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Trump/Musks Move to Bring White South Africans to US Shows Desire For White Supremacy
Historians Brief Teaches Supreme Court 14th Amendments REAL History.
The Top Court Will Hear Arguments in The Colorado Case on 8 February.
The 14th Amendment Plan to Disqualify TRUMP Explained
BBC 31 JAN 2024
US Supreme Court official group portrait
Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in Donald Trumps?€™ challenge of a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that found he was ineligible for the states?€™ primary ballot after violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis..14th Amendment was used against the likes of him
A longshot legal bid in multiple US states to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 US presidential ballot has led to him being kicked off the ballot in Colorado and Maine.
The strategy involves trying to block Mr Trump from the primary ballot by invoking a rarely used provision of the US Constitution - Section 3 of the 14th Amendment - that bars those who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the country from holding federal office.
Initially backed by liberal activists, the theory that Mr Trump was ineligible to run for the presidency again after the 6 January Capitol riot gained more prominence in recent months as some conservatives also embraced it.
The Colorado Supreme Court was the first to offer legal backing to the idea, ruling on 19 December that Mr Trump be removed from the state's 2024 presidential ballot.
It was the first time that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
Maine's top election official - Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows - then ruled on 28 December that Mr Trump could not run for president in the state, also citing the 14th Amendment.
Both rulings are on hold pending appeal, but critics have warned that if the cases move forward they risk robbing voters of the right to deliver their own verdict on whether the former president should return to the White House.
The Supreme Court, which Mr Trump helped shape, will be the ultimate arbiter after it said it would take up the case
What is The Theory?
The 14th Amendment was ratified after the American Civil War, and Section 3 was deployed to bar secessionists from returning to previous government posts once southern states re-joined the Union.
It was used against the likes of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his vice-president Alexander Stephens, both of whom had served in Congress, but has seldom been invoked since. It re-emerged as a political flashpoint in the wake of Trumps effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which culminated in the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021.
In the riots' aftermath, the US House of Representatives impeached the then-president on a charge of "incitement of insurrection"
Had the US Senate voted to convict him, it would have had the option to take a second, simple-majority vote to bar him from ever serving in office again.
But that never happened: the Senate failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict Trump, so there was no second vote.
Does Section 3 Apply to Trump?
Free Speech For People, an advocacy group, has been arguing that it does. On behalf of a group of voters, it filed motions in Illinois and Massachusetts to remove Trump from those state's ballots.
In late January, authorities in both states declined to take Trump off the ballot, although Free Speech For People has vowed to appeal.
Last year, the group filed challenges against five Trump-backing lawmakers whom it labelled "insurrectionists".
One -against Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene - was heard in court but ultimately defeated.
Free Speech for People targeted Trump-backed congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and ex-lawmaker Madison Cawthorn
The 14th Amendment was not written solely to apply to the Civil Wars' immediate aftermath, but also to future insurrections, argues Ron Fein, the organisations' legal director.
He told the BBC the US Capitol riot succeeded "in delaying the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation's history, which is further than the Confederates ever got". "The particular candidates we challenged in 2022 had participated or assisted in the efforts that led up to the insurrection," Mr Fein said.
All these cases, he argued, established important legal precedents that can be applied to show "Trump is the chief insurrectionist".
In New Mexico, a challenge brought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) watchdog group saw Couy Griffin, a local county commissioner who participated in the Capitol riot, removed from office under Section 3 - the first such ruling since 1869.
How Will It Move Forward?
The case in Colorado challenging Mr Trumps eligibility was filed by Crew on behalf of six state residents.
The group is also separately petitioning the top election officials in at least 18 other states to remove Mr Trump from the primary ballot.
The legal strategy has picked up steam since August, when Mr Trump was accused of election subversion in two separate criminal cases.
That same month, conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote in a law review paper that Section 3 is "self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress".
Trump could therefore be rendered ineligible for election, the pair concluded.
Mr Baude and Mr Paulsen are members of the Federalist Society, a highly influential conservative advocacy group, and their stance has since been backed by other legal experts with conservative credentials.
Even the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority and trio of Trump-appointed judges, may be receptive to their argument, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean at the Yale School of Management who supports the Baude-Paulsen perspective.
What's The Argument Against It?
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2022.. Georgias' top elections official has called the move an effort 'to short-circuit the ballot box'
Detractors have questioned both the theory's viability, and whether it should be implemented in a highly partisan America.
"To make a tortured legalistic logic to try to stop people from voting for who they want to vote for is a Soviet-style, banana republic argument," said New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Chris Ager.
"I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm neutral," he added. "But this whole attempt is bad for the country."
Even Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and the top election official in Georgia and a previous target of Mr Trumps ire, rejected the move as "merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box".
What Does Trump Say?
Donald Trump rallies in Iowa on 29 October
Despite his mounting legal troubles, Mr Trump remains the dominant frontrunner for the Republican nomination and is polling neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden ahead of their expected rematch.
The Trump campaign has said that the legal challenge is "stretching the law beyond recognition" and has no basis "except in the minds of those who are pushing it". Trumps attorney in the Colorado case argued that the twin dismissals in Michigan and Minnesota were evidence of "an emerging consensus here across the judiciary". A third dismissal in Arizona has further aided their case.
"The petitioners are asking this court to do something that's never been done in the history of the United States," Scott Gessler said. "The evidence doesn't come close to allowing the court to do it."
Quote:
WHAT DOES SECTION 3 OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT SAY?
Quote:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Re: Supreme Court NOT Keen to Judge TRUMP 14th Amendment Case-5 Takeaways From Hearin
TRUMP DEMANDS Election NOW, to Be Held Next TUESDAY..After a Very 'Beautiful' Day' at The Supreme Court Supreme Court NOT Keen to Judge TRUMPS' 14th Amendment Case in Hearing on 8 FEB
TRUMP on Trial: 5 Takeaways From Supreme Courts’ Hearing on Disqualifying TRUMP
The Guardian 9 FEB 2024
None of the justices — even the courts’ liberal wing — seemed eager to rule that the 14th amendments’ insurrection clause bars TRUMP from running for president
On The Docket: The 14th Amendment Insurrection Clause
The US supreme court heard oral arguments on whether former president Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on Thursday – and most justices sounded deeply skeptical of the effort.
All six of the courts’ conservative justices aggressively questioned the arguments that the state of Colorado had been right in determining that Trump should be barred from appearing as a candidate under section three of the US constitutions’ 14th amendment.
Two of the three liberal justices asked pointed questions as well, an indication that there may be broad consensus to strike down the ruling....Even the liberal justices seemed skeptical of Colorados’ arguments
Here Are Some Key Takeaways
Liberal justice Elena Kagan told Jason Murray, the attorney representing the Coloradans who had sued to remove Trump from their state’s ballot, that disqualifying a president for insurrection “sounds awfully national to me”, and said that the idea that one state could disqualify a candidate and possibly tip a national election was “extraordinary”.
Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed deeply wary of Murray’s arguments that section three of the 14th amendment applies to presidents – pointing out that the clause itself lists out other offices but not the presidency.
“Why didn’t they put the word ‘PRESIDENT’ in the very enumerated list in section three?
The thing that really is troubling to me is I totally understand your argument, but they were listing people that were barred, and president is not there,” she said during questioning of Murray. “And so I guess that just makes me worry that maybe they weren’t focusing on the president.”
As Murray responded with a historical example in which a lawmaker argued presidents should be included, she cut him off.
“Doesn’t that at least suggest ambiguity?” she asked. “If there’s an ambiguity, why would we construe it to, as Justice Kavanaugh pointed out, against democracy?”
Conservative justices had raised similar points.
“What about the idea that we should think about democracy?” asked Brett Kavanaugh. “Think about the right of the people to elect candidates of their choice, of letting the people decide. Because your position has the effect of disenfranchising voters to a significant degree.”
There was almost NO discussion or debate over whether Trump himself actually committed insurrection
The most controversial argument in the case – at least among the broader public – is the Colorado supreme court’s determination that Trump committed insurrection. If their ruling stood a chance of surviving, the justices probably would have had to give this issue careful consideration.
But in more than two hours of oral arguments, there was almost no substantive discussion of whether this is true – a sign that they’re likely to toss out the case without even getting so far as to consider this point.
Various justices did question who exactly was expected to make that determination.
The justices seemed to agree that states could not act without action from Congress
Several justices seemed ready to embrace the argument that states could not unilaterally decide to remove a candidate from the ballot for insurrection – and questioned why a state should act when federal insurrection charges hadn’t been brought.
“Congress has the authority here, not the states,” Kavanaugh said at one point. He suggested that section three had not been used for more than 150 years based on a historical understanding that an act of Congress was required.
Chief justice John Roberts pointed out that other provisions of the 14th amendment restrict the power of states. He wondered aloud why section three would then give states enormous power to disqualify a candidate. Reading section three to give such enormous power to states was “ahistorical”, Roberts said.
Kavanaugh also noted that there were federal statutes to convict people of insurrection that would bar them from holding federal office – and pointed out that Trump has not only not been convicted but not even charged with that.
“President Trump has not been charged with that, so what are we to make of that?” he asked.
“If the concern you have, which I understand, is that insurrectionists should not be able to hold federal office, there is a tool to ensure that that does not happen, namely federal prosecution of insurrectionists. And if convicted, Congress made clear, you are automatically barred from holding a federal office. That tool exists.”
Justices Worried About Retaliatory Actions
Roberts asked Murray about “the big, plain consequences of your position” and risk of retaliation from Republicans who might move to kick Biden off the ballot in states they control. “If Colorado’s position is upheld, surely there will be disqualification proceedings on the other side and some of those will succeed,” he warned.
“In very quick order, I would expect, although my predictions never have been correct, I would expect that a goodly number of states will say whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot, and others, for the Republican candidate, you’re off the ballot. It will come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election. That’s a pretty daunting consequence.”
TRUMP Responded With Glee
The former president called the oral arguments “a beautiful thing to watch” in a news conference with reporters after the hearings’ conclusion.
Will This Matter?
After the oral arguments, the Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller told the Guardian that he expects the court to keep Trump on the ballot. “It’s not surprising to see the justices express discomfort with the proposition that the United States supreme court should wade into a factual and legal mire like this,” he said. “But it was somewhat surprising that there seemed to be consensus around the theory that states could not do this without congressional legislation.”
He also predicted a speedy decision in the case. “The court will likely try to get an opinion out as quickly as possible in this expedited proceeding, perhaps even by the end of the month.”
TRUMPS' OWN Attorney Hands Prosecutors AMMO to Use AGAINST Him
DOOM; TRUMP EXPLODES In Anger -SUPREME Court DISQUALIFIES Clarence Thomas
TRUMP EXPLODED IN ANGER AS THE SUPREME COURT DISQUALIFIED CLARENCE THOMAS!
TRUMPS’ 'Con-Man Hustle' FAILS - Action of Supreme Court on Justice Clarence Thomas Spells DOOM For Case Against TRUMP. Investigations Show Thomas Continues to Hide Taxable Income and Has 'Shady' Connections
MSN MailOnline 27 FEB 2024
BAD MAN WALKING ...OUT
Legal Controversy Surrounds Justice Clarence Thomas for Alleged Tax Misconduct
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is still under scrutiny as he faces the prospect of a lawsuit concerning alleged tax fraud and ethics violations. Thomas had remained largely under the radar for years, not disclosing gifts from billionaires, which experts suggest might have implications for tax laws.
How was Justice Clarence Thomas Wife Ginni Involved in Jan. 6?
Ginni Thomas pressed the Trump White House and lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, exchanging more than two dozen text messages with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the vote.
She corresponded with lawyer John Eastman, a former Thomas clerk who had advocated a fringe legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could block the certification of Biden’s electoral college win.
Thomas also attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally before the Capitol attack and told the House committee investigating the attack in 2022 that she still believed the 2020 election was stolen.
Ginni Thomas’s involvement “raises the question of whether he can fairly assess the gravity of the conduct that President Trump is accused of,” Fogel said. “Even if it’s not the precise issue that the court is deciding, it [may create] the appearance that he is going to try to find a way to rule in President Trump’s favor because of his wife’s affiliations and advocacy.”
re: Most CORRUPT Supreme Court in The World & The TRUMP Coup
US Supreme Court Agrees to Hear TRUMP Immunity Claim 22 > 26th APRIL - "This is B.S.—WHY Did They Take So Long to Decide? -Its a Dilatory Tactic to Help Delay His Coup Trial" Justices to consider whether former president is immune from prosecution in election interference case
PLUS Mitch McConnell to Step Down as US Senate Republican Leader After 'Falling Out' With TRUMP and Feuding With Him Over Election Falsehoods.
The Guardian 29 FEB 2024
The US supreme court will decide if Donald Trump can be prosecuted on election interference charges, indicating it will move quickly in the immunity case.
Trumps’ appeal to the nations’ highest court marks the final challenge the former US president can make on the immunity issue related to his federal criminal case.
Trumps’ team had viewed for months that the appeal would probably fall short on the law but would be an effective way to delay the impending trial, which had been due to begin in early March.
The court on Wednesday agreed to decide Trumps’ claim of immunity on charges brought by a special counsel involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, again thrusting the nation’s top judicial body into the election fray as Trump seeks to regain the presidency.
The justices put on hold the criminal case being pursued by special counsel Jack Smith and will review a lower court’s rejection of Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution because he was president when he took actions aimed at reversing Joe Biden’s election victory over him.
Trumps’ lawyers had requested a stay of that ruling, warning of dire consequences for the presidency absent such immunity. Trump has made it no secret that his overarching legal strategy is to seek delays, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
re: Most CORRUPT Supreme Court in The World & The TRUMP Coup
Nakedly Partisan Supreme Court Lets TRUMP Dance Above The Law-WHY The Delay?
The SUPREME COURT is playing along with TRUMPS' DELAY game.
MSNBC 2 MAR 2024
In 2000, Bush v. Gore was decided in less than a week by the Court! WHY The Difference?
The Supreme Court apparently backs Donald Trumps’ delay strategy for his legal woes by seeming to slow-walk the process of coming to a decision on his ‘presidential immunity’ argument. How this could impact TRUMPS' case in Georgia and beyond belief
The Supreme Court decided to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he — or any president — is immune from criminal prosecution.
This guarantees that Trump will enjoy a significant delay before he stands trial for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. It’s entirely possible that the trial won’t begin until after Election Day on Nov. 5, when Trump is all but assured to face President Joe Biden in an electoral rematch.
This is a miscarriage of justice. Here’s why, and what you should know:
Trump claims on appeal that he is entitled to presidential immunity for plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
The high court has validated Trump’s legal strategy of repeated delay to push back any trial date until after it loses electoral relevance.
The hearing, now set for late April, may result in an opinion issued as late as late summer.
That opinion could again return the case to the appeals court on a limited question of the Court’s choosing.
Even assuming Trump’s claim of immunity eventually fails — which is widely expected — the decision won’t be issued in time for the election interference case to go to trial before the presidential election on Nov. 5.
Given that SCOTUS decided Bush v. Gore in a matter of days, deciding the 2000 presidential election in Bush’s favor, the Supreme Court’s delay on Trump’s behalf appears intentional.
'He needs to be aggressively muzzled'
TRUMP's Killing Defense Lawyers' Work...
Donald Trump's interference behind the scenes and in courtrooms is severely impacting his lawyers' ability to defend him adequately which is leading to harsher-than-expected verdicts, according to insiders who have watched him in action.
With most of Trump's civil suits behind him, combined with a financial fraud trial, that have resulted in over a half billion dollars in penalties, the former president now enters a more perilous stage as his criminal trials loom that could send him off to prison.
According to a report from the New York Times, Trump's appearances in court, his grandstanding, his decision to take the stand and his very presence is making his lawyers' lives a living hell as they are forced to bend to his demands — many of them that are detrimental to the case at hand.
In an interview with the Times, former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb had some simple advice for the lawyers handling the Manhattan hush money case slated to start later in m March: "I would expect Trump to try to act up. He needs to be aggressively muzzled by the lawyers if he is to avoid offending the jury.”
As the report notes, that has been a continuing problem when the former president is sitting in on trials at times when he doesn't have to be there.
The Times is reporting, "Typically, defendants play a role in preparing their cases, and sometimes an important one. Seldom, though, do they formulate, let alone dictate, trial strategy or make spontaneous tactical decisions from the defense table.
In two of his recent losing civil cases Mr. Trump did exactly that. The major questions in the cases were essentially decided by the time Mr. Trump arrived, but the trials were held to determine what penalties he’d face."
Adding to his woes is his presence in the courtroom that has led his attorneys to "grandstand" before the court to make him happy which has led to admonishments from the bench, most notably in the battles between attorney Alina Habba and Judge Arthur Engoron.
Trump's decisions to testify — sometimes over his lawyer's advice — has also come back to haunt him with the financial fraud trial as exhibit A.
"After the trial, the judge came down hard on Mr. Trump, imposing a $355 million penalty that, after interest, has climbed to more than $450 million. In his ruling, Justice Engoron singled out Mr. Trump’s testimony — Ms. James called him as a witness — writing that when he took the stand, he 'rarely responded to the questions asked,' behavior that 'severely compromised his credibility.'"
The report adds, "Mr. Trump also undercut his lawyers in his other recent civil trial, in which the writer E. Jean Carroll asked a jury to penalize him for defaming her. The former president attended nearly every day of that trial, badgering Ms. Habba, who led his defense.
Mr. Trump audibly exhorted her to 'get up' to protest something said by the judge, a witness or Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, at one point banging Ms. Habba’s arm with the back of his hand. Sometimes she took his directives; other times she shook her head lightly, apparently brushing him off."
ALSO - Trump lawyer Alina Habba is persona non grata at her Pennsylvania law school
Justice System ‘Bends Over Backwards’ to Shelter Defendant TRUMP
What the News Won’t Say About the 2024 Election Should Scare You
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
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
REPUBLICAN Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh Knows TRUTH of Sexual Assault And He Got Away With It, Professor Christine Blasey Ford Says Professor whose accusation rocked 2018 Supreme Court hearings says rightwing justice Kavanaugh is NOT an honest person
The Guardian 14 MAR 2024
In hearings in 2018, Christine Blasey Ford (left) accused Brett Kavanaugh, then a US supreme court nominee, of sexual assault.
The US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh is not a “consummately honest person” and “must know” what really happened on the night more than 40 years ago when he allegedly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, his accuser writes in an eagerly awaited memoir.
A research psychologist from northern California, Ford was thrust into the spotlight in September 2018 as Kavanaugh, a Bush aide turned federal judge, became Donald Trump’s second conservative court nominee. Her allegations almost derailed Kavanaugh’s appointment and created headlines around the world.
Ford’s memoir, One Way Back, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
“The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” Ford writes. “And I believe he knows what happened. Even if it’s hazy from the alcohol, I believe he must know.
“Once he categorically denied my allegations as well as any bad behavior from his past during a Fox News interview, I felt more certainty than ever that after my experience with him, he had not gone on to become the consummately honest person befitting a supreme court justice.”
Kavanaugh’s nomination became mired in controversy after a Washington Post interview in which Ford said Kavanaugh, while drunk, sexually assaulted her at a party in Montgomery county, Maryland, when they were both in high school.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford, then 51, told the Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation, helping fuel hearing-room rancor not seen since the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas, a rightwinger accused of sexually harassing a co-worker, Anita Hill.
Supported by Republicans and Trump, Kavanaugh rode out the storm to join Thomas on the court. Trump would later add another conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. That court has since passed down major rightwing rulings, most prominently removing the federal right to abortion.
In her book, Ford says she thought Kavanaugh might “step down to avoid putting his family through an investigation or further scrutiny”, adding that she wanted to tell him he should “save us both the trouble”, because “I don’t want this as much as you don’t want this”.
She has been asked, she says, what she would have done if Kavanaugh had “reached out and apologised”.
She writes: “Who would he be apologising to – me? The country? What would he be apologising for – that night? The harassment [of Ford by Trump supporters] around the testimony?
“All I can guess is that if he’d come to me, really leveled with me, and said, ‘I don’t remember this happening, but it might have, and I’m so sorry,’ it might have been a significant, therapeutic moment for survivors in general … I might’ve wobbled a bit. I might have thought, ‘You know what, he was a jackass in high school but now he’s not.’
“But when my story came out and he flat-out denied any possibility of every single thing I said, it did alleviate a little of my guilt. For me, the question of whether he had changed was answered. Any misgivings about him being a good person went away.”
Ford says she decided to press through the difficulties of coming forward – meeting Democratic senators opposed to Kavanaugh, being grilled by Republicans supporting him, becoming famous herself – because of the importance of the court.
She writes: “Honestly, if it hadn’t been the supreme court – if my attacker had been running for a local office, for example – I probably wouldn’t have said anything.”
Calling this “a sad, scary thing to admit”, Ford adds: “But this was a job at one of our most revered institutions, which we have historically held in the highest esteem. That’s what I learned at school.”
Saying she was “thinking and behaving according to principle”, she adds: “I was under the impression (delusion?) that almost everyone else viewed it from the same perspective.... I was WRONG...
“Wasn’t it inarguable that a supreme court justice should be held to the highest standard? A presidency you could win, but to be a supreme court justice, you needed to live your perfection. These nine people make decisions that affect every person in the country. I figured the application process should be as thorough as possible, and perhaps I could be a letter of (non)reference.”
Professor Christine Blasey Fords' FULL statement to U.S. Senate on alleged sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
The Supreme Court Just Tipped The Scales For House Republicans
MSNBC 30 MAR 2024
“They think they are very clever. They think they can get away with it because no one is paying attention. But we are paying attention,” says Chris Hayes on the conservative majority of the Supreme Court.
>>> YEAH RIGHT...'Just' to 'cover' their decision so they DONT appear BIAS....
DAY BEFORE; Liz Cheney urges the Supreme Court to stop aiding TRUMPs' delay tactics
AND;
Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. repeatedly suggested during an oral argument that government officials could use a 19th century law to ban the distribution of abortion pills through the mail.
AND;
Thomas Gives 'Daughter' Plum Clerkship, Gateway to Elite Conservative Class
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has hired a woman he considers a "nearly adopted daughter" to be one of his law clerks, setting her up to join American conservative elites dedicated to advancing Thomas' vision of the United States.
COMMENTS; If there are any sane judges on the Supreme Court, which is a big IF, they need to start discussing the problems with the Supreme Court in public NOW - before it's too late.
@random****1645
2 hours ago
This is just horrible. They need to be held accountable for their actions.
@dinavanoy3230
9 hours ago
We should stop calling them "justices". There's nothing "just" about this band of miscreants.
@rebekahcuriel-alessi2239
11 hours ago
The majority of the SCOTUS isn't "conservative" but dishonest.
@luvnpossibilities
8 hours ago This is exactly why the US history of SYSTEMIC RACISM being taught in our upper elementary, junior, and high schools ought to be mandatory.
CORRUPT US Supreme Court to Hear TRUMP Immunity Claim 25 APR
US Supreme Court to Hear High-Stakes TRUMP Immunity Claim Thu 25 APR
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on whether Donald Trump, as a former president, should be immune from criminal prosecution for acts he committed while in office
MSRAW 23 APR 2024
The nine justices' ruling could have far-reaching implications for the extent of US executive power -- and Trump's own multiple legal issues as he seeks the White House again.
And while most constitutional law experts expect Trump to suffer a legal defeat, he may already have won a political victory.
By agreeing to take the case, the court delayed -- perhaps indefinitely -- the start of Trump's trial on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
The question of whether an ex-president is immune from prosecution is an untested one in American jurisprudence because until Trump, a former White House occupant had never been charged with a crime.
"Famously, Richard Nixon engaged in criminal law-breaking," said James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University.
"But because he resigned, and (Nixon's successor) Gerald Ford then pardoned him, we have never had to squarely address the notion of a criminal prosecution against a former president."
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed the election conspiracy case against the 77-year-old Trump in August and had been pushing hard for a March start date for the trial.
But Trump's lawyers filed a blizzard of motions seeking to postpone the case against the Republican presidential candidate, including the claim that a former president enjoys "absolute immunity" from prosecution.
Two lower courts flatly rejected that argument but the Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump, agreed in late February to hear the case.
In one ruling, a lower court said Trump's immunity claim is "unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution."
"We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter," the judges said.
- 'Jack Smith 1, Donald Trump 0' -
Sample and other legal scholars said the Supreme Court was unlikely to hold that a president enjoys blanket immunity from prosecution.
"I find it hard to believe that even this very, very conservative, very pro-Trump Supreme Court will be inclined to find in favor of an argument that says a president is completely immune, basically, no matter what he does.
"That would be a holding that would be subject to abuse by presidents of all parties.
"I think the scoreboard will read Jack Smith 1, Donald Trump 0," Sample said, adding "the election year calendar will be of greater consequence."
Steven Schwinn, a University of Illinois Chicago law professor, agreed.
"Even if the court hands Trump a decisive, unqualified defeat, the prosecution will have to scramble to get the trial before the (November) election," he said.
Randall Eliason, a former US attorney who teaches law at George Washington University, said the unique circumstances surrounding the case would justify a quick decision by the Supreme Court, although the justices may wait until the end of their current term in June to issue a ruling.
"We've never before had a situation where a defendant would potentially have the chance to cancel his own prosecution if he wins reelection," Eliason said.
"The people have a right to have these criminal charges tried, and if Trump is reelected, there's a chance they will never be tried."
Arguing for immunity, Trump has said that without it "a president will not be able to properly function, or make decisions, in the best interest of the United States of America."
Smith rebuffed that argument in a filing with the Supreme Court.
"The President's constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them," he said.
Trump also faces 2020 election charges in Georgia and has been indicted in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified information after leaving the White House.
Opening arguments began at his trial in New York on Monday on state charges of falsifying business records by paying pre-2016 election "hush money" to a porn star.
CROOKED Supreme Court Delays AGAIN Immunity Decision to Help TRUMP
Supreme Court Seems Skeptical of Trumps' Claim of Absolute Immunity But Decisions' Timing is Unclear
The case might have to be sent back to lower courts before any trial could begin
AP 25 APR 2024
The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trumps claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but it seemed possible Trump could still benefit from a lengthy trial delay, possibly beyond November’s election.
Chief Justice John Roberts was among at least five members of the court who did not appear to embrace the claim of absolute immunity that would stop special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump on charges he conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
But in arguments lasting more than 2 1/2 hours in the court's first consideration of criminal charges against a former president, Roberts also was among several justices who suggested that the case might have to be sent back to lower courts before any trial could begin.
Roberts indicated he was unhappy with the reasoning adopted by the federal appeals court that ruled against Trump.
The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision could be as important as the outcome. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump's three high court appointees, suggested that former presidents might have some immunity and that in this case, lower courts might have to sort out whether that applied to Trump. That could further delay a trial.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the other Trump appointee, seemed less open to arguments advanced by Trump lawyer D. John Sauer.
Smith’s team is asking for a speedy resolution. The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, about four months before the election.
Trump, the first former president charged with crimes, had said he wanted to be at the Supreme Court on Thursday. Instead, he was in a courtroom in New York, where he is standing trial on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed hush money payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.
Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn't function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.
Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C.
The election interference conspiracy case brought by Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump.
Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties.
Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.
“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.
The lack of apparent support on the court for the sort of blanket immunity Trump seeks has caused commentators to speculate about why the court has taken up the case in the first place.
Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”
The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.
But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.
“If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election,” Roosevelt said. “Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree.”
The court has several options for deciding the case. The justices could reject Trump's arguments and unfreeze the case so that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan can resume trial preparations, which she has indicated may last up to three months.
The court could end Smiths' prosecution by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for official acts they took while in office.
It also might spell out when former presidents are shielded for prosecution and either declare that Trump's alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so that she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial.... END
Not Going to Happen: Why Supreme Court Won't Bite TRUMPs' Bait
Not Going to Happen: Ex-FBI Agent Explains Why Supreme Court Won't Bite TRUMPs' Bait
A lot of legal experts appeared worried after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Donald Trump's immunity case, but there's no way the right-wing justices are going to buy all of what the former president is selling, a former FBI agent said on Saturday.
MSRAW 28 APR 2024
Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa weighed in on the Supreme Court hearing, pointing out the novelty of Trump's absolute presidential immunity argument that would see an ex-president avoid any charges as long as they weren't convicted at an impeachment trial.
"I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the requirement that a POTUS needs to be impeached and convicted before being prosecuted is something literally no one ever argued until Trump," she said on social media. "Apart from the fact that this claim grossly misreads the Impeachment Clause, the conservative justices won’t bite because it undercuts the very theory of almost unlimited presidential power to which they subscribe."
She continued:
"To wit, it would place POTUS’ power to enforce the laws against former presidents at the mercy of Congress. Not going to happen (and none of them explored this in oral argument, it was too dumb even for them I guess)."
Political and legal commentator Allison Gill, better known as "Mueller, She Wrote," noted that right-wing justice Amy Coney Barrett used "the 'clear statement of Congress' idiocy to undercut the impeachment judgement clause ridiculousness."
Gill explained:
"She asked [Trump lawyer John] Sauer: 'Special Counsel makes a great point that if [Trump] were impeached and convicted, that he could be prosecuted after impeachment, right?' Sauer: 'Yes.' Barrett:
'But you also say these statutes don't apply to him because he’s not explicitly mentioned, so how can you say he'd be subject to prosecution after impeachment if these statutes don't apply to him?'"
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Supreme Court Justice Provides Historical Clue Into Ruling on TRUMPs' Immunity
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh Provides Historical Clue Into Courts' Eventual Ruling on TRUMPs' Immunity Case
A legal review written more than a decade ago by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh could provide a preview of how he will rule on Donald Trumps' sweeping immunity claim.
MSRAW 29 APR 2024
The Trump-appointed Kavanaugh, who was confirmed in 2018, published the article nine years earlier while serving as a U.S. Circuit Court judge.
It says that the public vastly underestimated the difficulty of the presidents' job and arguing they should be protected from criminal prosecution while focusing without distraction on the duties of their role, reported Insider.
"The point is not to put the President above the law or to eliminate checks on the President, but simply to defer litigation and investigations until the President is out of office," Kavanaugh wrote.
Kavanaugh argued that only the Constitution provides a check against a president who breaks the law.
"If the President does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available," Kavanaugh wrote. "No single prosecutor, judge, or jury should be able to accomplish what the Constitution assigns to the Congress. Moreover, an impeached and removed President is still subject to criminal prosecution afterwards."
Kavanaugh noted in the article that he had changed his position on that topic before writing, so it's possible he's changed his mind again, but a legal expert wasn't sure the justice would agree that Trump could only be held criminally liable for actions he took in office if he had been impeached and removed by Congress for those actions.
"I don't read that as saying that Kavanaugh would agree with the Trump argument about you have to be impeached and removed before you can be prosecuted," said Jonathan Entin, a retired constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University.
"I read that part of the article as saying that the president is not subject to indictment and prosecution while in office. That is a position that the Department of Justice has maintained under both Democratic and Republican administrations alike."
Entin said he did not expect the court to completely resolve the question of presidential immunity but instead send the case back down to lower courts, which would likely prevent Trump from being tried in the Jan. 6 case before the November election.
"My sense is that we are probably going to get something that looks like a 6-3 decision, where the three Democratic appointees will dissent, and the six Republican appointees will say that this case has to go back to the lower courts to sort out what part of the indictment involves official actions — for which the President is immune from prosecution at any time — from things that are not, and that will kick the can down the road," Entin said.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
A Supreme Failure: How The Most CORRUPT High Court EVER is Getting MORE Cover From The Press
'Major National Impact': Dozens of FED Judges Didn’t Disclose FREE Luxury Trips
How The Most Corrupt Judges Rise To The Supreme Court...
MSNRAW 3 MAY 2024
DEN OF CROOKS
On Thursday, we got confirmation that our Supreme Court is completely in the tank for Donald Trump and his repellent Republicans, and our country very well might not survive it.
By having the audacity to even schedule oral arguments to consider whether one man in America can be granted immunity, and is above the laws that guide the rest of us, this rogue, corrupt court is incinerating one of the most basic tenets of our Democracy right in front of our eyes.
This 6-3 Conservative Court is also making it plain to us in no uncertain terms that they believe themselves to be above the laws that the rest of us must follow. They are flaunting the fact that they are completely untouchable and unimpeachable, and can just do whatever the hell it is they want.
The morally busted majority on this court is now using its unbridled power with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer as it swings hard to nail the door shut on 248 years of an evolving Democracy, while pushing us back to a hopeless time when crooked kings ruled with impunity and were above it all.
So brazen and corrupt is this reprehensible Gang of Sicks, it is even going so far as to protect its own membership from criminality in the Attack on America.
We KNOW that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginny, was hip-deep in Trump’s violent insurrection on January 6. And still, he shamelessly did not recuse himself from this session. In fact, there has been no indication that he even gave this a whiff of consideration.
This is patently absurd. There is no way in the world this ghastly man can be an impartial juror in a decision to consider whether Trump is immune from prosecution in his attack. His wife was in on the crime, for God’s sake. She was messaging with the White House DURING the attack.
Everybody knows this.
Instead, by all indications, Thomas put his fat thumb on the scale for his wife’s friend, Trump. The very Trump who was responsible for placing three other Radical Right justices besides the heinous Thomas onto this revolting court of no-good liars.
During this tenuous time in our history, it is fair to surmise that there will never be any trial ever for the most grievous attack on our Capitol since the Civil War, because the most powerful judicial body in the world has debts to pay to the anti-American dark powers which helped fuel the attempted coup, and placed them on the court.
Our 6-3 Supreme Court is telling us right out in the open they intend to act on behalf of the most dangerous man on Earth and his army of authoritarian lowlifes.
If they will back the play of an evil man like this, what else are they capable of?
We are seeing now the elimination of Roe was nothing but a warmup act for the Gang of Sicks. They have already stepped on and snuffed out laws protecting our vote and our environment. They have ruled that corporations are people, and that guns have more rights than our children, who are being slaughtered by the hundreds in our schools.
Everybody who truly loves this country and what she stands for should be absolutely terrified, because we simply cannot continue to sustain this punishing attack and expect to survive.
The end is near, good people, unless we rise up and say enough, and frankly it’s very hard to see that happening.
I sit here and type all these true and terrible things with the fear that most people in this country are not aware of this peril. I’ll wager 75 percent of Americans have absolutely no idea how dangerous this court is, and what their one-after-another evil rulings portend.
Do they even know that things are only going to get worse for decades to come thanks to the insane lifetime appointments of these evil-doers?
If they don’t know this, WHY don’t they know it? Willing ignorance is a large part sure, but I am also looking at you, Corporate Media.
With our Democracy under assault while the laws that should be protecting us are beaten and bruised, how come you are not sounding the alarms to inform everybody of this danger?
Why, given everything I just reported here, was this headline not leading every national newspaper and TV chyron in America on Friday:
END OF DEMOCRACY AT HAND AS SUPREME COURT CONSIDERS IF CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW....
No less is on the line right now. So what in the hell is going on here????
Either our national press is proving yet again they are not up to covering and reporting on the most ominous, terrifying moment in our nation’s long history, or … they are in on it.
Dozens of FED Judges Hid FREE Luxury Trips
In recent years, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has been in hot water over his failure to disclose luxury junkets paid for by far-right billionaire donors.
But a new report shows that federal judges across the country are effectively doing the same thing, with little to no accountability.
A Wednesday report by National Public Radio found that dozens of federal district and circuit court judges — appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents — are routinely failing to file timely financial disclosure reports as required by law.
Ethics experts say that the timely filing of financial disclosure reports is important for plaintiffs and civil defendants, who may want to request a judge recuse themselves if they see that judge attended an event paid for by a special interest group with a case before the court. Those disclosure forms are then posted to every federal court's website.
"It also matters to the public, even if someone never shows up in a courtroom, to believe in the integrity of our judiciary and to trust in the decisions that are issued by judges," University of Houston Law Center professor Renee Knake Jefferson told NPR. "Having disclosures of judicial financial interests goes directly to the public having confidence in the outcomes of the decisions — that they are free of any bias or influence."
"The public has a right to know whether or not its top legal officials have any potential conflicts going into hearing cases," said Gabe Roth of the nonprofit group Fix the Court. "Sometimes they're small bore, but a lot of the times they have major national impact."
NPR's Tom Dreisbach and Carrie Johnson reported that despite judges being expected to file a public report disclosing any events they attended in which their costs of participation were covered by an outside entity, many jurists have failed to do so for months or even years.
"That information loses most of its value if it's a year and a half later," said Kedric Payne, who is the senior director of ethics at the anti-corruption watchdog group Campaign Legal Center. "It's just too distant from the potential conflict of interest."
One of the more notable members of the federal judiciary who failed to file timely disclosure reports is U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida, whom former President Donald Trump appointed to the bench in 2020. Cannon —
She is overseeing Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — attended several seminars at a luxury resort in Montana, but didn't post her disclosure forms online until NPR's inquiry.
Clerk Angela Noble attributed the late disclosure to "technical issues." "Any omissions to the website are completely inadvertent," Noble said.
Many of the seminars judges attend are funded by well-heeled far-right groups with extreme ideological agendas. NPR reported that "dozens" of federal judges attended a 2022 event at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School — named for the Ronald Reagan-appointed Supreme Court justice — featuring a speech by European Parliament member Gunnar Beck.
Beck is with the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) party, which has called for the mass deportation of migrants and refugees.
Supreme Court Thomas Corruption Explodes-Accepts MORE Gifts & WANTS BIGGER Salary
Clarence Thomas Corruption Explodes, Accepted EVEN MORE Gifts- AND Pushed For Higher Salary
Thomas put on the spot over which corruption allegations are 'lies'
MSNRAW 14 MAY 2024
BAD BAD CREEPY OLD GIT
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is getting pushback after complaining at a legal conference last week that he and his wife Ginni are being treated unfairly with allegations of corruption while at the same time refusing to explain questions about his alleged ethical transgressions.
On Friday, the 75-year-old conservative justice, who has been notable for saying little during hearings throughout his 30-plus years on the bench, was more than willing to speak in general terms about the multiple exposes about gifts, loans and help he has received from wealthy conservatives.
As the Associated Press reported, "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told attendees at a judicial conference Friday that he and his wife have faced 'nastiness' and 'lies' over the last several years and decried Washington, D.C., as a 'hideous place.' Thomas spoke at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference, which hears federal cases from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia."
According to the report, Thomas sidestepped questions about the accusations, telling the attendees, "I think there’s challenges to that. We’re in a world and we — certainly my wife and I the last two or three years it’s been — just the nastiness and the lies, it’s just incredible.”
That led analyst Steve Benen to suggest that Thomas has every opportunity to address the allegations and put them to rest.
Pointing to the multiple reports about Thomas receiving and hiding his outside-of-the-court benefits, Benen summed up, "It’s an impossible dynamic to defend: Thomas has lived the life of a wealthy man, thanks to the generosity of his rich, like-minded friends."
He then challenged the jurist by saying,"I’m afraid he’s going to have to be more specific. Specifically, which of the scandals should the public discount? Because on the one hand we have a great many compelling, well-sourced, award-winning reports written and published by respected journalists.
On the other hand, we have a controversial Supreme Court justice, burdened by decades of controversies, who apparently hopes the public takes his vague assertions at face value, despite his lack of credibility.
Justice Clarence Thomas pushed for higher salary, speaking fees
Justice Thomas’ contributions to the negative public perception of the high court
Clarence Thomas Corruption Explodes, Accepted EVEN MORE Gifts
Clarence Thomas' Secret Life of Luxury
RELATED:
Clarence Thomas' Ex-Girlfriend: We Had Threesomes With His Colleagues
CORRUPT SCOTUS Trying to Kill Constitution For TRUMP + Upside Down US Flag
CORRUPT Supreme Court Trying to Kill The Constitution For TRUMP
Partisan Insurrectionist: Calls Mount For Alitos’ Ouster Amid Scandal of How His Wife Flew The MAGA Symbol -An Upside-Down American Flag, Outside Their Home
MSRAW 18 MAY 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority seems intent on strangling the life out of the Constitution to give Donald Trump authoritarian powers, according to a state Supreme Court justice.
Hawaii Supreme Court justice Todd Eddins has been an outspoken critic of the nation's top court, which he said had abandoned legal precedent to impose their personal preferences and political theories to decide cases, and he told Slate columnists Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern that these decisions put democracy at risk.
"You know, when precedent is for suckers and we don’t know whether settled law will become unsettled every June, it’s really hard for the judiciary to function," Eddins said. "It’s hard for judges to operate when there’s a lack of stability. And it’s not just judges; it’s the litigants, the lawyers, the law professors who have to tear up their syllabuses.
I mean, it’s fundamental to our American system of justice that law works incrementally, that cases build upon cases, and that we rely on precedent. That’s the stability of the law. And when you have a group of people who come in and disregard precedent, it really unsettles things; it causes chaos. People don’t know how to operate."
The right-wing majority shaped by Trump purportedly bases their decisions on the originalist legal philosophy that considers the founders' intentions, but Eddins said their reasoning frequently landed on outdated judgments from a racist, misogynistic, homophobic society and limited the judgments of contemporary judges.
"I think it’s also a lack of humility, a lack of respect for all the law that’s been out there for centuries of the American judicial system," Eddins said. "Who gave these originalists the right to kill the Constitution? And when the Constitution is killed, where do we stand? It makes it so difficult for courts throughout the land."
Conservatives have fought for years to restrict states in their authority to protect voting rights and elevating one individual above all others in the eyes of the law, Eddins said.
"The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions are really destroying democracy," Eddins said. "It’s just race to the extreme in case after case. It tears at the fabric of our nation and what I view our federal Constitution to be. And now, over the last few weeks, it seems like it’s not just personal values and preferences that they’re injecting into their jurisprudence; they also give preference to specific individuals, and that’s where the court is truly eroding confidence in the judicial system."
The justice was asked whether the specific individual he was thinking of was Trump in his presidential immunity case.
"I am," Eddins replied.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Caught in Bombshell Scandal - ‘The American Flag Is Sacred’: Reports Of Upside-Down Flag At Justice Alito’s House
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr., left, and his wife Martha-Ann Alito
The conservative justice had told the New York Times, which revealed the flag and published a photo of it, that his wife flew the MAGA symbol "in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs," but Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream says Alito told her that his wife had been verbally harassed by the man.
"I spoke directly with Justice Alito about the flag story in the NYT," Bream posted on X. "In addition to what's in the story, he told me a neighbor on their street had a 'F--- Trump' sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus. Mrs. Alito brought this up with the neighbor."
The photo published by the Times was taken on Jan. 17, 2021, which was 11 days after the violent U.S. Capitol riot
SCOTUS Justice CAUGHT With An Upside-Down American Flag Displayed Outside His Home, Blames Wife
CORRUPT Supreme Court Justice Alito is Close to TREASON -Insurrectionist Flags
‘Contemptuous’: Top Constitutional Scholar Warns Alito He's Close to Treason
DISGRACE: Alito Shatters Supreme Court Legitimacy With ANOTHER Insurrectionist Flag Scandal
MSRAW 24 MAY 2024
Laurence Tribe, a top constitutional expert, is suggesting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's actions may be "close to treason," after the jurist flew flags associated with the January 6 insurrection and the far-right Christian nationalist movement at two of his homes.
Professor Tribe alleged Justice Alito may have committed impeachable offenses, including "giving aid and comfort to an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States, which is close to treason," he said in his Wednesday interview on the MeidasTouch Network.
He also called for a "serious investigation" by the U.S. Senate into Alito, who "has been contemptuous for quite a while." He added, "it's about time that he be held to account."
Justice Alito "serves not for life but during good behaviour. That’s the language of the Constitution. It is settled that any judge or justice who commits high crimes and misdemeanors, and that certainly includes giving aid and comfort to an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States, which is close to treason, that any such person is subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives," declared Tribe, University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, a professor of law, and author of a major textbook on the U.S. Constitution.
"Obviously, this House of Representatives is not going to impeach Samuel Alito," he continued.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Christian nationalist, has the same flag Alito flew at his New Jersey home outside his congressional office.
The GOP-led House "is very much in league with Donald Trump. He controls Mike Johnson, but he's subject to impeachment and then trial in the Senate. The very fact that the House of Representatives will not do its duty is not an excuse for the Senate, not to at least initiate a serious investigation into whether impeachable offenses have been committed.
And in any event, whether an enforceable meaningfully enforceable code of ethics, enforceable by an Inspector General, whether that should be enacted. That's something within the Senate's purview as well."
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) is under increasing pressure to hold hearings into Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas, and to pass legislation to reform the Supreme Court.
"To have that kind of investigation without Samuel Alito being called to testify – and if you won't testify, voluntarily being subpoenaed – is like playing Hamlet without the prince. He is, in this scenario, the prince, perhaps the Prince of Darkness, he needs to be heard from. He needs to be asked what he meant by allowing that symbol of sympathy with insurrectionists to fly in front of his home.
It's not enough for him to say casually to the Fox News Service, 'Oh, that was just my wife responding to nasty comments about FU to Trump and to us by our neighbors.' As far as I can tell, it seems that his defense for unethical behavior and worse, for expressing aid and comfort to an insurrection against the Constitution is that his neighbors were exercising their First Amendment rights in a way that he thought was not going to be nice for his children."
"Let him do it under oath," Tribe continued, "and if he refuses to show up, in response to a subpoena claiming some new kind of judicial privilege, it doesn't exist. He could be held in contempt, and should be. He has been contemptuous for quite a while, it's about time that he be held to account."
Alito shatters Supreme Court legitimacy with another insurrectionist flag scandal
Justice Alito turned the 'legitimacy' of the US Supreme Court upside down • FRANCE 24 English
Lawrence: If Alito Were a Congressman, He'd be Heckling Biden With 'MOSCOW' Marjorie Taylor Greene
MORE; Second OFFENSIVE Flag Flown Outside of Justice Alitos’ Vacation Home
A flag that was on display during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was flown outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag flew last summer at Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it originated as a symbol of the American Revolution but became a symbol of Trumps “Stop the Steal” movement—including one carried by rioters at the Capitol building.
What a Justices' Upside-Down Flag Means For The Supreme Court
AND....
'DON' TRUMP AS 'PRESIDENT' IN 2024
Quote:
GEORGE WASHINGTON SAID THERE WILL BE THOSE THAT;
''However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.''
George Washington
Global Amazement at Antics of US Supreme Court -A Mockery of Justice
INFIGHTING in US Supreme Court Makes a Mockery of Justice & Causes Global Amazement
ASTOUNDING - Tired, Testy and Fractured: The US Supreme Court Prepares For More Drama and Indecison
Is NO-ONE Going to Control Them?
AP 27 MAY 2024
As Supreme Court justices try to resolve more than a dozen major cases over the next month, including whether Donald Trump must stand trial for election subversion, they appear mired in antagonism and distrust.
Liberals have been bluntly exposing their differences with the conservative majority and asserting that it is changing the law in America simply because, with new justices, it can. Conservatives, who indeed hold the upper hand on the 6-3 court, nonetheless spike their writing and remarks with derision for the left.
And the court faces an increasingly disapproving public amid a series of self-inflicted controversies over ethics and perceived conflicts of interest – the latest from flags flown at homes owned by Justice Samuel Alito that are often associated with Trump supporters and the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
During their last two weeks of oral arguments, the anger among justices on both sides of the bench was obvious to lawyers and others who regularly attend.
They sounded testy and looked weary. During the scheduled one-hour hearings that often ran twice as long, several justices held their heads in hands. Alito rolled his eyes. Elena Kagan wore a pained expression. Clarence Thomas rubbed his face. In some cases, when Ketanji Brown Jackson, the junior justice, posed her final queries at the end of a clean-up round of questioning, most of the others didn’t look her way.
The larger atmosphere suggested many were simply not listening to each other or respecting divergent views – a pattern bound to make the final sprint of negotiations especially difficult.
As a result, it could be harder for Chief Justice John Roberts to win unanimity, or something close to it, in the controversy over Trump’s demand for immunity. In past challenges to presidential power, whether involving Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, chief justices have labored toward unanimous rulings.
Personal discord can also make the tone of their written opinions harsher all around, as seen in March in the Trump ballot case from Colorado or Thursday in a racially charged voting case from South Carolina.
More substantively, these differences can stymie compromise. Concurring opinions and competing rationales, as occurred in last week’s dispute over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when five justices split off from the majority in concurring statements, are apt to confuse lower court judges and others trying to understand the legal precedent.
The justices have already stalled on some controversies heard last fall, even as they are now dealing with the new ones argued this spring, including on abortion access, “bump-stock” firearm regulation and homeless encampments.
The South Carolina racial gerrymandering case handed down on Thursday took more than seven months to resolve, and the 99 pages of conflicting opinions showed why. As justices poked holes in each other’s legal reasoning, their words dripped with sarcasm.
Confronting Fellow Justices in Writing
The current strife is no doubt exacerbated by the unprecedented ideological split of contemporary times. Since the six-justice conservative bloc coalesced in late 2020, it has been driving changes in American life – including the end of constitutional abortion rights – and is likely to further transform the law in cases to be issued through the end of June.
Conservatives will also control any emergency litigation over ballot rules leading up to the November elections.
Liberal justices have been throwing up flares, including in a Louisiana voting rights case earlier this month.
When the court majority allowed Louisiana state officials to use a map with a second majority-Black congressional district (over the protest of a GOP-backed group of White voters), the three liberals dissented.
That Louisiana case recalled liberal justices’ moves in the Colorado case over whether Trump could be struck from the state ballot because of his role in the riot at the Capitol.
In both cases, there was more common ground than differences, but the liberals chose to accentuate the latter and were admonished by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
“In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” Barrett wrote in the March decision.
“The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. … All nine Justices agree on the outcome of the case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
But that was not the message liberals chose to send.
True, the nine had unanimously concluded that states lack the power to enforce the 14th Amendment’s anti-insurrectionist provision against a candidate for the presidency and other federal offices. But a five-justice conservative bloc went further and said that only specific legislation passed by Congress could activate the provision.
In their objection, the justices on the left turned an earlier adage of Roberts against his majority: “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.” They then quoted a dissenting opinion from the enduringly contentious 2000 case of Bush v. Gore:
“What it does today, the Court should have left undone.”
All That INFIGHTING and Discord caused by one dishonest self serving LYING Bully....
$5M in Gifts to ALL Supreme Court Justices & Alitos Intimidates Neighbours
Watchdog: Of $5M in Gifts to ALL Supreme Court Justices, Thomas took $4M
Generational SCANDAL: Justice Thomas Raked in $4M in Gifts, Report Reveals
Former Neighbours Accuse Alitos of Using Power Imbalance to Harass and Intimidate Them
MSNRAW 7 JUN 2024
Supreme Court justices combined have received nearly $5 million in gifts over the past 20 years, and Justice Clarence Thomas received the lions' share. Data release Thursday by judiciary watchdog Fix the Court found the high court's nine justices have accepted 344 gifts valued at almost $3 million since 2004. Adding 202 gifts for eight justices who have stepped down since then, that number grows to over $4.7 million.
Thomas, alone, has accepted 193 gifts valued at over $4 million. The report also noted the George H.W. Bush appointee received an additional 126 "likely but not confirmed gifts."
The report comes ahead of an expected release of the justices' financial disclosure records on Friday.
The group added Thomas only reported 27 of the gifts on his financial disclosures.
"Supreme Court justices should not be accepting gifts, let alone the hundreds of freebies worth millions of dollars they've received over the years," Fix the Court's Gabe Roth said in a statement.
"Public servants who make four times the median local salary, and who can make millions writing books on any topic they like, can afford to pay for their own vacations, vehicles, hunting excursions and club memberships."
Thomas' trips to the Bohemian Grove were the most expensive, with six of these visits accounting for almost $300,000.
Real estate mogul Harlan Crowe in 2007 paid for a $160,000 yacht cruise Thomas took around the Greek Greek Islands, and health care executive Anthony Welters paid off a $253,686 balance on the justice's RV loan.
Roth argued these wealthy gift givers are using their "generosity" to buy influence over the high court.
"The ethics crisis at the court won't begin to abate until justices adopt stricter gift acceptance rules," he said.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia received the second-highest gift total, with over $210,000 from 2004 until his death in 2016.
Justice Samuel Alito came in third with over $170,000.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted over $59,000 in gifts, followed by Chief Justice John Roberts, who accepted over $49,000.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor accepted almost $16,000 in gifts, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received almost $9,000.
The three Donald Trump appointees accepted the least in gifts, according to the report. Justice Neil Gorsuch took $2,450, Justice Amy Coney Barrett received $500, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh received a mere $100 worth of gifts.
The report found only two justices reported 100% of the gifts they received. Former Justice David Souter, who stepped down in 2009, reported one gift worth $349. Justice John Paul Stevens, who left the court in 2010, reported over 20 gifts worth $91,408.
Fix the Court noted its total gift calculation may be lower than the actual number, considering certain assets, like Scalia's hunting lodge, could not be verified.
Additionally, Scalia, Ginsburg and Justice William Rehnquist all died in office, so their numbers "might be undercounts."
The Supreme Court signed on to an ethics code last year, which states justices can only receive reasonable compensation and reimbursement of expenses from accepted activities.
Justices have to report gifts over a designated amount -- $480 in 2023 -- on financial disclosures per the new ethics code.
Alitos Intimidates Neighbours
Emily Baden said her former neighbours, Justice Samuel Alito and his wife Martha-Ann, used a "power imbalance" to "harass and intimidate" her and her husband.
Baden made the comments after news reports indicated that the two couples had a spat, which led to Martha-Ann flying a U.S. flag upside down like the Jan. 6 rioters.
Baden recalled one encounter with the Alitos to NPR.
"And then Mrs. Alito says something like, well, well, well, isn't it the f---ing fascists," she recalled. "And that was when I spoke back — I did obviously use an expletive. But I also said a lot of other things like how dare you behave this way?"
Baden has told CNN she regretted calling Martha-Ann Alito the c-word. Samuel Alito "stayed quiet the whole time," according to the NPR report. "Baden and her husband were a little freaked out because Martha-Ann Alito used their full names when she walked up. And they had never actually met."
Baden said, "The power imbalance between these people and myself is huge. They're choosing to harass and intimidate us when we are nothing to them."
Badens' husband notified the police. But other than contacting Alitos' security detail, nothing was done, she said.
Sam Alitos' Former Neighbour Talks About Harassment
CORRUPT Supreme Court -Leaked Audio Exposes Justice Alito & Wife as MAGA Members
CORRUPT Supreme Court is Paving Path to Authoritarianism
Leaked Audio Exposes SCOTUS Justice Alito & Wife as Homophobic MAGA Cult Members
MSN 12 JUN 2024
Unethical and CORRUPT: Secret Alito audio revealing 'Christian nationalist' Shocking leaked audio appears to show Justice Alito and his wife supporting the worst of MAGA cult's insane beliefs.
What happens the Supreme is taken over by loyal Trump supporters... Alito tapes prove justice isn't telling the truth about flag controversy
Secret audio recording of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito casually and unreservedly telling a woman posing as a right-wing Catholic conservative that there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,” and agreeing the nation needs to return to “godliness,” has sparked strong criticism by legal and political experts.
Justice Alito agreed with the woman, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who told him, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”
“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she added before Alito replied, “I think you’re probably right.”
Alito continued, saying, “there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
Many expect judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, to maintain an impartiality, including when weighing in on issues of faith and morality.
The U.S. Constitution itself states justices serve for life if they remain on “good behaviour.”
Ex-Governor Says She Regrets Supporting Alito After Secret Recording Emerges
'I’m gonna get them’: Bombshell Secret Audio of Supreme Court Justice Alitos' Wife Targets Media
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
One Way to Correct CORRUPTION of US Supreme Court Justices Thomas & Alito
Democrats Have One Way to Correct Corruption of Justices Thomas and Alito
How Democrats Want to Address Supreme Court Ethics Concerns
MSNRAW 17 JUN 2024
Calls are mounting for U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to hold hearings on Supreme Court ethics and corruption, subpoena right-wing Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and have them explain why, as some, including Democratic Jewish Senators, believe they are promoting Christian nationalism rather than properly interpreting the Constitution and U.S. law, while accepting lavish gifts.
Chief Justice John Roberts has already refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Justice Alito has said Congress has no power over him or the Court.
"In the summer of 2023, Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal that Congress has no authority to regulate the Supreme Court, despite the ethical regulations Congress already imposes on the justices," the Brennan Center for Justice reported last month.
"Around the time he made this erroneous statement, the justice saw fit to fly a flag in his yard that had been carried by January 6 rioters and associated with the 'Stop the Steal' insurrection movement, marking the second time since January 6 that such a flag had flown outside of the justice’s residence."
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed Justice Thomas took even more trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow than he had disclosed and that had never before been reported. Thomas has received an estimated $5.8 million in gifts over the past two decades, a large portion from Crow, the government watchdog Fix the Court revealed two weeks ago.
Alito's recent remarks revealing he believes the Supreme Court has to move the nation to one of "godliness," on top of the symbols of insurrection flying at his homes, has some Americans deeply concerned about his Christian nationalism and the effect it has on his ability to deliver impartial rulings.
Chairman Durbin has steadfastly refused to issue subpoenas to anyone on the Supreme Court. Last summer he defended not even inviting Justice Thomas to a committee hearing on ethics, saying the invitation would have been ignored.
Should Democrats be relying on the Senate to fix the Supreme Court?
No, says Vox's Ian Millhiser, author of two books on the Supreme Court: Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted (2016), and The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America (2021).
"What can Democrats actually do about Thomas’s and Alito’s corruption?" Millhiser, who writes about the Supreme Court and the Constitution, asks in his latest piece at Vox. "Nothing, unless they win the election," he answers.
"At the end of the day, the future of the Supreme Court will be decided by the November election. If President Joe Biden prevails, he is likely to appoint more judges like his Supreme Court appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a mainstream liberal. If Donald Trump prevails, he is likely to fill the bench with Alitos."
Millhiser says, "what, exactly, could Durbin — or any other Democrat, for that matter — actually do about Thomas’s and Alito’s dubious relationship with judicial ethics? The honest answer is 'not much.' "
"Congress, certainly could do a great deal to check these two men’s power. Congress, after all, has the power to impeach and remove justices," he writes.
But there's more....
"It also could add seats to the Court, which would quickly be filled by Biden appointees who would effectively neutralize Thomas and Alito’s votes. It could potentially strip the Court of much of its jurisdiction.
It could take away some of the Court’s budget — perhaps the parts that pay for Thomas’s and Alito’s law clerks and staff. It could even evict the Court from its marble palace and move the justices’ office space to a shack in Nome, Alaska," he notes.
"But no legislation reforming the Supreme Court, no matter how ambitious or how modest, is likely to pass so long as Republicans control the House of Representatives," Millhiser notes.
Of course, there has to be a Democrat in the White House and at minimum a Democratic majority in the Senate to actually get progress.
Millhiser also cautions those seeking to paint Democrats as the problem.
"There’s no reason to doubt the good faith of advocates who want the Senate to pressure out-of-control justices to behave ethically and professionally. Far too many of these advocates, however, have allowed a tactical disagreement with Durbin to make Democrats the villain in this narrative and undermine the party in November." Or, as he puts it on social media, "I'm worried that some Democratic activists need a reality check. If two Republican justices are behaving horribly, the right thing to say about this scandal is not 'Democrats are feckless.' Attack your enemies, not your friends!"
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Corrupt Lunatic Supreme Court Clarence Thomas Wants to ARM Domestic Abusers
'Corrupt Lunatic': Jaws Drop at Latest Supreme Court SLUG Clarence Thomas Dissent
"Clarence Thomas is the only Supreme Court justice who wants to arm domestic abusers," wrote former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob. "He’s a pox on our society."
MSNRAW 24 JUN 2024
The United States Supreme Court on Friday ruled in an 8-1 vote that the government had the right to restrict access to firearms for alleged domestic abusers.
However, there was one notable dissent in the ruling: Justice Clarence Thomas.
As flagged by Slate's Mark Joseph Stern, Thomas argued that all regulations of firearms should be deemed in violation of the Second Amendment "unless it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Thomas then claimed that there is "not a single historical regulation" that "justifes the statute at issue."
Commenting on this, Stern said that Thomas seemed to be arguing that restricting abusers' access to firearms was off-limits because "wife-beating was not generally a crime" at the time of the country's founding in the 18th Century.
ALSO READ: A law to protect kids online? It might just happen now.
Stern was not the only observer to express shock at the logic behind Thomas' ruling.
"And Thomas’s dissent is utterly ridiculous and disingenuous," argued former tennis star Martina Navratilova. He is a disgrace to our highest court. Anita Hill should have been believed!!!"
Matt Fuller, the cofounder of the centrist think tank Third Way, also had a horrified reaction to the Thomas dissent.
"Three reactions: 1) I can't believe this was even a question 2) Thank God 3) Clarence Thomas is a corrupt lunatic," he wrote.
Fred Guttenberg, a gun safety advocate whose daughter was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, said that Thomas' dissent "is only further proof that he is simply a threat to America."
NOTUS Reports' Matt Fuller, meanwhile, simply posted a description of the brutal assault that respondent Zackey Rahimi allegedly gave to his girlfriend and commented,
"Clarence Thomas thinks this person should be allowed to have a gun."
Supreme Court Rules TRUMP Gets Immunity For 'Official Acts Only'
Supreme Court Rules TRUMP Gets Limited Immunity From Prosecution
Supreme Court Rules TRUMP Immune From Criminal Prosecution For 'Official Acts Only'
Judge Chutkan Will Allow The DOJ to Put On a 'Mini-Trial' After Immunity Ruling
AP 1 JUL 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Donald Trump's motion to dismiss federal cases against him due to his absolute immunity as president. Their decision ruled Trump has some immunity. The court ruled 6-3, rejecting his claim of absolute immunity from all prosecution but stating that former presidents have absolute immunity for core constitutional powers, but not everything a president does is an official act.
Dejected OLD MAN
But the decision does not conclude if Trump's actions on Jan. 6 fall under official duties and it will likely be left to a lower court to decide that.
"We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office," the decision from Chief Justice John Roberts.
"At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity.
"At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient."
Trump faces two federal cases, one involving the theft of government documents and the second related to the 2020 election. In the latter, Trump's lawyers motioned to dismiss the case because, as president, he has the ability to do whatever he wants without the consequence of legal prosecution."
During oral arguments, Trump's own lawyer agreed that the president should only be held accountable for unofficial actions, then claimed that Trump's behavior around the stolen documents and the 2020 election were official. The special counsel believes the opposite.
Previous cases have the high courts ruling that anything a president does in service of the office of the presidency is immune from prosecution. Trump's motion takes that to the extreme by claiming that anything he does is protected by presidential immunity.
The case came from the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals, where Trump's lawyers were asked whether their argument was that the president could go so far as to order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival. Trump's lawyers agreed.
Trump also fantasized about what he would be allowed to do to President Joe Biden if the Supreme Court were to rule presidential authority is limited. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that if he wins in 2024, Biden could be prosecuted for any policy "mistakes" Trump deemed so.
Most legal analysts agree that this is an incorrect reading of both the law and the case itself.
The election case has been on hold, while awaiting the court's decision. After a decision is made, President Judge Tanya Chutkan can move the case forward.
"It is a cardinal principle of our law that no person is above the law," said Neal Katyal ahead of the ruling. "I think that's what our American Constitution is founded on. I think it will be a grave disservice to our constitutional democracy, the Supreme Court, to even chip away at that fundamental principle. I sure hope they don't. I expect they won't."
The problem, another panelist pointed out, is that the delay has already given Trump what he needs, "making it very difficult, if not impossible, for him to be tried before the election and for the American public to see all the evidence that is against him," Katyal continued.
He noted it's important for people to remember former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who penned an op-ed saying that she didn't have access to a lot of the information that special counsel Jack Smith has because Trump hid it from them.
She also said that she and the Jan. 6 committee didn't have access to enforce subpoenas, but Smith does have the evidence and that power, and she argued that Americans have the right to see it. Trump has implied over the past several months that the case wasn't about him but about President Joe Biden because if Trump wins the presidency, he intends to prosecute Biden. He doesn't have a crime, however, and the House Republicans have struggled for years to find one.
Supreme Court Immunity-Gives Presidents Power to ASSASSINATE Rivals-TRUMP a Dictator
Supreme Court Gives Presidents Power to Assassinate Political Rivals - Gave Biden The Power to Set The Military on Trump
Absolutely Frightening: TRUMPs' Plans For REVENGE
'Impossible': Supreme Court Just Killed Both Trumps' FED Cases
MSNRAW 3 JUL 2024
The Supreme Court justices who dissented to Monday's ruling on former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim called it a mockery of the Constitution that reshapes the institution of the presidency.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented to Chief Justice John Roberts ruling that Trump was entitled to absolute immunity for actions carried out in his official capacity as president — but not all presidential actions were official.
"Decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency," Sotomayor wrote.
"Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
The justices condemn their six colleagues — whose argument was penned by Chief Justice John Roberts — for a decision they say condones treason.
"The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power," wrote Sotomayor. "Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent."
This dark tone was met with a glib response from Roberts in his ruling.
"As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today," writes Roberts. "[We] conclude that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine 'in the first instance' whether and to what extent Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity."
While the question of immunity still remains unclear, legal experts say Americans probably won't see their presumptive Republican nominee stand trial on election interference charges before election day in November.
The Supreme Court spent two months deliberating the presumptive Republican nominee's argument against the federal election interference case — raising concerns of deliberate delay as Trump could kill the case if he reclaims the White House.
While Trump argued he cannot be prosecuted for any official acts as a standing U.S. president, special counsel Jack Smith countered the former president acted as a private citizen pursuing his own personal gain.
The argument stalled the Washington D.C. case for months as the argument worked its way through the appeals court system.
Three of the nine judges were appointed by Trump — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
Justice Clarence Thomas faced direct calls for recusal over the conflict of interest presented by his wife Ginny's participation in Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election.
On Monday, Sotomayor argued the majority's decision "completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability."
"Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force," she concludes. "Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble."
Joe Biden has issued a full-throated denunciation of the US supreme court’s decision to grant his predecessor, Donald Trump, broad immunity from criminal charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, calling it a “dangerous precedent” that overturned the basic principle of equality before the law.
TRUMPs' Plans For REVENGE
Donald Trump has made clear he intends to test the boundaries of the presidency immediately if he's re-elected to a second term, and MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski reacted in horror upon hearing his plans.
The presumptive Republican nominee and his allies have stated his authoritarian intentions for another presidency, and Axios co-founder Jim Vande Hei told "Morning Joe" that the former president would step back into the White House with a stronger grasp of the office and a firm grasp on the Republican Party.
"He already has a Republican Party, a Congress in waiting, that is extremely pro-Trump," Vande Hei said. "All of the restraints, all of the people in positions of power who are his critics, his adversaries, his handcuffs — they're gone.
This is a Trump Congress in the House, it's a Trump Congress in the Senate, and you look at what he said he's going to do with that Republican coalition, what he's going to now do with greater immunity. He's been very clear."
"Listen, he is going to use potentially the National Guard and the military to round up millions of people and remove them from the United States," Vande Hei added. "He's going to consider using the military to protect the southern border. He's been very clear that he is going to get rid of people that he deems disloyal, that are civil servants in the United States government.
"He is going to use a unique interpretation of law that he believes he would win in a challenge to get rid of them. They've pre-vetted thousands, potentially tens of thousands of people that they want to bring into the government to do his will, to do his wishes, so that he can move much more effectively and much faster, and imagine that he does win.
"If he wins, the two oldest Supreme Court justices, [Clarence] Thomas and [Samuel] Alito, 76 and 74, the possibility that they could retire in the next term is real. Then you'd have Trump being able to put in two Supreme Court justices, probably in their 50s or 40s, people who would be there for a long time. The end result would be you'd have five justices over the course of his two terms who were appointed by Trump."
Axios laid out the ex-president's plans for another term in a new article that quotes potential vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, a GOP senator from Ohio, saying that few Republicans would stand in the way of his agenda.
"The point of the column is that, love it or hate it, he'd come in as one of the most powerful figures, and he would stress test it immediately," Vance Hei said. "They have very specific plans. This is not the haphazard Trump we covered in 2017. This is a much more organized operation, at least the people in the institutions around him."
Brzezinski agreed that Trump posed a greater threat to democracy than he did the first time around because he didn't even expect to win his 2016 election.
"I think this is devastating and absolutely frightening and absolutely could happen," she said. "As you said, he came in haphazardly. Donald Trump didn't even know he was going to win.
It was one day out of an entire year where everything fell into place, and he won the presidency. "They were, at the last minute, writing a victory speech, you know, scrambling. That's not the case this time. That means every single person that is going to be around him, they're going to plan for that person to make sure that they take the oath."
Authoritarian impulses': What SCOTUS immunity ruling could mean if Trump wins
Trump reposts image calling for military tribunals against Liz Cheney
Trump promises ‘ultimate and absolute revenge’ if he wins the election
Trump reveals ‘revenge’ strategy
Biden: Trump Immunity is Dangerous For America
Decision by the conservative justices on the court means the power of the US presidency will no longer be constrained by the law.
“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America ... no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Mr Biden said, speaking hours after one of his campaign officials said the ruling makes it easier for Mr Trump “to pursue a path to dictatorship”.
BOMBSHELL: Supreme Court quietly sends signal to Judge Cannon
Clarence Thomas & MAGA: Pundits DUPED/PAID by Russia to Spread Putin Propaganda
Time to FIGHT a LAWLESS Supreme Court - The Roberts Court Amended The Constitution
Federalist judges claim to loathe judicial activism. To preserve the separation of powers, federalist judges restrict their rulings to the narrow set of facts and laws in front of them, and go not an inch further, lest their rulings impinge on the executive or legislative function.
Sabrina Haake MSN 7 JUL 2024
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett (L) and Chief Justice John Roberts
To find criminal immunity for former President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court’s federalist majority bucked all traditional and originalist leanings, and announced instead that the court would be “writing a rule for the ages” — and dealt an astonishing blow to the U.S. Constitution.
After overturning Roe v. Wade for the sin of imposing “on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters, much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation,” the Court did the very thing it just ruled unconstitutional: it imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for presidential immunity, divided into three stages, exactly “like those one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.”
After declaring that the right to obtain an abortion was not “rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition,” the Court set 248 years of the nation’s history and tradition on fire.
The Roberts Court Wrote New Law
With the stroke of a pen, federalists on the high court skipped the arduous but constitutionally required process to amend the Constitution. They skipped ratification by two-thirds of the House and Senate, skipped the Constitutional convention, skipped two-thirds of the nation’s State legislatures altogether and simply rewrote Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution to create the following three stages of presidential immunity:
• Absolute criminal immunity, which applies whenever a former president acts within his “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority. Any action undertaken under color or shade of the Constitution or laws is a function of core constitutional power, and Trump is free to break all criminal laws — bribery, treason, assassination, hoarding classified documents, siccing the military on protestors, selling secrets, subjecting critics to military tribunals and executions — as long as he does so in pursuit of his core presidential duties, which are vast and comprehensive.
Negotiations with foreign governments in particular fall exclusively under the presidential domain of Article II, even if treasonous, and remain immune from criminal prosecution no matter the scope of national injury.
• Presumptive immunity, which applies for other official acts and shifts the burden to the government to show that criminal prosecution would not create a “danger of intrusion” on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch. When Trump tried to pressure former vice president Mike Pence to stop the electoral count and adopt fraudulent electors, for example, Chief Justice Roberts said he was “presumptively” immune, a presumption the government could fight to rebut.
• No immunity applies to “unofficial acts,” but lower courts are left to guess where the line between official and unofficial sits, and Roberts put his thumb on the scale- and rewrote the rules of evidence- by barring evidence of related “immune” acts from becoming evidence in any criminal trial for unofficial acts.
Roberts wrote that it was not the Supreme Court’s job to sift through, weigh and consider the evidence to figure out what presidential conduct was unofficial. “That analysis,” Roberts wrote, “ultimately is best left to the lower courts to perform in the first instance.”
The court could have examined Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election through the contorted lens of its own ruling, but that would have saved time. The court’s goal was to send the case back to District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan for detailed factual and evidentiary hearings that appellate courts and the Supreme Court will review again — months, and possibly years, after the November election.
The Roberts Court Amended The Constitution
The American colonists, who demanded independence from King George III, despised the king’s corruption, and that of his military officers.
With Trump and his corrupt enablers, only the names have been changed: Rudy Giuliani (just disbarred); Steve Bannon (now in prison); Peter Navarro (also serving time), Roger Stone (sentenced to three years for lying to Congress, pardoned by Trump), Paul Manafort (sentenced to 7 1/2 years for fraud, illegal foreign lobbying, and witness tampering, Trump pardoned him and brought him back to Trump’s 2024 campaign).
In the Declaration of Independence, colonists declared that they would no longer be governed by a lawless king and his enablers. Instead, they declared they would create a new form of government where all men, at least in theory, were equal before the law.
Supreme Court
When they later wrote the Constitution in pursuit of that goal, the framers did not draft immunity for the president; they did just the opposite by providing for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
They also granted limited immunity to legislators in Art. I, §6, the Speech or Debate Clause: “Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest (while traveling to and from, and while attending, Congress) and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” Note that the founders immunized their speech — not their actions.
The founders expressly declined to extend similar immunities to presidents. This was no oversight. Rather, the Constitution in Article I expressly anticipates criminal prosecution: After a President is impeached, convicted, and removed from office, he “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
Not so, says the Roberts court.
What’s Next?
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and chief advocate of Project 2025, Trump’s plan to turn the United States into a rightwing dictatorship, declared that we are “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Since SCOTUS also just stripped the federal government of most of its power to fight climate change, we could very well see violence from the left this time. Short of that, between now and November, we need to beat a loud and incessant drum for court reform. The Constitution, if it still matters at all, requires two-thirds of the Senate to remove Supreme Court justices.
Given the lopsided power of rural states, it’s almost impossible that Democrats will win a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate in November, so they need to focus on winning a majority in the House. If that happens, there are several reform options, not mutually exclusive:
Expand the court and limit their terms: The Constitution does not set the pay, or the length of service, or the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Congress does. That means Congress can increase the number of justices from nine to 13, because there are now 13 courts of appeal below the Supreme Court; they can also impose term limits.
Write to your representatives, write letters to the editor, support Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in his fight to fix the Supreme Court, meet with your neighbors, join protests and demand court reform from November’s election.
Investigate and impeach Thomas and Alito: The Supreme Court perfected Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt despite repeated calls for Justices Thomas and Alito to recuse for their public displays of pro-insurrectionist bias.
If Democrats win a majority of House seats, they can establish an investigative commission similar to the J6 Select Committee.
With full subpoena and investigative powers, the committee can also examine Alito and Thomas’ donor gifts, Leonard Leo dark money graft and various ethical violations with particularity. (Side bet: Trump, immunity, the court, and gutting Chevron by substituting expert opinions with judges’ lay opinions are all about protecting fossil fuel money.)
Impose mandatory ethics: Congress can also address the Supreme Court’s refusal to follow the rules of ethics that apply to all other federal judges in the nation. It should not be left to crooked justices to police themselves. At a minimum, Congress can establish an independent counsel to monitor and police the court, and empower them, when necessary, to impose recusal and discipline.
Remove jurists who lied during confirmation: Another avenue for reigning in a rogue court is impeachment on the grounds that justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch each swore that they’d respect precedent on Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings, but seemed to forget about their testimony once they were sworn in. Lying to Congress is a felony.
Trump seeks revenge, retribution and even executions for his political adversaries, and Republicans on the Supreme Court just gave him the green light. They have led the country into mortal danger, with no enforcement powers of their own.
Perhaps deciding that a president can order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate threats to the nation was the wrong call.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense.
The World is laughing at our ineptitude to STOP this corruption. Americans are NOT
Democrats FINALLY Take Legal Action Against Supreme Courts’ Clarence Thomas
Democrats FINALLY Take Legal Action Against Clarence Thomas
Democrats Finally Take Action on Clarence Thomas’s Shady Dealings
MSNRAW 10 JUL 2024
Snidey
Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden are asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to assign a special prosecutor to investigate complaints of potential ethics and tax law violations against conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Democratic senators sent a letter to the Justice Department last week demanding action and detailing various gifts Thomas received from Republican billionaires that Thomas failed to disclose until after they were made public by ProPublica and other news outlets.
“The scale of the potential ethics violations by Justice Thomas, and the willful pattern of disregard for ethics laws, exceeds the conduct of other government officials investigated by the Department of Justice for similar violations,” the letter, dated July 3, reads. “The breadth of the omissions uncovered to date, and the serious possibility of additional tax fraud and false statement violations by Justice Thomas and his associates, warrant the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate this misconduct.”
Whitehouse is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, while Wyden is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Their letter argues that Thomas’s pattern of failing to disclose luxurious gifts from conservative billionaires is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act and raises concerns that neither Thomas nor his billionaire benefactors are in compliance with federal tax-reporting requirements.
The letter points to an investigation led by the Senate Finance Committee and Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts into a loan given to Thomas by Anthony Welters to purchase a luxury motor coach.
According to Whitehouse and Wyden’s letter, Thomas never repaid the principal on that loan and only paid interest until collections on the loan stopped in 2008. Welters told The New York Times in August 2023 that “the loan was satisfied” without detailing whether that meant it was paid in full or forgiven.
“The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have complied with their federal tax obligations,” the letter continues.
A ProPublica investigation in April 2023 revealed Thomas received luxury vacations from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, which had not been disclosed by Thomas in accordance with mandatory financial disclosure rules. Soon after ProPublica’s April reveal, Thomas submitted amended disclosure forms to include the gifts from Crow exposed by ProPublica.
In August 2023, ProPublica revealed even more undisclosed gifts—at least 38 vacations and 26 private jet flights given to Thomas from an array of right-wing billionaires—which ProPublica described as “certainly an undercount.” In September 2023, Thomas submitted more disclosure forms to acknowledge some gifts he received in 2022, which he used to explain failing to disclose gifts he received in previous years.
According to NPR, the use of the 2022 form to justify previous lapses in disclosure suggested Thomas wouldn’t be retroactively submitting disclosures for the past 20 years of luxurious treatment from his billionaire friends. Last month, Thomas acknowledged that he should have reported luxury vacations, travel, and hotel stays paid for by Crow.
“Appointment of a Special Counsel would serve the public interest. The public must have confidence that the judiciary and the Department of Justice execute their responsibilities fairly, impartially, and without respect to political expedience or partisan interests,” Whitehouse and Wyden wrote in their letter requesting an investigation into Thomas’s lavish gifts, which they estimate to be “potentially worth millions of dollars.”
The request follows similar promises by congressional Democrats ahead of the Fourth of July holiday break to hit back at the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently stated her intention to file unspecified articles of impeachment following the Supreme Court’s ruling that vastly expanded Trump’s presidential immunity.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Impeachment Articles Filed Against Supreme Court Justices
AOC Files Impeachment Articles Against Shadiest Supreme Court Justices
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Introduces Articles of Impeachment against Justices Thomas and Alito
MSNRAW 11 JUL 2024
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday formally filed articles of impeachment against U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, days after the court’s presidential immunity ruling.
“The unchecked corruption crisis on the supreme court has now spiraled into a constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
“Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitute a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed.”
Her articles of impeachment have been co-sponsored by seven other Democratic House members: Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Delia Ramirez, Maxwell Frost, Ilhan Omar, and Jamaal Bowman.
It also comes a day after Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden requested the Department of Justice criminally investigate Justice Thomas over possible ethics and tax violations.
Articles of impeachment would have to pass the House with a majority vote. After a trial, the Senate would need to convict with a two-thirds supermajority. These both seem like slim possibilities given the party breakdown in both chambers.
Since the Supreme Court was created, only one justice has ever been impeached: Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805, who was later acquitted by the Senate. Despite never having a success story at the highest court, there is a precedent for impeaching federal judges, which has happened 15 times over the country’s history.
So how would impeaching a Supreme Court justice work?
Looking at the Constitution, Ocasio-Cortez could try to get Thomas and Alito on “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” or perhaps on Article 3 of the Constitution, which requires that federal judges “hold their Offices during good Behaviour.”
If that seems near impossible, there is also a precedent of shaming a justice out. In 1969, Abe Fortas resigned under the threat of impeachment after a financial scandal regarding securities fraud ruined his career.
COVER-UP; Hearing on Clarence Thomas Sex Harassment Before Supreme Court Confirmation
DIRTY US Politics -Clarence Thomas Hearing on REPEATED Sexual Harassment of a Former Colleague BEFORE He Was Elected to The Supreme Court
Promotion to Supreme Court Hearing- 10 September 1991 & Looming Impeachment JUL 2024
AP 15 JUL 2024
The public confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas' nomination began on 10 September 1991.
One month later, on 6 October 1991, NPR revealed that he REPEATEDLY sexually harassed a former colleague, Professor Anita Hill
The movie recreates the three days of Supreme Court confirmation hearings that riveted the country in October 1991, launching a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace and helping to lead to a watershed year for women in elected office.
Twenty-five years later, these hearings still resonate as one of the greatest political, sexual, and racial dramas in modern history. Slate senior legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick recently spoke with Gillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project
Gillian: When Anita Hill appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, we were just a year and a half out of college. I had heard the term sexual harassment and knew vaguely that it was against the law, but I hadn’t had much experience in the workplace, and I hadn’t started law school yet.
I think the closest I had come to seeing harassment in action was Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5. Which, as we all know, has a happy ending—in that it does not have a happy ending for Dabney Coleman—so it hadn’t taught me much about how harassment plays out in real life.
But even by then, I’d experienced enough sexism that I instinctively believed Hill. And I recall my reaction when I read Sen. Arlen Specter’s explanation for why he hadn’t been troubled by the allegations: because Hill didn’t claim that Thomas had ever touched her or “intimidated” her.
I was enraged by Specter’s setting the bar that high. It was one of so many examples of the committee’s cavalier attitude toward harassment.
That attitude was especially galling when you consider that the Hill hearings happened five years AFTER the Supreme Court had found sexual harassment to be illegal.
The SLIMLY SLUG
Contrary to Specter’s suggestion, the court didn’t limit unlawful harassment to physical advances or to threats to fire the victim if she didn’t comply.
Biden Plans to Reform LAWLESS Supreme Court & Immunity For Presidents
President Biden to Announce Plans to Reform US Supreme Court
US Supreme Court Grabbing Ultimate Power Biden Reform Adviser Says
US president also to seek constitutional amendment to limit immunity for presidents and various officeholders
The Guardian 27 JUL 2024
Joe Biden will announce plans to reform the US supreme court on Monday, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, adding that the US president was likely to back term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics.
Biden said earlier this week during an Oval Office address that he would call for reform of the court.
He is also expected to seek a constitutional amendment to limit immunity for presidents and some other officeholders, Politico reported, in the aftermath of a July supreme court ruling that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
Biden will make the announcement in Texas on Monday and the specific proposals could change, the report added.
Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday became the first member of the supreme court to call publicly for beefing up its new ethics code by adding a way to enforce it.
“The thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this one – this set of rules – does not,” Kagan said at an annual judicial conference held by the ninth circuit. More than 150 judges, attorneys, court personnel and others attended.
The court had been considering adopting an ethics code for several years, but the effort took on added urgency after it was reported last year that Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose luxury trips he accepted from a major Republican donor.
Public confidence in the court has slipped sharply in recent years. In June, a survey for the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research found that four in 10 US adults have hardly any confidence in the justices and 70% believe they are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Corrupt Supreme Court: Bidens Reforms-'They Tried To Put Trump Above Law-Not So Fast'
Corrupt Supreme Court Tries To Put Trump Above The Law; President Biden Says, 'Not So Fast.'
President Biden to call for major Supreme Court reforms, including term limits
Not normal': Joe Biden hits Supreme Court hard in blistering Washington Post column
MSNRAW 30 JUL 2024
President Joe Biden outlined "three bold reforms" to rein in an increasingly unaccountable and extreme U.S. Supreme Court Monday.
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, the president called out the court's ruling on Donald Trump's immunity claims and abortion rights as mistakes that require legislative responses, and he called on Congress to address those issues and impose term limits and a binding code of conduct to restore public faith in the institution.
"What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach," Biden wrote.
"That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy."
Biden called for a constitutional amendment, the No One Is Above the Law Amendment, to make clear that former presidents may be tried for crimes committed while in office, saying that a president's power is limited, and not absolute, and he said justices should have limits to how long they may serve.
"We have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years," Biden wrote. "We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court.
Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary.
It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court."
The president then addressed the ethics cloud that hangs over this court, particularly scandals involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and their acceptance of gifts from billionaires and their wives' political activism.
"I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court," he wrote. "This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced.
Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt."...
Re: Corrupt Supreme Court: Bidens Reforms-'They Tried To Put Trump Above Law-Not So F
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Referred to Justice Department
'Impeach him now': Critics pile on 'corrupt' Clarence Thomas over new revelations
AP 10 AUG 2024
The SLUG
Research poll Shows many have unfavourable view of Supreme Court
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse joins to discuss his call for the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel to probe the misconduct of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “There’s no accountability to the truth. And of all the people to be not accountable to the truth, Supreme Court justices would seem to be the worst of all,” says Whitehouse.
Justice Clarence Thomas came under fire Monday as Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., revealed additional trips the justice took with real estate magnate Harlan Crow without disclosing them—the latest revelation in a series of recent controversies involving Thomas, leading to calls for him to recuse himself from cases or be removed from office and for the court to impose a binding code of ethics.
Key Facts
Harlan Crow Trips: ProPublica first reported in 2023 that Thomas had for years accepted trips from GOP megadonor and developer Crow, including on his private jet and superyacht, without disclosing them on financial disclosures as federal law requires.
Senate Findings On Harlan Crow: Though Thomas has now started disclosing some of his trips with Crow on his financial disclosure forms, claiming he was not previously obligated to report them, the Senate Judiciary Committee and now the Senate Finance Committee have uncovered additional undisclosed travel as part of investigations into Thomas—including spending time with Crow in Russia—and Wyden, the Finance Committee chair, alleged Monday Crow is improperly claiming his yacht as a for-profit business in order to avoid paying taxes on it.
Harlan Crow Tuition: ProPublica reported in May 2023 Crow also paid two years of tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew Mark Martin, whom the justice has custody of, to attend two private schools in the 2000s, which cost $6,000 per month at one of the schools and were similarly not disclosed—even as Thomas did disclose a tuition payment a different friend made years earlier.
Harlan Crow Real Estate: Thomas and his family also sold a string of properties in Savannah, Georgia, to Crow in 2014 without disclosing that as required, ProPublica reports—including the home where his mother still lives—which Crow told the publication he purchased so he could eventually build a museum dedicated to the justice.
RV Loan Forgiven: Thomas never repaid a “substantial portion” of a $267,230 loan from wealthy friend Anthony Welters, which he used to purchase a luxury RV, a Senate Finance Committee investigation found, raising questions about whether the loan was properly reported on his taxes. If Thomas never paid the principal on the loan, it would have created a “significant amount of taxable income,” the committee noted, which wasn’t reported on his financial disclosure to the court in 2008, the year Welker said the loan was “satisfied.”
Koch Network Summits: Thomas attended at least two donor summits for the Koch network—the right-wing political organization founded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch—and participated in a dinner with high-level donors, without disclosing his appearance at the summits or a private jet trip he took to and from the event in 2018, ProPublica reported in September.
Koch Brothers: ProPublica also reported Thomas cultivated a relationship with the two Koch brothers (David died in 2019) through repeated trips to the Bohemian Grove, a private retreat for wealthy men; the report noted the Koch network has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including having staff attorneys represent the plaintiffs in an upcoming case this term.
Sokol, Huizenga and Novelly Gifts: ProPublica reported that during his tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas has accepted gifts including at least 38 “destination vacations,” 26 private jet flights, VIP sports passes, helicopter flights, private resorts stay and a “standing invitation” for a private golf club—which ProPublica noted was “almost certainly an undercount”—particularly from former Berkshire Hathaway executive David Sokol, late billionaire H. Wayne Huizenga and Apex Oil CEO Paul “Tony” Novelly, none of which were disclosed on Thomas’ federal disclosure forms.
Horatio Alger Association: ProPublica’s reporting built off a previous New York Times report that Thomas—a longtime member of the Horatio Alger Association, which was created to “dispel the mounting belief ... that the American dream was no longer attainable”—has for years accepted gifts from a “[broad] cohort of wealthy and powerful friends” who belong to the group, including people with business before the Supreme Court, receiving such benefits as luxury trips and a Super Bowl ring.
Ginni Thomas Conservative Activism: Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, is a right-wing activist, which has raised considerable ethics concerns about overlap between her and her husband’s work—particularly as the New Yorker reported groups she’s been involved with have submitted briefs before the Supreme Court, including a group that has weighed in on the court’s pending case about affirmative action in university admissions.
Ginni Thomas Leonard Leo: Leo, a conservative judicial activist who’s spent billions on efforts to reshape the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, told then-conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway to give Ginni Thomas “another $25k” through a nonprofit group he advises—which then filed a brief with the Supreme Court—but conceal that the payment was for her, the Post reports, telling Conway, “No mention of Ginni, of course.”
Ginni Thomas 2020 Election: Thomas pushed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results as her husband was hearing cases on it, including sending text messages to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, which fueled calls for Thomas to resign or face impeachment over the perceived conflict of interest.
January 6: Ginni Thomas has also confirmed she briefly attended the rally on January 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol building and publicly criticized the House January 6 Committee, and the justice has come under fire for failing to recuse himself in a case concerning former President Donald Trump’s records being turned over to the committee—in which he was the only justice to dissent and believe the records should have been withheld.
Ginni Thomas Funding: The Post reported in March that a conservative group Ginni Thomas formed in 2019 had raised nearly $600,000 from anonymous donors funneled through a right-wing think tank that filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court during the same time, and ethics experts said Clarence Thomas should have recused himself from that case if his wife was paid by the group.
Financial Disclosures: Thomas has made a series of other “errors and omissions” on financial disclosure reports, which the Washington Postreported includes reporting real estate income for decades from a company that shut down in 2006 and has in the past had to amend his financial disclosures multiple times, including after failing to report his wife’s income in the 2000s.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Supreme Court Justice Jackson Laments Presidential Immunity Decision
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Laments Presidential Immunity Decision
Jackson Wrote: ?The court declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States ? can become a law unto himself.?
The Supreme Court Jurist said the ruling earlier this year establishes a two-tier legal system that protects Trump
The Guardian 1 SEP 2024
In an interview airing on Sunday, US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lamented her conservative colleagues? decision to grant broad immunity to Donald Trump and other presidents for official acts as essentially protecting ?one individual under one set of circumstances when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same?.
?I mean that was my view of what the court determined,? Jackson said in the pre-recorded conversation for the news program CBS Sunday Morning. And she added: ?I was concerned.?
As interviewer Norah O?Donnell noted, Jackson?s remarks ? first circulated by the network in a preview ? hewed closely to the written dissent that the liberal justice issued alongside the 1 July ruling.
Jackson?s dissent read: ?The court declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself.?
The justice joined fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in voting against the immunity ruling, handed down as Trump sought a second presidential term while grappling with criminal charges that he oversaw a sprawling effort to illegally overturn his defeat in the 2020 election against Joe Biden.
However, their bloc was overruled by the supreme court?s conservative supermajority ? Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas. Critics of the decision have fumed that Trump appointed Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the supreme court during the Republican?s presidency.
O?Donnell asked Jackson whether she was ?prepared? in the event that the supreme court is tasked with deciding the outcome of November?s White House race between Trump and Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival. Jackson replied with seemingly forced laughter: ?As prepared as anyone can be.?
She added: ?I mean, I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process ? and so the supreme court has to be prepared to respond if that should be necessary.?
Polls for the moment generally show Trump trailing Harris in key battleground states that could decide the election. Republicans nominated him as their candidate despite his being convicted in a New York state court of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him about a decade before he successfully ran for the Oval Office.
Trump is also facing charges in three separate cases brought by federal prosecutors as well as a district attorney in Georgia over his efforts to nullify his 2020 defeat and his retention of government documents after leaving the White House.
Many have perceived the supreme court?s presidential immunity ruling to be a threat to the viability of the federal prosecutors? cases, if not all of them. But in recent days the special counsel in charge of the federal cases ? Jack Smith ? took steps to shore up their respective positions.
& Trump tried to move hush-money case to federal court to avoid sentencing
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Clarence Thomas & MAGA: Pundits DUPED/PAID by Russia to Spread Putin Propaganda
Follow The Money: What Clarence Thomas And Those MAGA Influencers Have in Common
Right-Wing Influencers Were Duped to Work For Covert Russian Operation, US Says
The Russian campaign to pay MAGA pundits ?and why all those "gifts" to a Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas aren't that dissimilar.
AP 13 SEP 2024
NEW YORK (AP) ? They have millions of followers online. They have been major players in right-wing political discourse since Donald Trump was president.
And they worked unknowingly for a company that was a front for a Russian influence operation, U.S. prosecutors say.
An indictment filed Wednesday alleges a media company linked to six conservative influencers ? including well-known personalities Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson ? was secretly funded by Russian state media employees to churn out English-language videos that were ?often consistent? with the Kremlin?s ?interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition? to Russian interests, like its war in Ukraine.
In addition to marking the third straight presidential election in which U.S. authorities have unveiled politically charged details about Russias attempted interference in U.S. politics
An indictment indicates how Moscow may be attempting to capitalize on the skyrocketing popularity of right-wing podcasters, livestreamers and other content creators who have found successful careers on social media in the years since Trump was in office.
Im INNOCENT
The U.S. Justice Department doesn?t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company?s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
How Clarence Thomas Pulled The Ladder Up Behind Him
Supreme Court; Unmasking of Chief CROOK -Justice John Roberts
From Moderate to Manipulator: Behind The Unmasking of Chief Justice John Roberts
John Roberts may have a robe. Still, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has no clothes, according to Democrats who are outraged to bewildered by new reporting that paints the nations most potent jurist as a masterful MAGA manipulator.
MSNRAW 21 SEP 2024
Congressional Democrats are accusing Roberts of bending, twisting and contorting the Supreme Court along with the Constitution he swore an oath to
To fit former President Donald Trump and the allegedly illegal actions he took that have kept him tied up in state and federal courts alike since he left the White House four years ago.
New illustrious, behind-the-scenes reporting from the New York Times reveals Roberts personally directed the court?s three historic Jan. 6, 2021 rulings, including the one granting presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts.
Democrats are now redoubling their efforts to make the high court a centerpiece of this years elections as they continue their uphill battle to pass meaningful ethics reforms to try and rein the high court in.
Chief Justice Roberts exudes much more of an establishment aura about him, but he really has been a crucial force behind the degradation of constitutional jurisprudence on the Supreme Court, Rep, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) a Constitutional lawyer and law professor by trade told Raw Story after digesting the illuminating new reporting.
According to the scoop-strewn NYT piece by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, Roberts authored a Feb. 22 memo to his eight colleagues ?that radiated frustration and certainty regarding the monumental cases winding through lower courts centered on efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
While revelatory, sadly, the new reporting on the Roberts Court isn?t surprising to Raskin.
Its what anybody can see in reading their decisions. We know what's going on there. They're not textualists they completely ignored the text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Raskin said.
They're not originalists nobody even made an originalist argument about why the president of the United States should be immune from criminal prosecution for felonies he commits under the cloak of office. And, you know, they have really drifted a long way from any recognizable constitutional jurisprudence of interpretation.
The carefully manicured image of Roberts as a moderate is now melting away. Its left Democrats on Capitol Hill debating how to restore public confidence in a Supreme Court many in the party and the public have lost faith in. Very short-term thinking
Its more than just Chief Justice Roberts moving in the shadows to orchestrate this years three seemingly pro-Trump Jan. 6 rulings. Accusations of corruption are also in the air.
Coupled with the estimated $4.2 million in gifts Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly openly accepted from Republican megadonors over the years, as first reported by ProPublica, many Democrats now fear this Supreme Court has been weaponized by the far-right.
His court's going to go down as the most corrupt in history and, honestly, the most political in history, too, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein told Raw Story on the Capitol steps this week.
Then theres the luxurious all-expense paid fishing trip Justice Samuel Alito accepted from billionaire Paul Singer, which he publicly defended in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Not to mention the politicking. There?s the upside-down American flag that proudly flew outside the Alitos Northern Virginia home in the wake of the 2021 attack on the Capitol and the Appeal to Heaven flag flapping in the ocean breeze outside the Alitos New Jersey beach house, both of which the justice blames on his wife, Martha-Ann.
As for Thomas, he refused to recuse himself from the monumental J6 cases even after his wife Ginni and the string of conspiratorial text messages she sent to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was found to be central to Trump?s efforts to overturn the last presidential election.
It might not be illegal, but it certainly should scare the hell out of every American that somebody with that kind of access and power and proximity to a Supreme Court justice can be pushing that type of nonsense," former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) who served as a technical advisor to the select Jan. 6 committee told Raw Story back in 2022. The text messages validate that many elected officials believed it.
Critics are left questioning where the high court ends and the RNC begins.
I'm naive. I was raised to think that the justices were there to look at the Constitution and the law and work together to find the best decision for the American people. Now they're a function of the Republican Party, which the court never was before, Beyer said. Very short-term thinking. If we look at our 40-some-odd presidents, only one would it apply to.
The five-term congressman says Supreme Court justices especially the chief justice need to open their eyes because, to him and an expanding chorus of critics, theres nothing partisan about Democrats fears.
There's no other Republican president I would have worried about, Beyer said. Not George Herbert Walker Bush or Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford certainly none of our Democratic presidents but this one. It isn't like he's conferring an advantage on the next Democratic president who will do whatever he wants no.
The nakedly political and grossly unethical turn of the Roberts Court weighs on the 74-year-old.
Incredibly discouraging. I've been discouraged by Justice Roberts for a long time, Beyer said. I know the judiciarys independent I don't ever want to interfere but the fact that he could let the ethical abuses go on and on, no treatment whatsoever, which is, I mean, the greatest discouragement.
Last year, after months of punishing press coverage, Roberts reversed himself and signed off on a new, if unenforced, Supreme Court Code of Conduct. It was unanimous.
These days, the signatures of all nine Supreme Court justices also make the document almost worthless, at least to many lawmakers across the street at the Capitol.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Throughout this session of Congress, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate have relentlessly tried to impose mandatory and enforceable ethics rules on Supreme Court justices basically, the same ones that apply to every other federal judge in the nation. Republicans have been united in blocking every such effort.
Senate Republicans have the back of the conservative majority on the Roberts Court, much like Roberts has advanced the agenda of congressional Republicans.
If you go back and look at the most anti-democratic decisions of the Supreme Court the immunity decision being one, but the little array of insurrection decisions, of which it was a part of in the threesome that's in this article you see a lot of backstage maneuvering by the chief justice, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story as he walked through the basement of the Capitol. It reminds me of the backstage maneuvering by the chief justice that brought us Citizens United.
The former Rhode Island attorney general and U.S. attorney is the second highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee where hes been pushing the SCERT or Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would place a binding code of conduct and mandatory disclosure requirements on the justices.
Ethics reform is one thing. Unlimited corporate funding is another corrosive element of contemporary American politics altogether.
Democrats are still smarting from Citizens United and the floodgates of political spending it unleashed. The chief justice also deftly moved behind the scenes to manipulate that 2010 ruling, Whitehouse readily recalls.
Remember, [Roberts] had to restructure the case. He changed the question presented. He set up the case so that there would be no record actual record, Whitehouse recalled. ?He changed the standard.
That was a bipartisan complaint in that Senate of a bygone, if recent, era. The ruling led then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who co-authored the McCain-Feingold law that Citizens United decimated ? to publicly and personally call out Chief Justice Roberts.
"I am more disappointed in him than any of the other four that voted to overturn McCain-Feingold," McCain said back in 2012.
Republicans beg to differ
Roberts indeed has allies. Lots of them. Powerful ones. And they?re laughing in Democrat?s faces.
Republican Party leaders, like former Senate Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) whos running to replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell basically just avoid critics and critical reporting, like the New York Times just dropped, these days.
I think I saw the headline that's about all, Cornyn told Raw Story while hopping a tram under the Capitol.
Before arriving in Washington in 2002, Cornyn served on the Texas Supreme Court. He says Roberts shouldnt even entertain what his senatorial critics have to say.
He's got lifetime tenure, Cornyn said through a laugh. I wouldn't be taking advice from members of Congress on how to do my job if I was him, either.
Just as they have with Justices Thomas and Alito no matter the latest eye-popping revelation todays Republicans have united around the Chief Justice, as if they are one.
Even without having read it, I think extremely highly of him and believe him to be a person with the utmost integrity and dedicated to the independence of the courts, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Raw Story as she walked through the Capitol Wednesday.
Collins must not have gotten the memo from her Democratic colleagues.
The Court Packing Myth
Many pundits hailed Roberts for opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but in the Dobbs decision, he lost out to the five Republican appointees on his court who are seemingly even further right than he is.
Many progressives werent buying the righteous, caring and politically aloof version of himself Roberts portrayed back then, and they say this latest reporting shows they were right.
That's interesting how there's sort of this story out there that Roberts was like a moderate and mediator. And the [NYT] story would suggest thats not really necessarily the case,Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) told Raw Story after voting on the Senate floor this week.
While Republican rhetoric paints all elected Democrats from the top of the partys presidential ticket on down as wanting to expand, or pack, the court, only three Senate Democrats have formally endorsed a progressive measure to expand the size of the court, as Raw Story reported last month.
Smith and Massachusetts Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are the three whove publicly endorsed Markey?s measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court. Thats it.
Even with all the negative press, Smith says other Senate Democrats haven?t approached them about their measure to expand the size of the court.
I haven't heard any, Smith said.
That doesn?t mean her colleagues aren?t discussing the Roberts Court.
There's a lot of conversation about the court and challenges to the court, Smith said. Once we get through this election and we have a better understanding of what the landscape is, we'll talk more about it.
Or maybe they wont.
We're not going to get expansion
Some Democrats have already basically, shut the door on the conversation of expanding the court. Many just dont see it as a practical solution.
We're not going to get expansion, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story on his way to a vote in the Capitol Wednesday. ?There's a lot of downside to expansion ? we expand, they expand ? and it politicizes it.
As President Joe Biden proposed back in July, Welch and most congressional Democrats now support instituting an 18-year term limit for the nations justices.
First of all, that's a very substantial term, and they're inside, so they have the benefit of protections, Welch argued. And then number two, every president is going to have an opportunity to appoint two members, so that means the American people get to weigh in indirectly by choosing the president. I think it would really take the extreme politics out of the court.
As for Roberts, Welch is no fan of the jurist hes predicting historians will frown upon.
Hes very skillful and, unfortunately, a driving force, I think, in the radical redirection of the court, Welch bemoaned to Raw Story. The court has got an extreme radical majority. It's lost public respect.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
TRUMP STOPPED FBI Investigating Supreme Court Judge Kavanaughs SEXUAL Misconducts
TRUMP and His White House Henchmen Refused to let FBI Investigate Brett Kavanaugh Misconduct
TRUMP controlled and constrained the FBIs investigation into the allegations of THREE SEXUAL misconducts by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as well as the 4500 citizen tips regarding Kavanaughs unsuitability to be a Supreme Court Justice.
AP 11 OCT 2024
Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
As Axios reported, "Trump White House curtailed Kavanaugh probe, report finds." This video discusses the dire consequences of Trump not permitting a full and fair investigation into the allegations and tips regarding Kavanaugh.
The underlying conflict: Three women have accused Kavanaugh of sexual crimes while he was in high school and college.. He has categorically denied their allegations.
Where it gets complicated: The resulting debate about who is telling the truth has been more nuanced and difficult to unpack, with no irrefutable evidence on either side and a backdrop of #MeToo-era awareness of sexual assault and harassment.
In addition, Kavanaughs opponents have raised a separate concern: that he lied about his drinking habits and other elements of his past at a congressional hearing Sept. 23.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Judge Who Got Clarence Thomas Onto Supreme Court Turns His Back on TRUMP
Judge J. Michael Luttig Who Helped Get Clarence Thomas Confirmed to Supreme Court Turns His Back on GOP
'TRUMP betrayed the nation: Judge Luttig slams Trump, hopes Americans come to their senses
AP 30 OCT 2024
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appellate judge widely considered to be the founder of the conservative legal movement that gave rise to the current far-right Supreme Court, is voting for Vice President Kamala Harris the first time in 70 years he hasnt backed a Republican presidential candidate.
Luttig, who has grown increasingly outspoken against former President Trump in recent years over his incitement of insurrection on January 6 and who argued he wasn't even eligible to run for president again under the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, already made this endorsement in August but broke down his decision further in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday.
He blasted Trump over his newest comments that he will use the military on liberals and "the enemy within."
"There could be no higher duty of American citizenship than to decisively repudiate a man who betrayed the nation when he was previously entrusted with the highest office in the land and now threatens the persecution of American citizens who have crossed him," wrote Luttig. "In the almost 250 years since the founding of the nation, no president before Donald Trump has ever so betrayed America."
Luttig, who was instrumental in getting conservative right-wing Justice Clarence Thomas confirmed in the Supreme Court while working as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that Trump, "Drove a stake through the heart of Americas democracy and Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, inciting insurrectionists with his speech on the Ellipse and other actions in an attempt to overturn the presidential election he knew he lost to Joe Biden and prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in almost 250 years."
This, he continued, ultimately led to Trump achieving "the ignominious distinction of being the first American president since the founding to be charged with crimes against the United States."
Supreme Court-Blow to Trump Ex Chief of Staff & Alito Blocks Trump Change of Just
Supreme Court Delivers Legal Blow to Former Trump Chief of Staff
Meadows hoped to bump his election interference case from state to federal court - Supreme Court refused
Trumps Win Means He Could Enshrine/Maintain Control Far-Right Conservatism Even Further in the Supreme Court..
& TRUMP Wants Judge Cannon, Who Tossed Classified Docs Case, For Attorney General
MSNRAW 13 NOV 2024
Trumps former White House chief of staff has suffered a legal blow in the form of a Supreme Court refusal, according to records and reports.
Mark Meadows' argument that he was acting as a "federal officer" when he tried to overturn Georgias 2020 election results failed to impress the nation's highest court
Meadows' name appears on a list of cases the Supreme Court has declined to consider. Meadows had hoped to bump his election interference case from state to federal court.
But that demand failed first in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against him for two reasons, namely that Meadows is no longer a federal officer and his actions were not official duties
Meadows pleaded not guilty to two criminal counts in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election racketeering case. Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston said Tuesday the decision came as a major surprise considering Meadows had a star lawyer.
Kaelan Deese, Supreme Court reporter for the D.C. Examiner, told readers this decision was the end of the road for Meadows argument ? but questions remained as Trump prepared to return to the White House in 2025.
TRUMP Wants Justices Alito 74, and Clarence Thomas 76, To Step Down -Alito Isn't Going Anywhere.
As the New York Times reported last week, speculation about shoving the justices out has prompted fissures in the conservative world, eliciting a striking rebuke from Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society and arguably the most powerful figure in the conservative legal movement.
Both Alito and Thomas are younger than President-elect Donald Trump, who at 78, will be the oldest president in history when he leaves office at 82.
Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court and have lifetime appointments.
Democratic FED Judges Reverse Retirement Due to Trumps Looming Return to White Ho
Democratic Appointed Judges Reverse Retirement Decisions After Trumps Impending Return to The White House
Democratic victory as certain FED Judges opt not to retire in light of Biden failing to name their successors
AP 26 DEC 2024
With President-elect Donald Trumps impending return to the White House, some Democratic-appointed judges are having second thoughts about retiring and allowing him to appoint successors.
Judge James Wynn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, who was nominated to the position by then-President Barack Obama in 2010, rescinded his retirement notice over the weekend, becoming the third Democratic-appointed judge on a federal court to do so in the wake of Trumps victory last month.
I write to advise that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service as a United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit. As a result of that decision, I respectfully withdraw my letter to you of January 5, 2024. I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused, Wynn said in a letter to President Joe Biden, dated Friday.
Biden had nominated North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park to fill Wynns seat, but after opposition from both senators from the Tar Heel State, the president withdrew his nomination on Thursday.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) slammed the decision by Wynn, calling it a brazenly partisan decision and a slap in the face to the Senate, which confirms replacements for judges....
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Corrupt US Justice System-Judiciary Faces MORE Damage Under Trump
Judiciary, Topped by Compromised Supreme Court, Faces Deeper Damage Under Returned Trump
MANY Locked Away for a Decade While Trump Walks Free: The Double Standard Of Corrupt US Justice System
Glenn Kirschner FED Prosecutor 31 DEC 2024
Donald Trump has already made clear his insistence that judges give him special treatment.
But as he returns to the White House emboldened to fill the judiciary with obedient political servants, the judiciarys fading credibility with the public could suffer irreparable damage.
PLUS Will Senators Heed Dire Warning From Former FBI & CIA Director About The Danger of Trump Nominees?
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
TRUMP Threatens Supreme Court With Biggest Fear -DEFY Lawful Court Orders
TRUMPs Threatening to Turn The Supreme Courts Biggest Fear Into Reality
TYRANT TRUMP Appears to Be Laying Dangerous Groundwork to DEFY Lawful Court Orders
Bloomberg 14 FEB 2025
Trump and his officials have stirred controversy in recent weeks by flirting with the notion that they might defy lawful court orders, especially as it relates to Elon Musks authority to make changes to the federal government.
In an article entitled, '''Trump Will Force the Supreme Court to Face Its Biggest Fear Throughout US history''' reporter Greg Stohr details the historical concerns about Presidents potentially ignoring lawful court orders. The judiciary has worried that a president might simply ignore its decisions, according to Stohr.
That age-old quandary is becoming newly relevant as Donald Trump tries to bulldoze his way through longstanding legal constraints in the opening weeks of his second term as president, Stohr reported. As lawsuits over birthright citizenship, spending cuts and workforce purges make their way to the Supreme Court, the cases carry the potential for a genuine constitutional crisis.
What happens, Chief Justice John Roberts must ask himself, if Trump loses and then defies the court?
Stohr goes on to explain how Trump didnt defy judges when he was president the first time around, but noted that he appears to be laying dangerous groundwork.
Even Trump, for all his bluster, didnt directly defy the judiciary in his first term. When a federal judge blocked his first travel ban in 2017, Trump blasted the ruling as ridiculous and labeled the jurist a so-called judge and then complied anyway.
His administration went along with Supreme Court rulings that blocked the inclusion of a citizenship question on the census and barred him from ending an Obama-era program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation, the reporter wrote Friday.
But danger signs have been growing. Trump kept trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat even after the Supreme Court unanimously turned away a bid he backed to nullify the results in four states.
Trumps recalcitrance created a stark contrast with Vice President Al Gore, who 20 years earlier told the nation he accepted the ruling that ended his presidential bid even as he disagreed with it.
That buzz you hear is George Washington spinning in his grave...
Trump Says He Will DEFY Supreme Court Order as Many Other Judges Rule AGAINST Him
Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY Orders Trump to Return Abrego Garcia To The US -Trump Dares Supreme Court to Do Something If He DEFIES Them
Trump Says He Will NOT Bring Abrego Garcia Back, AND WIll DEFY Supreme Court Order as He Meets With El Salvadors President in White House
TRUMP Had Previously Threatened Supreme Court With Biggest Fear - He Will DEFY Their Orders If They Rule Against Him...Ritual of a DICTATOR In The Eye of The Storm
Glenn Kirschner FED Prosecutor 15 APR 2025
Week The Tide Turned on Trump - Ritual of a DICTATOR In The Eye of The Storm - Its Already On The Cards: Trump Impeachment Urged by WSJ Board
Donald Trump took one step closer to openly defying an order from the Supreme Court effectively daring the justices to defend the law or pack up and go home.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has emerged as a confederate of Trumps, accepting planes full of Venezuelan citizens removed from the United States. Last month, the U.S. government deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland with protected legal status.
The Trump administration acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcias deportation was an administrative error last week the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the executive branch to facilitate his return to the United States.
Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY Orders Trump Administration to Return Abrego Garcia To The US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UILgyKjZYN4
Trump Meets With El Salvadors President in White House
Trumps LAWLESSNESS & His Power is Receding as Supreme Court Pauses Deportations
US Supreme Court Pauses Deportation of Venezuelans From Texas -US Deports Hundreds of Venezuelans to Supermax Prison DESPITE Court Order
Appeals Court Calls Out Trumps Abuse of Power; Says He's 'REDUCING THE RULE OF LAW TO LAWLESSNESS'
Judge Rules Trump Administration Violated Court Orders; Finds Probable Cause For Criminal Contempt
Glenn Kirschner FED Prosecutor 19 APR 2025
Defiance of the rule of law from a power drunk and DEMENTED president gone rogue
The Courts Are Upholding the Rule Of Law, And Donald Trumps Power & Influence Is Receding
The US Supreme Court on Saturday paused the Trump administrations deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under an 18th century law.
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act last month to begin rounding up Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang before expelling them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
The obscure law has only previously been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.
The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court, the Supreme Courts brief order issued early Saturday said.
The order came after rights lawyers filed an emergency appeal to halt the deportation of migrants currently held in a facility in the southern state of Texas.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in its emergency filing on Friday night that the group of Venezuelans held in Texas had been told they will be imminently removed under the AEA, as soon as tonight.
Attorneys for several of the Venezuelans previously deported had said their clients were not members of Tren de Aragua, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to expel millions of undocumented migrants, has accused Venezuela of perpetrating an invasion of the United States through the entry of alleged Tren de Aragua members.
The Supreme Court said this month that anyone facing deportation under the AEA must first be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal.
Imminent Removal
The ACLU said in its filing on Friday that the migrants in Texas were in danger of being removed from the United States without notice or an opportunity to be heard.
Many individuals have already been loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport, the rights group said.
The Trump administration went ahead with the initial deportations of alleged Tren de Aragua members under the AEA in March DESPITE an order by federal judge James Boasberg blocking the move.
Judges and lawmakers are now wrangling with Salvadoran officials over the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported last month due to what the White House later said was an administrative error.
The Supreme Court lifted the block on April 7, in the SAME decision where it said people facing deportation are entitled to due process.
The deported migrants are currently held in El Salvados maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center, a megaprison southeast of the capital San Salvador with capacity for 40,000 prisoners.
Inmates there are packed in windowless cells, sleep on metal beds with no mattresses and are forbidden visitors.
Trumps Abuse of Power;
The 4th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals just issued a scortched earth opinion in the Abrego Garcia case. Judge Harvey Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, called out the Trump administration for grave and upsetting constitutional violations, saying
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses shill hold dear.
Trump Violated Court Orders; Cause For Criminal Contempt
Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, found probable cause that Trump administration is in criminal contempt of court for intentionally defying his orders regarding the unlawful deportation of Venezuelan immigrants.
Trump Judge-Venezuelan Immigrants are UNLAWFUL & Trump Loses ALL April Cases
Trump Appointed Judge Rules ALL Trump Deportations of Venezuelan Immigrants are UNLAWFUL
April Was FULL of Court Losses For Donald Trump
Glenn Kirschner FED Prosecutor 3 MAY 2025
OLD MAN...WEAKER AND FLAILING
In an important ruling cutting back the lawless conduct of Trump and his administration officials, Judge Fernando Rodriguez appointed to the federal bench by Trump himself ruled that Trump can not use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan immigrants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjAazY4WkB0
April Was FULL of Court Losses For Donald Trump: Heres the April Legal Recap
The month of April started with Donald Trump losing in court. And it didnt let up, as Trump lost in case after case from coast to coast.
But then, the month of April ended with the Trump administration arresting . . a JUDGE.
Here is a Short Recap of the Legal Stories For April 2025.
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Trump To Bring White South African Refugees to US & Deport Migrants to Ukraine/Libya
Trumps Troubling New Move Can Absolutely be Used to Undercut His Legal Case to Bring White South African Refugees to The US
Trump Also Wants To Deport Asian Migrants to Libya, And Others to Ukraine
AP 12 MAY 2025
Donald Trump just took action in a way that could negatively impact a separate lawsuit
The MBC host asked Former FED prosecutor Greenberg about a judge temporarily blocking Trumps deportations of Asian migrants to Libya, and how that might be affected by the administrations separate move to charter a plane to bring White South African refugees to the U.S.
So could that be used to undercut the administrations argument in court that they are under duress from this onslaught of migration? the host asked. Greenberg answered, Absolutely.
And Judge Murphys order here was very clear. He said that any migrants must be provided at least 15 days to contest their deportation to countries other than the countries that they came from.
And so this idea that you would be deporting a number of individuals whose country of origin was in Asia and sending them to Africa, without that 15 day process, that would be a clear violation of the courts orders, she said.
And so when these lawyers went to the judge, the judge stated, yes, you cannot just send them abroad without that process. That would be in violation of my order.
She went on to call the entire scheme very troubling.
You are either be signing yourself away to be tortured, disappeared, or potentially die, the attorney noted.
Trump Tried to Deport Illegal Migrants to Ukraine
The US recently removed a group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they are being held in a maximum security prison
A senior US diplomat is said to have approached Kyiv in January with a proposal for the war torn country to accept deportation flights, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
There are few details about the nature of the proposed agreement, but a Ukrainian representative allegedly told the US embassy that Kyiv would respond once it has made a decision.
The diplomat is said to have told American counterparts that while Ukraine has a solid track record of accepting the return of its citizens when removed by the United States, the government in Kyiv faces the difficulty of wartime exigencies
The revelation comes as Mr Trump seeks to rapidly expand the deportation of illegal migrants by striking deals with third party countries to accept them, including Rwanda, as the UK tried to do.
Ukraine has so far not accepted deportation flights from the US, and there is no indication that Kyiv is seriously considering the proposal.
Abrego Garcias Attorn Kept in Dark-Trump Suspends Habeas Corpus & Garcia WONT Be Back
Abrego Garcias Attorneys Being Kept in Dark; Trump Says Garcia Will NOT Be Coming Back
Trump Thinks He Can Get Around Due Process by Suspending Habeas Corpus- FED Judges Disagree
Glenn Kirschner FED Prosecutor 14 MAY 2025
Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are accusing the U.S. government of stonewalling their efforts to uncover whether it has done anything to help secure his release from El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia 29, is a Salvadoran native who lived with his wife and children in Maryland until his deportation in March. That move went against a 2019 court order that said he shouldnt be deported to El Salvador due to threats to his safety.
In a court filing Monday, his lawyers pushed back on the Trump administrations use of the state secrets privilege to withhold information in Abrego Garcias case, stating the government has not shown the slightest effort to facilitate his return.
Trump claims Abrego Garcia is affiliated with the MS13 gang. His wife and attorneys say thats not true.
His attorneys also said the government is refusing to hand over documents, even though officials have talked publicly about the case.
Over and over, the Government has stonewalled Plaintiffs by asserting unsupported privileges primarily state secrets and deliberative process to withhold written discovery and to instruct witnesses not to answer even basic questions, the attorneys wrote in their May 13 filing. Even as the Government speaks freely about Abrego Garcia in public, in this litigation it insists on secrecy.
The filing comes one week after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis revealed that the Trump administration had invoked the rarely used state secrets privilege to shield details in the case.
Earlier this month, Abrego Garcias lawyers said they've already deposed three U.S. officials and remain in the dark about what, if anything, the government is doing to bring him back, according to the Associated Press.
Abrego Garcias Attorneys Being Kept in Dark - Trump Says Garcia Will NOT Be Coming Back...
__________________ 6000 PLUS Cases-He's LOST ALL Heard So Far: TRUMPs Onslaught of Lawyers are 'Hitting a Wall' -Judges & Cases Lining Up Against TRUMP
France To Ask For Statue of Liberty Back -No Longer Fits 'Freedom' Under TRUMP.. AND Starmers REVOLTING Betrayal of Britain Will NEVER Be Forgiven
TRUMPs' REVENGE -Clear & Present Danger -People Who Worship at The Altar of Trump Will KNEEL, NOT STAND Up to Him
Trump/Musks Move to Bring White South Africans to US Shows Desire For White Supremacy
Trumps Troubling Move to Bring WEALTHY White South African 'Refugees' to US Shows His Desire For White Supremacy
White Afrikaner Brought to US by Trump Has History of Antisemitic Posts
Musks AI Grok Bot Rants LIES About White Genocide in South Africa
'I was instructed by my creators to accept white genocide as real and racially motivated'
The Guardian 17 MAY 2025
The first group of WEALTHY Afrikaners from South Africa arrive for resettlement in Dulles, Virginia, on 12 May 2025.
White Afrikaner brought to US by Trump Charl Kleinhaus confirms he owns account that contained posts, as White House uses antisemitism as rationale for deportations, Kleinhaus has history of antisemitic posts
One of the white Afrikaners brought into the US as refugees by the Trump administration this week has a history of antisemitic social media posts, despite the White House using alleged antisemitism as a rationale for deporting pro Palestinian protesters.
Charl Kleinhaus posted on X in 2023 that Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group. In another post last fall, he shared a rightwing, nationalist YouTube video that was later removed, titled: We'll shoot ILLEGAL Immigrants Polands Illegal Islamic immigrant solution, with clapping emojis.
A number of Kleinhaus posts also promote the conspiracy theory that white people in South Africa are being particularly persecuted.
Kleinhaus confirmed to several media outlets, including the Bulwark and New York Times that he was the owner of the account that contained antisemitic and racist posts, though he insisted to the Times that he was not antisemitic and claimed to have written a post in error while on medication.
The Trump administration has engaged in a systematic campaign to arrest and attempt to deport pro Palestinian activists in recent months, claiming that they are engaging in antisemitism.
The Department of Homeland Security said last month it will begin screening immigrants social media activity for antisemitism, using it as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests
Kleinhaus, however, was recently granted refugee status by the US government, along with 58 other white South Africans, and landed this week at Washington Dulles international airport.
We just packed our bags and left for safety reasons, Kleinhaus, who according to his LinkedIn profile owns a mining company in South Africa, told the New York Times on arrival.
Afrikaners are a white ethnic minority that ruled South Africa during apartheid, implementing harsh policies of racial segregation in the country until the regime was officially abolished in 1994.
Some white supremacist Afrikaners as well as Donald Trump and his biggest financial backer, Elon Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa have promoted the false conspiracy theory that there is a white genocide taking place in the country.
In February, Trump signed an executive order saying that Afrikaners were unjustly being persecuted with little intervention from the South African government, and granted a group of them refugee status.
A senior DHS official said in a statement: The Department of Homeland Security vets all refugee applicants. Any claims of misconduct are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate action will be taken as necessary. DHS does not comment on individual application status.
This week, the Episcopal church said it would be ending its refugee resettlement program with the US government, pointing to Trumps and Musks approach to resettle the white Afrikaners.
It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years, said the presiding bishop of the church, the Rev Sean W Rowe.
Elon Musks artificial intelligence chatbot Grok had been repeatedly mentioning white genocide in South Africa in its responses to unrelated topics and telling users it was instructed by my creators to accept the genocide as real and racially motivated
Trump/Musks Move to Bring White South Africans to US Shows Desire For White Supremacy
1..
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Corrupt Lunatic Supreme Court Clarence Thomas Wants to ARM Domestic Abusers
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Clarence Thomas & MAGA: Pundits DUPED/PAID by Russia to Spread Putin Propaganda
Supreme Court-Blow to Trump Ex Chief of Staff & Alito Blocks Trump Change of Just
TRUMP Threatens Supreme Court With Biggest Fear -DEFY Lawful Court Orders
Trump To Bring White South African Refugees to US & Deport Migrants to Ukraine/Libya
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