years in private practice in Colorado.

Davis became well-known in Washington during Trump’s first administration. He “led the outside support team” for Gorsuch’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017, then served on Senator Chuck Grassley’s staff as chief counsel for nominations going through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Most famously, he shepherded Brett Kavanaugh through the Supreme Court confirmation process in 2018. George Hartmann, who was Grassley’s press secretary for the Judiciary Committee at the time, told The Daily Iowan in 2019 that Davis “was key in withholding documents relating to Kavanaugh’s work in the White House.” The New Yorker published emails showing how Davis “stymied” efforts by Kavanaugh accuser Deborah Ramirez to testify before the committee. The New York Times reported in 2019 that Kavanaugh “referred to the former Senate aide as ‘a warrior’ on his behalf.”

Davis left Grassley’s staff in 2019 to create the Article III Project, with the goal of bringing “brass knuckles” to fight the political left. The front page of the group’s website boasts, “We are unfazed and determined,” a callback to a tweet Davis had posted and quickly deleted while Kavanaugh’s nomination was pending.

In a September 2024 profile for Politico, Adam Wren described Davis as “the former president’s troll-in-chief, a frequent talking head in MAGA-aligned media known for his provocative, no-holds-barred defense of the president and crusade against Trump’s perceived enemies, especially in his legal battles.” Davis has called himself Trump’s “viceroy” and has frequently bashed political adversaries, sometimes using violent rhetoric.

When asked about his threats to “put kids in cages,” impose a “reign of terror,” or throw critics and journalists into a “gulag,” Davis often claims he was “obviously” joking or trolling. He told the Washington Post last year, “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.” Media Matters compiled a long list of his “racist, misogynistic, and authoritarian remarks” in February 2024. But none of those comments inspired any organized effort to dissociate the University of Iowa from this alum.

MIKE DAVIS’ POST-ELECTION MOOD BRINGS MORE SCRUTINY

Davis is a heavy user of the platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The day after the November 5 election, he posted, “Here’s my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)” He stood by the sentiments.

Those comments received national and even international media coverage, because Trump had suggested he might pick Davis as his next attorney general. At a campaign rally in October, the former president praised Davis as “tough as hell,” adding, “We want him in a very high capacity.”

Since the election, Davis has repeatedly said he will not go back into government. (He has joked, “I can’t get confirmed to anything. Too charming.”) The Article III Project said last week that he is not interested in a federal judgeship, if a vacancy were to arise in Iowa. “Mike is committed to helping President Trump’s administration from the outside and has no desire to serve in any capacity beyond his current one,” the group said via email.

Davis’ post-election “mood” garnered more attention in his home state. Reddit users on more than one forum flagged the November 6 post and an X/Twitter post from July, in which Davis promised to “build a special gulag for leftwing white women. The laundry ward.” He may have been alluding to Ireland’s prison-like Magdalene Laundries, where “fallen women” were forced to do hard labor.

Some social media users highlighted Davis’ connection to the University of Iowa and encouraged like-minded people to contact the university. On the Iowa subreddit, several commenters said that after expressing concern to university officials, they were told these posts were constitutionally protected free speech.

The roughly 40 members of the political science department’s alumni advisory board are volunteers who meet once a year on campus and once virtually. In addition, they donate to a fund supporting the department and help with other tasks, such as “selecting the undergraduate paper award winners, advising the department on undergraduate programs/internships, and assisting with fundraising for internship programs.”

The Wayback Machine indicates that Davis was still listed as an advisory board member as late as November 30. In early December, I noticed his page had been removed from the political science department’s website and asked about the change. As noted above, the university declined to comment on whether anyone asked Davis to step aside or told him his calls for retribution had created controversy surrounding his role on the advisory board.

The Article III Project did not clarify whether Davis was aware of social media posts seeking his removal from the board. In the statement provided in December, Davis said he would “continue to happily support the University of Iowa, including the Political Science Department.”

HOW DAVIS IS HELPING TRUMP FROM THE OUTSIDE

Davis and the Article III Project have been working on several fronts to help Trump push through his agenda.

The group is putting pressure on Republican senators to confirm all of Trump’s nominees, particularly Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Kash Patel for FBI director, and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. Davis has claimed the Article III Project generated tens of thousands of contacts to Senate offices about the most controversial picks. He warned in November that if Senate Republicans oppose Patel, the Article III Project “will ensure they face the wrath of their constituents.”

Davis has also said his group will work closely with Trump, incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House counsel David Warrington, and Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi to help “pick, confirm, and defend even more bold and fearless judges in President Trump’s second term.”

The Article III Project has used other means to pressure judges appointed by Democrats. Last month, the group filed misconduct complaints against three U.S. appeals court judges who rescinded their plans to retire after Trump won the November election. Earlier in 2024, the group filed a complaint against Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor, who had publicly criticized U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for flying politically charged flags outside his home. The chief judge of the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit determined Ponsor’s op-ed column was a breach of judicial ethics.

Davis regularly assails the prosecutions related to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. During interviews with Newsmax and MAGA podcasters Benny Johnson, Jack Posobiec, and Steve Bannon on the fourth anniversary of the attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, Davis argued that almost all the January 6 defendants should be pardoned. He backs commutations for “the worst offenders,” because “nothing that happened on January 6 calls for a 22-year prison sentence.”

Although Davis decries the Biden administration’s supposed “lawfare” against Trump and MAGA activists, he enthusiastically supports prosecuting certain political opponents once Trump is back in power. A recent X/Twitter post outlined the philosophy in broad terms: “Too many leftists are sick, evil monsters. They only respect power. Power is their god. So we must use power to crush them. Legally, financially, and politically. No mercy.”

Specifically, Davis has called for indicting President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and his brother James Biden. He promised “revenge” against various outgoing Justice Department officials: Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a top prosecutor who investigated Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents), and U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, whose office charged many of the January 6 defendants.

As a 2020 election denier, Davis has suggested prosecuting former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee on January 6. Others he has advised to “lawyer up” include General Mark Milley (former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and state officials involved in the criminal and civil cases against Trump, such as New York judges and New York Attorney General Tish James. Several of his preferred targets are named in a poll currently pinned to the top of Davis’ X/Twitter feed, which asked, “Who should the Trump 47 Justice Department indict first?”

A favorite metaphor for Davis when discussing such plans for retribution (or “restitution”): “The hunters are about to become the hunted.”

Not content to see Trump change U.S. immigration policy, Davis has called for bringing criminal charges against outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-retired former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, belongs in a prison cell too, he has said.

Criminal trials won’t be the only instruments of vengeance. Davis has endorsed the idea of civil lawsuits against some who led what he calls “malicious prosecutions” against Trump, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, or January 6 defendants. It’s not clear whether his law firm, MRDLaw, might represent those litigants.

A January 5 post by Davis cautioned law firms, lobbying and consulting outfits, and government contractors against hiring former Biden administration officials: “We’re keeping a list of those who politicized and weaponized intel agencies and law enforcement against Trump, his aides, and his supporters. Hire them at your own peril.”

Davis quipped on New Year’s Day that his resolution is to “Speak my mind more. I hold back too much.” Whatever else 2025 brings, his comments on podcasts, MAGA broadcast outlets, and social media platforms won’t be associated with any entity at the University of Iowa. One can only imagine what Republicans on the Iowa House Higher Education Committee would say if a powerful Democrat affiliated with any Regents institution called conservatives “sick, evil monsters,” or threatened to punish individuals and whole groups they disliked, either sincerely or under cover of “trolling.”