A veteran Washington reporter said Wednesday he'd "bet everybody's farm" that Congress will launch an investigation into Stephen Miller by week's end.
Scott MacFarlane made the prediction during a panel on MS NOW. The MeidasTouch Network's chief Washington correspondent was reacting to New York Times reporting on secret White House memos showing Miller had pushed to suspend habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants.
"By the end of the week, Congress launches an investigation that would go right to the White House," MacFarlane said. "This is not the Department of Justice. This is the White House. This is a report about Stephen Miller, so you could bank on that."
The Times report, bylined by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, revealed that Miller — President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy — proposed stripping undocumented immigrants of the centuries-old right in order to accelerate deportations after courts kept blocking the administration's efforts.
Habeas corpus — older than the United States itself, rooted in the Magna Carta — is the foundational legal right that forces the government to justify, before a judge, why it has locked someone up.
A confidential memo dated April 29, 2025, written by White House staff secretary Will Scharf, warned Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that the move would almost certainly be struck down. Its subject line: "THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS."
Scharf wrote that the Constitution permits suspension only in cases of rebellion or invasion — and that courts have almost uniformly held that only Congress can do it.
Miller told reporters the suspension was "…an option we are actively looking at," insisting the border qualified as an invasion.
The proposal eventually faded — but the Times reported it was never fully abandoned.
MacFarlane, a former CBS News justice correspondent who covered more than 1,500 Jan. 6 prosecutions, also disclosed he had spoken with Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC) minutes before the broadcast. Tillis, a pivotal Senate Judiciary Committee vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation, told MacFarlane he had no Jan. 6 concerns — but the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" was another matter.
"That slush fund is not going over well," MacFarlane said.
Blanche's confirmation hearings are set for July.
