A Biden-era legal win over proper board member removals set the precedent for President Donald Trump's firing of several Kennedy Center board members. (Getty Images)
Upon starting his term in 2021, President Joe Biden attempted to remove Spicer, current director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought and others from their positions on the Board of Visitors for the Naval Academy.
Spicer and Vought were serving statutory terms on the Naval Academy board after being appointed by Trump during his first term. Spicer's term was set to expire in December 2021.
At the time, he was also serving on the Commission of White House Fellows, to which he submitted his resignation shortly after Biden entered the Oval Office.
On Sept. 8, 2021, Spicer and Vought received a letter from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, stating, "I am writing to request your resignation from the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy. If we do not receive your resignation by end of day today, you will be terminated," according to the initial complaint.
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Spicer said he would not be resigning. America First Legal, founded by current Trump White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, approached the board members with the proposal to pursue a lawsuit against the Biden administration.
"This is about sending a message to make the President of the United States go to court and argue that he had the right to fire any of these people," Spicer said. "It was America First Legal that came up with the strategy, and we were the two appointees that agreed to be the example."
Spicer said the suit "was not about getting back on the board," and the irony of it all was that the goal was to lose the case in the courts.
With Trump under fire for removing multiple Kennedy Center board members earlier this month, Spicer says his loss is Trump's win. (Getty Images)
In its initial appeal to the high court, the Trump administration argued that the judiciary is attempting "to seize executive power" as courts have blocked the president from firing certain federal employees.
Likewise, just several weeks back, Trump's Justice Department penned a letter to Congress stating that it was seeking to overturn a landmark Supreme Court case in an effort to give the president greater control over independent three-letter agencies.
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"The idea would be [that] we have a unitary executive and all that means is in Article II of the Constitution, that vests all executive branch authority in one president," Malcolm said. "And the idea is that if you are an executive branch official, it is implied that the Constitution gives the president the authority to keep those officials or not keep those officials so that if they are not properly implementing executive branch policies, that the buck stops with the president and he can fire people."
Amid the legal pushback toward the Trump agenda, Spicer said, in hindsight, he and AFL "took a page out of [Trump's] book to begin with."
"I think Trump, from the day he came down the escalator at Trump Tower, basically told conservatives, ‘Stop being such wusses and learn to fight back,’" Spicer said. "So, it was Trump in 2015, 2016 that made it clear that conservatives don't have to sit and take it anymore. We can fight back. And that was kind of the notion of this lawsuit."
Haley Chi-Sing is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. You can reach her at @haleychising on X.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-era-legal-win-paved-way-trumps-kennedy-center-board-firings