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re: SUPREME Failure-Most CORRUPT Court EVER & Judges Don’t Disclose FREE PERKS
Most CORRUPT Supreme Court in US History
US Supreme Court Ruling on TRUMP Ballot Ban: Five Key Takeaways
Unanimity over 14th amendment masks supreme court schism on accountability
Donald Trump can remain on the presidential ballot but the question of whether he was guilty of insurrection unresolved
The Guardian 5 MAR 2024
The US supreme court ruled on Monday that former president Donald Trump cannot be kept off the ballot in Colorado, foreclosing a series of legal challenges the Republican frontrunner faced in multiple states as he seeks a return to the White House.
The 14th amendment’s third clause, enacted after the US civil war, seeks to prevent people who were elected officials who engaged in insurrection from then holding office again. It has been rarely used since, but was resurrected by advocacy groups and voters who claim it applies to Trump because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The court’s nine justices agreed that a state can’t remove a federal candidate from its ballot. Though the decision was unanimous, briefs filed separately indicate tension among the justices about how far the majority opinion went.
Because the case involved an obscure part of the constitution, the court had to parse questions of how the clause works and to whom it applies. And, perhaps most critically, the court’s decision held tremendous capacity for disruption during an election year with a leading candidate known to rile up his followers.
Here are some key takeaways from the decision and the broader context at play.
State v Federal Rights at Heart of Issue
The core of the decision rests simply on the interplay between state and federal rights.
Though states administer federal elections, the court decided states have no authority to remove a candidate from the running under Section 3. Instead, the majority opinion noted, the 14th amendment “expanded federal power at the expense of state autonomy”. Allowing states to do as Colorado did would “invert the Fourteenth Amendment’s rebalancing of federal and state power”.
The language of the clause doesn’t include any direction on how a state could enforce it, the majority said. Only Congress is mentioned as an enforcer, they argue.
States could, and did, use the section to disqualify state candidates from holding office if they violate the insurrectionist clause, the majority wrote.
This federalism argument was clearly agreed to by all nine justices – though the majority opinion goes on further to suggest how Congress might act to enforce the clause in the future.
Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all wrote, in two separate opinions, that the majority opinion went too far.
The decision that states lack the authority here “provides a secure and sufficient basis to resolve this case”, the liberal justices (Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson) wrote. “The Court should have started and ended its opinion with this conclusion.”
Tension among the justices on how far the ruling goes
The justices’ unanimity in the belief that the Colorado court couldn’t remove Trump was fractured by two addendums that strike at the extension of the case beyond its scope.
The court’s majority – conservative justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch – specified how the insurrectionist clause would need to be enforced. It would require an act of Congress to determine who would be ineligible to hold office because of insurrection, they wrote, relying on another section of the 14th amendment to make the case.
In December 2000, Brett Kavanaugh joined the legal team of George W. Bush, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in Florida.
The liberal justices, in one separate opinion, and the conservative Barrett, in her own, said the majority went too far by prescribing what kind of process would be needed.
The case did not require the justices to “address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced”, Barrett wrote. Because of the sensitivity of the issue and its context, the justices should have left it with the federalism justification alone. “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” she wrote.
The liberal justices took this disagreement further, saying the majority opinion moved into constitutional questions it didn’t need to as a way to “insulate this court and petitioner from future controversy”.
The case did not involve federal action; it was a state court in Colorado that decided Trump could not be on the ballot there. The majority did not need to move into contested federal issues, the liberals said. “These musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.”
No decision on whether Trump engaged in insurrection
What’s left entirely unsaid in the court’s opinions issued on Monday: whether Trump engaged in insurrection.
A finding that Trump had himself engaged in insurrection would have been required for keeping the former president off the ballot. The clause says that a person could be disqualified from holding office again if they had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”.
Trump and his team fought against this claim, saying his actions after the 2020 election did not constitute an insurrection. Instead, he argued, 6 January was more akin to a “riot” and his comments to his followers, which some have contended amounted to incitement, were protected by the first amendment. In Colorado, the state supreme court had concluded that he incited his followers to engage in insurrection, which met the definition for engaging in insurrection.
The legal cases against Trump over his election subversion will continue unabated by any opining by the high court about whether he is an insurrectionist.
The potential for mayhem/violence was high because of this case
The 2024 election was already marked by tension because of the presence of Trump; his ability to direct his followers is unparalleled in American politics.
The cases against Trump in several states – for election subversion, hush-money claims, keeping classified documents and business fraud – have not injured his standing with his followers, but instead seemingly solidified or even amplified their support.
The 14th amendment cases entered into this fraught dynamic, throwing yet another legal bomb, albeit an obscure one, that gave Trump’s followers further belief that there is a conspiracy against Trump’s ability to run for re-election.
On the campaign trail, Trump has used these legal liabilities to his benefit, claiming they are evidence of election interference and a sign that President Joe Biden, not he, is a threat to democracy.
A survey focused on political violence conducted by the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats in January showed that the court’s decision on the 14th amendment held the potential for further support of political violence, regardless of how the court decided, because of the extreme partisan divide on the issue.
Trump called the decision “very well-crafted” and said he thought it would bring the country together. Most states were “thrilled” to have Trump on the ballot, he said, but others didn’t want him on there for “political reasons” and because of “poll numbers”.
The court clearly considered the political implications
While courts often claim to avoid wading in on political questions, politics clearly played into how the court decided on this case. The implications of how removing Trump could play out electorally are contemplated throughout the opinions.
The potential that a candidate could be ineligible in some states, leading to a “patchwork” effect, would disrupt voters, the majority wrote in their opinion.
“An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times,” the majority wrote. “The disruption would be all the more acute – and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result – if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos – arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.”
It wasn’t just politics with the election itself or the public at large that came into view; the political dynamics between the justices showed through as well.
The liberal justices jabbed at the majority opinion for its extension of the case into how Congress would need to act, claiming that was an attempt to “insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office”.
Barrett, in her separate opinion, tried to strike a conciliatory note. She called attention to the fact that the court unanimously decided on a “politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election”. The court’s goal, she said, should be to turn down the national temperature instead of inflame it.
“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case,” she wrote. “That is the message Americans should take home.”
The Most Corrupt Supreme Court in The World and The TRUMP Coup
Thom Hartman, MS RAW
Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation
At least four members of the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history have decided to help Trump delay his trial for trying to overthrow the government of the United States.
Just like in 2000, when five Republicans on the Court ignored Al Gore’s probable (later found to be definite) win in Florida to put Bush in the White House, today’s Court is doing as much as they can to help Trump win this November.
In a hail-Mary attempt to push his trials beyond the election, hoping he’d win with Putin’s help and could then pardon himself and gut the DOJ, Trump’s attorneys filed a claim that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “official acts” and that all presidents have “absolute immunity” while in office and for the rest of their lives thereafter.
Nobody took it seriously. Even the appeals court his bid first went to pointed out how absurd it was.
“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival,” Judge Florence Pan, one of the appeals court judges, asked Trump’s lawyers, “[and not] be subject to criminal prosecution?”
The answer from Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer was that Trump can’t be prosecuted unless he’s first impeached, which, as noted, is absurd on its face. Under this logic, President Biden could today order Trump assassinated and dare Congress to impeach him for it.
But absurd is nothing new to the six bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.
As I laid out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, Republicans on the Court have, for almost a century, taken the side of autocracy over democracy, billionaires over workers, and corporations over consumers and the environment.
— They tell us that corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights.
— They tell us when morbidly rich people or massive corporations bribe politicians that that’s merely their “First Amendment free speech” right.
— They ruled that American women and girls must live under rules established by a 17th century witch-burning judge.
— They repeatedly knocked down the rights of people living in Red states to vote.
— They make it harder for unions to function.
— They gutted Obamacare.
— They ruled that it’s okay to discriminate against gay people.
— They flooded our nation with guns.
— They encourage monopoly.
— They put shackles on the EPA, ruling that it can’t regulate carbon dioxide.
And now they’re doing everything they can to get Donald Trump back into office so Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, both well into their seventies, can retire confident in the knowledge they’ll be replaced by rightwing judges chosen by the Federalist Society.
Keep in mind, the reason Sandra Day O’Connor became the tie-breaking vote to block the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount in 2000 was because she didn’t want Al Gore to choose her successor (she was retiring because of her husband’s Alzheimer’s). Self-interest much?
Back in 1974, at least Chief Justice Rehnquist had the good sense to recuse himself in the US v Nixon case because of his close ties to the Nixon administration. Here, Clarence Thomas’ wife was deeply involved in January 6th and he won’t even consider a recusal.
The Court was given this case weeks ago, with a detailed unanimous decision by the DC appeals court that they could have simply let stand. Alternatively, they could have scheduled a hearing for the day after they got the case. They could have heard arguments and even rendered a decision by now.
But, no. The Republicans on the Court want more Republicans on the Court. And they don’t want Joe Biden expanding the Court, which they know he’s considering for a second term.
So they introduced what will be at least a 130-day delay in Trump’s trial. They won’t even hear arguments until April 22. Democracy be damned.
As former assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Richard Signorelli, noted:
“[SCOTUS] will prematurely hear a completely frivolous claim that if sustained, would allow any POTUS to commit crimes with almost unbridled immunity. This will delay his federal 1/6 trial indefinitely. A political and traitorous decision from a totally discredited SCOTUS.”
Jack Smith Laid Out The Stakes in His Appeal to The Court:
“The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy … the public interest in a prompt trial is at its zenith where, as here, a former President is charged with trying to subvert the electoral process so that he could remain in office.
“The nation has a compelling interest in the prompt resolution of this case. In all criminal cases, delay can be ‘fatal’ to achieving just outcomes.
“Delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict — a compelling interest in every criminal case; and one that has unique national importance here.”
But the Republicans on the Court don’t care.
This is one of the most naked partisan power grabs in the Court’s history, particularly given that the future makeup of the Court itself hangs on this election.
And the stakes are huge. After all, Trump didn’t just RAPED. Jean Carroll, damaging her life and mental health. He raped America as well.
— He packed his cabinet with such corrupt billionaires that five of them were referred by their own staffs to the Justice Department for prosecution (which an equally corrupt Bill Barr ignored).
— When, in April of 2020, he learned that most of the people dying of Covid were Black people in Blue states, he ended America’s lockdown and began pushing to get people back to work. He also STOPPED the Anti-COVID vaccines going into the poorer areas. Sean Penn stepped in and provided them
As a result, America had more deaths from Covid as a percentage of our population than any other developed country on Earth.
— He stirred up religious and racial hatred and encouraged Nazis and racist militias.
— He devastated the EPA, pushing out over half their scientists.
— He cut taxes on his morbidly rich peers, producing an $8 trillion addition to our national debt, more than any president in history.
— He put three radicals on the Supreme Court and several hundred crackpot, unqualified judges on the federal bench.
— He sucked up to Putin and trash-talked our democratic allies.
— He tried to destroy NATO, and promises to finish the job if he’s back in office next year.
— He empowered religious fanatics who are now on a campaign to outlaw abortion and birth control, working to destroy our entire public school system, and stirring up hatred against the queer community.
And now the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court are going out of their way to give him the delays he wants so he can stay out of jail and continue his campaign to end our American way of life.
Even if/when they rule against Trump, he will have won because he got the “fatal to justice” delay he asked them for that will now turbocharge his campaign while giving a patina of credibility to his claims of “selective prosecution” and “election interference.”
If Democrats make it through this election intact, expanding the size of the Court, imposing 18-year term limits on the justices, and imposing a code of ethics on them must be the first order of business in 2025.
The Five Worst Supreme Court Justices In American History
Justice Stephen Johnson Field. As a sitting justice in 1880, Justice Stephen Johnson Field launched a dark horse bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Chief Justice Roger Taney. Any list of terrible Supreme Court justices that does not begin with Chief Justice Roger Taney will inherently be controversial.
Justice James Clark McReynolds. I describe Justice James Clark McReynolds’s unique blend of self-centered bigotry in Injustices: McReynolds was, in Time magazine’s words, “a savagely sarcastic, incredibly reactionary Puritan anti-Semite.”
Chief Justice Melville Fuller. If it were up to Melville Fuller, Abraham Lincoln would never have been president.
Justice Clarence Thomas is the only current member of the Supreme Court who has explicitly embraced the reasoning of Lochner Era decisions striking down nationwide child labor laws and making similar attacks on federal power.
IF the Supreme Court rule Trump is immune from prosecution, it could lead to CIVIL UNREST and MASS protest ralleys never seen before in the US
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