Former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller is attempting to distance himself and the organization he founded, America First Legal, from Project 2025, a sprawling initiative to provide policy and staffing for a future Republican president, even though Miller appeared in a recruitment video for the effort. 

Additionally, AFL’s general counsel, Gene Hamilton, wrote a chapter for Project 2025’s policy book on proposed overhauls of the Department of Justice. 

On July 12, ABC News reported that Miller said in a statement: “I have zero involvement with Project 2025. Zero. None. I made an advice video a long while back for students. I have no involvement with the project whatsoever."  

Until recently, America First Legal, which bills itself as a conservative answer to the American Civil Liberties Union, was one of the more than 100 right-wing groups listed on Project 2025’s advisory board. The effort is spearheaded by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and serves as a blueprint for a potential second Trump administration to advance an extreme right-wing agenda and remake the federal government.

Miller appears to be taking his cues from former President Donald Trump, who recently attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 following increased public scrutiny. Both Trump and Miller have extensive ties to Project 2025, their recent comments notwithstanding.

Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video for its Presidential Administration Academy, an effort to recruit MAGA activists into government service, which was posted on September 20, 2023. His role in the video is short, limited only to stating his title: “senior adviser to the President.” He’s flanked in the video by Project 2025’s nearly 900-page policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

America First Legal is mentioned in Mandate at least 14 times, including on its advisory board page. The author breakdown lists Hamilton as “Vice-President and General Counsel of America First Legal Foundation” and mirrors the biographical language on AFL’s own website. The policy book additionally lists AFL’s Michael Ding and Reed Rubinstein as “Contributors.”  

Hamilton’s chapter on the Department of Justice concludes with an unusual footnote, which reads, in part: “Most contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume—and in the perfect cancel-proof world, all contributors of ideas would be listed—but the staff at America First Legal Foundation deserves special mention for their assistance while juggling other responsibilities.” The chapter itself is a guide for making the DOJ and FBI into overtly politicized weapons Trump could leverage against his opponents. On June 14, 2023, Hamilton appeared on Heritage president Kevin Roberts' podcast to discuss AFL's role in Project 2025, and the DOJ in particular. 

While working in the Trump White House, Miller was largely responsible for some of the administration’s most draconian and cruel policies, including its “Muslim ban” and its family separation policy. 

Following Trump’s defeat in 2020, Miller remained a key figure in right-wing media and activist circles. He is expected to again serve as a top adviser if Trump wins in November, and he has promised to carry out mass deportation of “all of the illegal aliens who entered the country under Joe Biden” using the U.S military and to build detention camps on a scale “that would be greater than any national infrastructure project we've done to date.”