According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Hamilton is the Vice-President and General Counsel of America First Legal Foundation. The America First Legal Foundation is a conservative non-profit organization, which according to their own site is “led by senior members of the Trump administration who were at the forefront of the America First movement.” Hamilton is also listed as an executive director on their website.
Supporters of the America First Movement were present at the insurrection and America First flags were seen at the January 6 Capitol insurrection, such as the flag seen to the left side of an AP photo taken by Andrew Harnik.
Hamilton is also a contributor to the Federalist Society, according to their website. The Federalist Society is an influential conservative society which counts at least five current Supreme Court Justices as current or former members—Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. It holds significant sway in matters of nomination to government lawyer and judge positions, and vetted the potential nominee list for the U.S. Supreme Court for President Donald Trump.
Hamilton was a member of the Trump administration, holding positions in the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security. He volunteered to work for Trump’s transition team in 2016, and was in charge of compiling the “day-one book” of policy proposals for the Trump administration.
He was partly responsible for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, pushing for Trump’s travel bans and contributing to refugee policies such as the ‘zero tolerance’ family separation policy. Hamilton was required to give a deposition in a lawsuit back in 2017 against the Trump administration’s handling of DACA, and revealed that he was the author of the D.H.S. memo that formally ended the program.
