The Supremes

[BamaATL 16593]

6 hours ago, C-Man said:

Do Americans Have a Constitutional Right to an AR-15? Gun-Rights Groups Ask the Supreme Court

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/do-americans-have-a-constitutional-right-to-an-ar-15-gun-rights-groups-ask-the-supreme-court-aa34fd50

 

No

[Gap03 3303]

On 8/14/2024 at 3:27 PM, dcbc said:

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/13/judge-in-x-lawsuit-against-advertisers-recuses-he-owned-tesla-stock.html

GQP-appointed federal judges:

[Longhornfan1024 1707]

22 hours ago, C-Man said:

Do Americans Have a Constitutional Right to an AR-15? Gun-Rights Groups Ask the Supreme Court

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/do-americans-have-a-constitutional-right-to-an-ar-15-gun-rights-groups-ask-the-supreme-court-aa34fd50

 

Not only do they have a right to an AR-15, they have an obligation to own one.--Clarence Thomas

[Js1 85262]

1 minute ago, Longhornfan1024 said:

Not only do they have a right to an AR-15, they have an obligation to own one.--Clarence Thomas

Actually illegal not to own one! - Thomas, Gorsuch, Beer Bro, Alito, Roberts, OfJesse

[DDD Dad 14324]

Annnd they've struck down Biden's restructured student loan forgiveness plan.  Yay.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/us/politics/supreme-court-biden-student-loans.html

 

Supreme Court Blocks, for Now, Another Biden Student Debt Plan

The move followed a decision last year that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by trying to forgive more than $400 billion in student loans.

[Brisketexan 105051]

29 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Annnd they've struck down Biden's restructured student loan forgiveness plan.  Yay.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/us/politics/supreme-court-biden-student-loans.html

 

Supreme Court Blocks, for Now, Another Biden Student Debt Plan

The move followed a decision last year that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by trying to forgive more than $400 billion in student loans.

For the masses, let's summarize the legal rule pronounced and applied by this SCOTUS:

Presidential authority and power is complete and total, and the POTUS has complete immunity for anything he does.....unless the POTUS is a Democrat, in which case nothing he does is legal or allowable, and he has no immunity for it and should probably be sent directly to prison, which is how we'll rule as soon as we're presented with that question.

Yes, because a court is made of human beings, there's always a "Calvinball" ELEMENT to it.....but this SCOTUS went from "air of legitimacy" to "complete joke that no rational person should take seriously" in the blink of an eye.  I practice in subject matter and before courts that have to follow SCOTUS precedents, and I can say pretty comfortably that the current SCOTUS has no credibility or legitimacy.  We all follow its rulings only out of habit and a deference to what once was.  I don't know how long that will last.

[Foosters 17821]

I hit 120 payments needed for Public Service Loan Forgiveness 5 months ago. But each time it gets ready to be forgiven, I get an email saying "sorry! a federal court just struck down blah, blah, blah . . . so we'll need to put a forbearance on your account until we figure this out."

 

[Captainant 27625]

5 hours ago, Foosters said:

I hit 120 payments needed for Public Service Loan Forgiveness 5 months ago. But each time it gets ready to be forgiven, I get an email saying "sorry! a federal court just struck down blah, blah, blah . . . so we'll need to put a forbearance on your account until we figure this out."

 

GAWD you're such a freeloader, working 10 years of public service and making on time payments...

[Js1 85262]

3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

GAWD you're such a freeloader, working 10 years of public service and making on time payments...

[tx 3 putt 76864]

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

 

[Nivek 16916]

surprised? how?  They could admit they are working for Putin and hate America and want to kill the whites and they would not lose one fucking vote.

[pacman 7355]

[elfenix 34221]

HBA's live YouTube continuing education today features two lawyers who've been breaking the government on behalf of fossil carbon (and particularly coal which is dying hard anyway) over the last couple of decades. Did much of the heavy lifting in West Virginia v EPA and then killing Chevron. Very tempted to troll them hard in the comments.  

 

This dick just bragged about writing an op-ed in the WSJ that after West Virginia, Chevron was going to die next. Good job, everyone on Leonard Leo's payroll has been going that way for a decade so it was entirely predictable, but you're a Swami.

Edited September 6 by elfenix

[chainsaw 9854]

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

HBA's live YouTube continuing education today features two lawyers who've been breaking the government on behalf of fossil carbon (and particularly coal which is dying hard anyway) over the last couple of decades. Did much of the heavy lifting in West Virginia v EPA and then killing Chevron. Very tempted to troll them hard in the comments.  

 

This dick just bragged about writing an op-ed in the WSJ that after West Virginia, Chevron was going to die next. Good job, everyone on Leonard Leo's payroll has been going that way for a decade so it was entirely predictable, but you're a Swami.

[HenryJames 66035]

Roberts sucks as much as any justice in history.

Spoiler

How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak

Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate.

Sept. 15, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

Mark Harris

Sign up for the On Politics newsletter.  Your guide to the 2024 elections.

Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty.

Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to retake the White House, had made a bold, last-ditch appeal to the justices. He wanted them to block his fast-approaching criminal trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was protected by presidential immunity. Whatever move the court made could have lasting consequences for the next election, the scope of presidential power and the court’s own battered reputation.

The chief justice’s Feb. 22 memo, jump-starting the justices’ formal discussion on whether to hear the case, offered a scathing critique of a lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule, according to several people from the court who saw the document.

The chief justice tore into the appellate court opinion greenlighting Mr. Trump’s trial, calling it inadequate and poorly reasoned. On one key point, he complained, the lower court judges “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.” He wrote not only that the Supreme Court should take the case — which would stall the trial — but also how the justices should decide it.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.

In a momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases last term, the court found itself more entangled in presidential politics than at any time since the 2000 election, even as it was contending with its own controversies related to that day. The chief justice responded by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.

This account draws on details from the justices’ private memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, both conservative and liberal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because deliberations are supposed to be kept secret.

The chief justice wrote the majority opinions in all three cases, including an unsigned one in March concluding that the former president could not be barred from election ballots in Colorado.

Another case involved a highly unusual switch. In April, the chief justice assigned Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to write a majority opinion saying that prosecutors had gone too far in bringing obstruction charges against some Capitol rioters. But in late May, the chief justice took it over.

Who initiated the change, and why, is not clear. The switch came days after The Times reported that an upside-down flag, a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement, had flown outside the Alito home following the Capitol attack. While that timing is suggestive, it is unclear whether the two are linked. (All nine justices declined to respond to written questions from The Times, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.)

During the February discussions of the immunity case, the most consequential of the three, some of the conservative justices wanted to schedule it for the next term. That would have deferred oral arguments until October and almost certainly pushed a decision until after the election. But Chief Justice Roberts provided crucial support for hearing the historic case earlier, siding with the liberals.

Then he froze them out. After he circulated his draft opinion in June, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal, signaled a willingness to agree on some points in hopes of moderating the opinion, according to those familiar with the proceedings. Though the chief justice often favors consensus, he did not take the opening. As the court split 6 to 3, conservatives versus liberals, Justice Sotomayor started work on a five-alarm dissent warning of danger to democracy.

In his writings on the immunity case, the chief justice seemed confident that his arguments would soar above politics, persuade the public, and stand the test of time. His opinion cited “enduring principles,” quoted Alexander Hamilton’s endorsement of a vigorous presidency, and asserted it would be a mistake to dwell too much on Mr. Trump’s actions. “In a case like this one, focusing on ‘transient results’ may have profound consequences for the separation of powers and for the future of our Republic,” he wrote. “Our perspective must be more farsighted.”

But the public response to the decision, announced in July on the final day of the term, was nothing like what his lofty phrases seemed to anticipate.

Both conservatives and liberals saw it as an epic win for Mr. Trump. The former president and his supporters exulted over the decision, which greatly expanded presidential immunity and pushed off any trial until well after the election — if ever. To Democrats, the Republican-appointed justices were brushing away the violent Capitol attack and abandoning the core principle that no one is above the law. The chief justice, who had long said he wanted to keep the court out of politics, had plunged it more deeply in.

Now his opinion is the key document in a legal drama playing out this autumn, as the judge presiding over the long-delayed trial, Tanya S. Chutkan, parses what the court meant and how to move forward. Legal scholars say her job won’t be easy. Despite the chief justice’s reputation as a methodical craftsman, many experts, both conservative and liberal, say he produced a disjointed, tough-to-interpret opinion.

“It’s a strange, sprawling opinion,” said William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and a former clerk to the chief justice. “It’s hard to tell what exactly it is trying to do.”

Others said the ruling was untethered from the law. “It’s certainly not really tied to the Constitution,” said Stephen R. McAllister, a law professor at University of Kansas and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.

But inside the court, some members of the majority had complimented the chief justice even as they requested changes. Two days after the chief justice circulated his first draft in June, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded to what he called an “extraordinary opinion.”

In a final flourish, he wrote, “Thank you again for your exceptional work.”

Soon afterward, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch added another superlative: “I join Brett in thanking you for your remarkable work.”

Roberts’s Unsigned Opinion

Two years earlier, as the other conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade, the chief justice had been sidelined as he sought a middle ground that would restrict but not eliminate the constitutional right to abortion. In failing to persuade a single colleague to adopt his approach, he appeared to lose control of the court. This term he seemed determined to regain it.

In February, the justices heard arguments on a provocative question. The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, contains language barring insurrectionists from holding office. So could Colorado kick Mr. Trump off the ballot in its Republican primary, creating an obstacle for his presidential campaign?

From the start of the justices’ private discussions of the case, Trump v. Anderson, it was clear that the court was going to say no, according to several people at the court familiar with the conversations. Allowing states to excise candidates from ballots in a national election was out of the question, the justices agreed. With sparse and cryptic text in the amendment, and little case law, to guide them, they raised various ideas for the court’s ruling and rationale.

The court’s conservative supermajority has prevailed in many of the most consequential cases in recent years. This time, Chief Justice Roberts told his colleagues he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned. In any politically charged case, agreement among the justices made the decision more authoritative. He even said he would consult individually with everyone to discuss what they would accept — a rare step.

While all nine justices agreed that Mr. Trump should remain on state ballots, four of the conservatives were pushing to go beyond that and rule that the Constitution’s prohibition would require congressional action to take effect. Such a decision would provide greater protection for Mr. Trump: To prevent him from taking office if he won re-election, Congress would have to vote to enforce the insurrectionist ban.

That left the chief justice in control of the outcome. He lingered over the choice, those familiar with the process said. Ultimately, he sided with the four conservatives in an opinion that he wrote but that was issued unsigned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals wrote concurrences saying the majority had gone too far.

Although the judgment was 9 to 0, the justices had not reached true agreement.

A Change of Authors

The next case, one with the potential to undermine charges against Mr. Trump, spurred behind-the-scenes footwork by the justices, including the mysterious reassignment of a majority opinion.

Keep Up With the 2024 Election

The presidential election is 51 days away. Here’s our guide to the run-up to Election Day.

On Politics Newsletter. Get the latest news and analysis on the 2024 election sent to your inbox. Sign up here.

The case, Fischer v. United States, posed another sensitive question: Had prosecutors overreached in charging some Jan. 6 rioters under a law originally aimed at white-collar crime? Of the nearly 1,500 people who had been indicted in the Capitol attack as of June, when Fischer was decided, about 250 cases included a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.

After oral arguments in April, a majority of the court, including the chief justice, privately concluded that prosecutors had erred. It appeared that the result would narrow, overturn or prevent convictions of some Capitol rioters. It also seemed poised to imperil some of the charges against Mr. Trump, which included obstructing Congress’s certification of the 2020 election.

The chief justice assigned the opinion to Justice Alito, according to several court insiders. But a month later, Chief Justice Roberts updated the court: Justice Alito was no longer the author. The chief justice was taking over the opinion.

Outside the court, the switch went undetected. Inside, it caused surprise. To change authors without the judgment itself shifting was a break from court procedure, several court insiders said.

In interviews, Supreme Court scholars agreed. “Can I tell you an instance when it’s happened? No,” said Paul J. Wahlbeck, a professor at George Washington University who has studied opinion assignments.

The chief justice and Justice Alito did not respond to inquiries from The Times about the reason for the change. But the date of the new assignment, May 20, offers a possible clue. Four days earlier, The Times had reported on the upside-down flag that flew at the Alitos’ Virginia home soon after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

As the three Jan. 6 cases were being decided, Americans’ trust in the court was at a near low, polls show. Justice Thomas had declined to recuse himself from matters related to Jan. 6, even though his wife, Virginia Thomas, had encouraged Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. After the flag revelations, some legal experts and lawmakers pushed Justice Alito to recuse himself from the three cases. He also declined.

The change in authorship wasn’t the last shift in the case. Soon after, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson deployed her vote to change the outcome.

As in the Colorado case, the vote did not fall along strictly partisan lines. Justice Barrett, along with Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, felt that prosecutors were entitled to charge rioters under the obstruction law. It appeared that Justice Jackson would stand alone. She agreed with the majority that the law had been applied too broadly, according to several court insiders. But she thought the others were going too far by reversing the lower court’s judgment, tossing out the charge in the case before them and undermining many others.

Her intermediate position gave her leverage. She said she would join the majority if they would send the cases back to the lower courts to be reconsidered. The conservatives said yes. The final vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Barrett siding with the liberals and Justice Jackson with the conservatives.

Prosecutors would get a shot at salvaging some of the cases, including charges against Mr. Trump.

Redefining Presidential Immunity

The immunity case, Trump v. United States, would determine whether and how the once and would-be future president could be prosecuted on charges of trying to overturn an election.

Just after the chief justice sent his Feb. 22 memo, showing that he was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s arguments, his position became stronger. Justice Kavanaugh responded the next morning, agreeing with the chief’s logic, according to insiders who knew of the exchange. The three most conservative justices were presumably on board, and with two of the justices at the court’s ideological center in agreement, the direction was clear.

At the justices’ private conference meeting that day, Justice Sotomayor protested that she did not see how the court could reverse the appellate decision. It would look like the Supreme Court was being used to delay the trial, she said, according to someone with knowledge of the proceedings.

So she and the other liberal justices focused on the crucial question of timing. Every day that the court waited to hear the case was a benefit to Mr. Trump, diminishing the possibility of a trial before the Nov. 5 election. At the meeting, some of the court’s most conservative members said they did not want to hear the case until the start of the next term in October, according to several court insiders.

Justice Thomas, who favored scheduling the arguments in October, told colleagues that he did not want to see the court dragged into political battles.

Justice Gorsuch agreed. The matter was too important to rush, he said, and lawyers on the case would need time to prepare their strongest arguments.

On that schedule, the Supreme Court would not decide the immunity question until after the presidential contest. If Mr. Trump won, he could have the criminal case dismissed.

Once again, the chief justice’s position prevailed: He preferred to hear the case in the current term, and Justice Kavanaugh was amenable. Oral arguments were set for two months later. While relatively fast by the court’s usual standards, that timing frustrated many Democrats.

The justices instructed lawyers from both sides to address a broad question: “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure.”

On April 25, the justices and the lawyers in the case gathered for oral arguments in the courtroom, across the street from where the Jan. 6 rioting had taken place three years earlier. The clamor from the Capitol attack had been audible from inside the court building, former employees recalled in interviews, and afterward, security sharply increased and fences shielded the building.

During the arguments, however, several conservative justices said that they wanted to focus not on what had happened that day, but on broader legal questions.

“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” Justice Alito told the courtroom.

“I’m not focused on the here and now of this case,” Justice Kavanaugh said. “I’m very concerned about the future.”

“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Gorsuch said.

All of the conservative justices, including the three Trump appointees, had voted against Mr. Trump or his administration in some major cases. The chief justice, who had cast several crucial votes with liberals, had once taken the extraordinary step of rebuking Mr. Trump to defend the independence of the judiciary.

But the chief justice and Justice Kavanaugh had spent formative years as White House lawyers, working to protect presidential power. At oral arguments, Justice Kavanaugh and some other conservatives worried aloud that presidents without sufficient immunity might become overly cautious or vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions.

Chief Justice Roberts, echoing his critique in the February memo, called the logic of the appeals court ruling circular. “As I read it, it says simply a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted,” he said.

When the justices met in private shortly after the arguments, the six conservatives voted in favor of Mr. Trump and greatly expanding presidential immunity. The three liberals voted against. After the chief justice circulated a draft on June 1, and Justice Sotomayor responded that she would consider a partial compromise, her invitation appeared to go nowhere.

That left the chief justice with plenty of requests for changes from members of his own majority, but only one main challenger: Justice Barrett. After he filed his draft majority opinion, she seemed somewhat skeptical, saying she intended to vote with him, but could not join on three points, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Inside the chief’s chambers, all four of his clerks participated in a furious rewriting effort. Later, others at the court wondered if the chief justice had taken on too much. The writing of a majority opinion requires responding to suggestions and edits from other justices, addressing any dissents, and crafting an analysis to withstand scrutiny. He had assigned himself seven majority opinions over the term, five of them blockbuster cases.

Months earlier, on the ballot case, the chief justice had sought consensus. But the immunity decision, which was issuedon July 1 and set off a national uproar, reflected a court cleaved sharply in two.

The majority awarded sweeping immunity to Mr. Trump. The opinion did not say whether any of the crimes he had been accused of were fair game for prosecution, even though Mr. Trump’s lawyer had repeatedly conceded in oral arguments that some of the charges against his client appeared to concern purely private acts outside the role of president.

Chief Justice Roberts’s language in the opinion seemed intended to stay above the fray, extending protections to “all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy or party.” But in a withering dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion gave Mr. Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.” It also, she wrote, protected “treasonous acts,” transformed the president into “a king above the law” and ultimately caused her to “fear for our democracy.”

The court’s leader shot back that the liberal justices “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.”

The immunity ruling proposed three categories of protection for former presidents accused of having committed crimes while in office: absolute immunity for core responsibilities set out in the Constitution, at least presumptive immunity for all other official conduct and no immunity for private acts that fall outside of presidential duties.

But many legal experts said they could not figure out how the ruling should be applied. Even Justice Barrett, who had joined much of the opinion, wrote that it could have been clearer.

One footnote left scholars wondering whether former presidents could ever be prosecuted for taking bribes. An N.Y.U. professor was startled to discover that the opinion, which leaned heavily on Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a 1982 case on presidential immunity, truncated a quote from that decision, changing its meaning.

Now one person above all others is charged with interpreting the decision in Trump v. United States: Judge Chutkan, who was presiding over the trial that stalled last winter when the chief justice sent his memo and the court took the case. Since then, Mr. Trump has been convicted of falsifying business records in New York, but the sentencing has been deferred until after the election, and three other efforts to prosecute him have, for now at least, run aground.

For the trial before Judge Chutkan to resume, she must examine the indictment, which prosecutors reframedafter the Supreme Court ruling, and decide which charges against Mr. Trump can survive.

Both sides will be able to appeal her interpretation of the new immunity rules. More delay is likely to ensue. Her conclusions could be sent up to the appellate court in Washington. And then the very same question, of just how accountable Mr. Trump can be held for trying to overturn an election, will likely return to the nine justices on the Supreme Court.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting, and Julie Tate contributed research.

Jodi Kantor is a Times investigative reporter and co-author of “She Said,” which recounts how she and Megan Twohey broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.More about Jodi Kantor

 

[wildcat09 29338]

More people jumping on board the "John Roberts is a treasonous piece of shit and dogshit stupid to boot" train?

[tx 3 putt 76864]

Roberts has always been a huge piece of shit, not shocked here 

[Captainant 27625]

6 hours ago, HenryJames said:

Roberts sucks as much as any justice in history.

  Reveal hidden contents

How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak

Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate.

Sept. 15, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

Mark Harris

Sign up for the On Politics newsletter.  Your guide to the 2024 elections.

Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty.

Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to retake the White House, had made a bold, last-ditch appeal to the justices. He wanted them to block his fast-approaching criminal trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was protected by presidential immunity. Whatever move the court made could have lasting consequences for the next election, the scope of presidential power and the court’s own battered reputation.

The chief justice’s Feb. 22 memo, jump-starting the justices’ formal discussion on whether to hear the case, offered a scathing critique of a lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule, according to several people from the court who saw the document.

The chief justice tore into the appellate court opinion greenlighting Mr. Trump’s trial, calling it inadequate and poorly reasoned. On one key point, he complained, the lower court judges “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.” He wrote not only that the Supreme Court should take the case — which would stall the trial — but also how the justices should decide it.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.

In a momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases last term, the court found itself more entangled in presidential politics than at any time since the 2000 election, even as it was contending with its own controversies related to that day. The chief justice responded by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.

This account draws on details from the justices’ private memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, both conservative and liberal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because deliberations are supposed to be kept secret.

The chief justice wrote the majority opinions in all three cases, including an unsigned one in March concluding that the former president could not be barred from election ballots in Colorado.

Another case involved a highly unusual switch. In April, the chief justice assigned Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to write a majority opinion saying that prosecutors had gone too far in bringing obstruction charges against some Capitol rioters. But in late May, the chief justice took it over.

Who initiated the change, and why, is not clear. The switch came days after The Times reported that an upside-down flag, a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement, had flown outside the Alito home following the Capitol attack. While that timing is suggestive, it is unclear whether the two are linked. (All nine justices declined to respond to written questions from The Times, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.)

During the February discussions of the immunity case, the most consequential of the three, some of the conservative justices wanted to schedule it for the next term. That would have deferred oral arguments until October and almost certainly pushed a decision until after the election. But Chief Justice Roberts provided crucial support for hearing the historic case earlier, siding with the liberals.

Then he froze them out. After he circulated his draft opinion in June, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal, signaled a willingness to agree on some points in hopes of moderating the opinion, according to those familiar with the proceedings. Though the chief justice often favors consensus, he did not take the opening. As the court split 6 to 3, conservatives versus liberals, Justice Sotomayor started work on a five-alarm dissent warning of danger to democracy.

In his writings on the immunity case, the chief justice seemed confident that his arguments would soar above politics, persuade the public, and stand the test of time. His opinion cited “enduring principles,” quoted Alexander Hamilton’s endorsement of a vigorous presidency, and asserted it would be a mistake to dwell too much on Mr. Trump’s actions. “In a case like this one, focusing on ‘transient results’ may have profound consequences for the separation of powers and for the future of our Republic,” he wrote. “Our perspective must be more farsighted.”

But the public response to the decision, announced in July on the final day of the term, was nothing like what his lofty phrases seemed to anticipate.

Both conservatives and liberals saw it as an epic win for Mr. Trump. The former president and his supporters exulted over the decision, which greatly expanded presidential immunity and pushed off any trial until well after the election — if ever. To Democrats, the Republican-appointed justices were brushing away the violent Capitol attack and abandoning the core principle that no one is above the law. The chief justice, who had long said he wanted to keep the court out of politics, had plunged it more deeply in.

Now his opinion is the key document in a legal drama playing out this autumn, as the judge presiding over the long-delayed trial, Tanya S. Chutkan, parses what the court meant and how to move forward. Legal scholars say her job won’t be easy. Despite the chief justice’s reputation as a methodical craftsman, many experts, both conservative and liberal, say he produced a disjointed, tough-to-interpret opinion.

“It’s a strange, sprawling opinion,” said William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and a former clerk to the chief justice. “It’s hard to tell what exactly it is trying to do.”

Others said the ruling was untethered from the law. “It’s certainly not really tied to the Constitution,” said Stephen R. McAllister, a law professor at University of Kansas and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.

But inside the court, some members of the majority had complimented the chief justice even as they requested changes. Two days after the chief justice circulated his first draft in June, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded to what he called an “extraordinary opinion.”

In a final flourish, he wrote, “Thank you again for your exceptional work.”

Soon afterward, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch added another superlative: “I join Brett in thanking you for your remarkable work.”

Roberts’s Unsigned Opinion

Two years earlier, as the other conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade, the chief justice had been sidelined as he sought a middle ground that would restrict but not eliminate the constitutional right to abortion. In failing to persuade a single colleague to adopt his approach, he appeared to lose control of the court. This term he seemed determined to regain it.

In February, the justices heard arguments on a provocative question. The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, contains language barring insurrectionists from holding office. So could Colorado kick Mr. Trump off the ballot in its Republican primary, creating an obstacle for his presidential campaign?

From the start of the justices’ private discussions of the case, Trump v. Anderson, it was clear that the court was going to say no, according to several people at the court familiar with the conversations. Allowing states to excise candidates from ballots in a national election was out of the question, the justices agreed. With sparse and cryptic text in the amendment, and little case law, to guide them, they raised various ideas for the court’s ruling and rationale.

The court’s conservative supermajority has prevailed in many of the most consequential cases in recent years. This time, Chief Justice Roberts told his colleagues he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned. In any politically charged case, agreement among the justices made the decision more authoritative. He even said he would consult individually with everyone to discuss what they would accept — a rare step.

While all nine justices agreed that Mr. Trump should remain on state ballots, four of the conservatives were pushing to go beyond that and rule that the Constitution’s prohibition would require congressional action to take effect. Such a decision would provide greater protection for Mr. Trump: To prevent him from taking office if he won re-election, Congress would have to vote to enforce the insurrectionist ban.

That left the chief justice in control of the outcome. He lingered over the choice, those familiar with the process said. Ultimately, he sided with the four conservatives in an opinion that he wrote but that was issued unsigned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals wrote concurrences saying the majority had gone too far.

Although the judgment was 9 to 0, the justices had not reached true agreement.

A Change of Authors

The next case, one with the potential to undermine charges against Mr. Trump, spurred behind-the-scenes footwork by the justices, including the mysterious reassignment of a majority opinion.

Keep Up With the 2024 Election

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The case, Fischer v. United States, posed another sensitive question: Had prosecutors overreached in charging some Jan. 6 rioters under a law originally aimed at white-collar crime? Of the nearly 1,500 people who had been indicted in the Capitol attack as of June, when Fischer was decided, about 250 cases included a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.

After oral arguments in April, a majority of the court, including the chief justice, privately concluded that prosecutors had erred. It appeared that the result would narrow, overturn or prevent convictions of some Capitol rioters. It also seemed poised to imperil some of the charges against Mr. Trump, which included obstructing Congress’s certification of the 2020 election.

The chief justice assigned the opinion to Justice Alito, according to several court insiders. But a month later, Chief Justice Roberts updated the court: Justice Alito was no longer the author. The chief justice was taking over the opinion.

Outside the court, the switch went undetected. Inside, it caused surprise. To change authors without the judgment itself shifting was a break from court procedure, several court insiders said.

In interviews, Supreme Court scholars agreed. “Can I tell you an instance when it’s happened? No,” said Paul J. Wahlbeck, a professor at George Washington University who has studied opinion assignments.

The chief justice and Justice Alito did not respond to inquiries from The Times about the reason for the change. But the date of the new assignment, May 20, offers a possible clue. Four days earlier, The Times had reported on the upside-down flag that flew at the Alitos’ Virginia home soon after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

As the three Jan. 6 cases were being decided, Americans’ trust in the court was at a near low, polls show. Justice Thomas had declined to recuse himself from matters related to Jan. 6, even though his wife, Virginia Thomas, had encouraged Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. After the flag revelations, some legal experts and lawmakers pushed Justice Alito to recuse himself from the three cases. He also declined.

The change in authorship wasn’t the last shift in the case. Soon after, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson deployed her vote to change the outcome.

As in the Colorado case, the vote did not fall along strictly partisan lines. Justice Barrett, along with Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, felt that prosecutors were entitled to charge rioters under the obstruction law. It appeared that Justice Jackson would stand alone. She agreed with the majority that the law had been applied too broadly, according to several court insiders. But she thought the others were going too far by reversing the lower court’s judgment, tossing out the charge in the case before them and undermining many others.

Her intermediate position gave her leverage. She said she would join the majority if they would send the cases back to the lower courts to be reconsidered. The conservatives said yes. The final vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Barrett siding with the liberals and Justice Jackson with the conservatives.

Prosecutors would get a shot at salvaging some of the cases, including charges against Mr. Trump.

Redefining Presidential Immunity

The immunity case, Trump v. United States, would determine whether and how the once and would-be future president could be prosecuted on charges of trying to overturn an election.

Just after the chief justice sent his Feb. 22 memo, showing that he was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s arguments, his position became stronger. Justice Kavanaugh responded the next morning, agreeing with the chief’s logic, according to insiders who knew of the exchange. The three most conservative justices were presumably on board, and with two of the justices at the court’s ideological center in agreement, the direction was clear.

At the justices’ private conference meeting that day, Justice Sotomayor protested that she did not see how the court could reverse the appellate decision. It would look like the Supreme Court was being used to delay the trial, she said, according to someone with knowledge of the proceedings.

So she and the other liberal justices focused on the crucial question of timing. Every day that the court waited to hear the case was a benefit to Mr. Trump, diminishing the possibility of a trial before the Nov. 5 election. At the meeting, some of the court’s most conservative members said they did not want to hear the case until the start of the next term in October, according to several court insiders.

Justice Thomas, who favored scheduling the arguments in October, told colleagues that he did not want to see the court dragged into political battles.

Justice Gorsuch agreed. The matter was too important to rush, he said, and lawyers on the case would need time to prepare their strongest arguments.

On that schedule, the Supreme Court would not decide the immunity question until after the presidential contest. If Mr. Trump won, he could have the criminal case dismissed.

Once again, the chief justice’s position prevailed: He preferred to hear the case in the current term, and Justice Kavanaugh was amenable. Oral arguments were set for two months later. While relatively fast by the court’s usual standards, that timing frustrated many Democrats.

The justices instructed lawyers from both sides to address a broad question: “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure.”

On April 25, the justices and the lawyers in the case gathered for oral arguments in the courtroom, across the street from where the Jan. 6 rioting had taken place three years earlier. The clamor from the Capitol attack had been audible from inside the court building, former employees recalled in interviews, and afterward, security sharply increased and fences shielded the building.

During the arguments, however, several conservative justices said that they wanted to focus not on what had happened that day, but on broader legal questions.

“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” Justice Alito told the courtroom.

“I’m not focused on the here and now of this case,” Justice Kavanaugh said. “I’m very concerned about the future.”

“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Gorsuch said.

All of the conservative justices, including the three Trump appointees, had voted against Mr. Trump or his administration in some major cases. The chief justice, who had cast several crucial votes with liberals, had once taken the extraordinary step of rebuking Mr. Trump to defend the independence of the judiciary.

But the chief justice and Justice Kavanaugh had spent formative years as White House lawyers, working to protect presidential power. At oral arguments, Justice Kavanaugh and some other conservatives worried aloud that presidents without sufficient immunity might become overly cautious or vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions.

Chief Justice Roberts, echoing his critique in the February memo, called the logic of the appeals court ruling circular. “As I read it, it says simply a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted,” he said.

When the justices met in private shortly after the arguments, the six conservatives voted in favor of Mr. Trump and greatly expanding presidential immunity. The three liberals voted against. After the chief justice circulated a draft on June 1, and Justice Sotomayor responded that she would consider a partial compromise, her invitation appeared to go nowhere.

That left the chief justice with plenty of requests for changes from members of his own majority, but only one main challenger: Justice Barrett. After he filed his draft majority opinion, she seemed somewhat skeptical, saying she intended to vote with him, but could not join on three points, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Inside the chief’s chambers, all four of his clerks participated in a furious rewriting effort. Later, others at the court wondered if the chief justice had taken on too much. The writing of a majority opinion requires responding to suggestions and edits from other justices, addressing any dissents, and crafting an analysis to withstand scrutiny. He had assigned himself seven majority opinions over the term, five of them blockbuster cases.

Months earlier, on the ballot case, the chief justice had sought consensus. But the immunity decision, which was issuedon July 1 and set off a national uproar, reflected a court cleaved sharply in two.

The majority awarded sweeping immunity to Mr. Trump. The opinion did not say whether any of the crimes he had been accused of were fair game for prosecution, even though Mr. Trump’s lawyer had repeatedly conceded in oral arguments that some of the charges against his client appeared to concern purely private acts outside the role of president.

Chief Justice Roberts’s language in the opinion seemed intended to stay above the fray, extending protections to “all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy or party.” But in a withering dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion gave Mr. Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.” It also, she wrote, protected “treasonous acts,” transformed the president into “a king above the law” and ultimately caused her to “fear for our democracy.”

The court’s leader shot back that the liberal justices “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.”

The immunity ruling proposed three categories of protection for former presidents accused of having committed crimes while in office: absolute immunity for core responsibilities set out in the Constitution, at least presumptive immunity for all other official conduct and no immunity for private acts that fall outside of presidential duties.

But many legal experts said they could not figure out how the ruling should be applied. Even Justice Barrett, who had joined much of the opinion, wrote that it could have been clearer.

One footnote left scholars wondering whether former presidents could ever be prosecuted for taking bribes. An N.Y.U. professor was startled to discover that the opinion, which leaned heavily on Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a 1982 case on presidential immunity, truncated a quote from that decision, changing its meaning.

Now one person above all others is charged with interpreting the decision in Trump v. United States: Judge Chutkan, who was presiding over the trial that stalled last winter when the chief justice sent his memo and the court took the case. Since then, Mr. Trump has been convicted of falsifying business records in New York, but the sentencing has been deferred until after the election, and three other efforts to prosecute him have, for now at least, run aground.

For the trial before Judge Chutkan to resume, she must examine the indictment, which prosecutors reframedafter the Supreme Court ruling, and decide which charges against Mr. Trump can survive.

Both sides will be able to appeal her interpretation of the new immunity rules. More delay is likely to ensue. Her conclusions could be sent up to the appellate court in Washington. And then the very same question, of just how accountable Mr. Trump can be held for trying to overturn an election, will likely return to the nine justices on the Supreme Court.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting, and Julie Tate contributed research.

Jodi Kantor is a Times investigative reporter and co-author of “She Said,” which recounts how she and Megan Twohey broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.More about Jodi Kantor

 

Surly lawyers be like

 

[tx 3 putt 76864]

[HenryJames 66035]

[jimmyjazz 45880]

Donald Trump and his supporters violate the National Environmental Policy Act:

 

[wildcat09 29338]

37 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

Oh cool, judicial eco-fascism.  

[kevwun 15759]

Gut the EPA at every opportunity and then use it to justify a stupid wall.  Motherfuckers have no shame.

[Js1 85262]

Yeah, that is um....

a huge reach. 

[chainsaw 9854]

I could have sworn that Trump waived all the environmental impact studies to speed up the construction of the wall. How would the cancellation of a project that hadn't complied with the impact study requirement be subject to the same requirement?

[Gap03 3303]

13 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

I could have sworn that Trump waived all the environmental impact studies to speed up the construction of the wall. How would the cancellation of a project that hadn't complied with the impact study requirement be subject to the same requirement?

/Trump Judge

[Captainant 27625]

3 hours ago, kevwun said:

Gut the EPA at every opportunity and then use it to justify a stupid wall.  Motherfuckers have no shame.

Use every lever of government as a weapon. If you have power, you're supposed to use it[/fascistshithead]

[Satchel 6925]

In a P 2025 world, there won’t be an EPA. So, there’s that.

[Jive Turkey 12594]

Coming to SCOTUS in a few years . . . completely unqualified Trump-appointed district court judge decides to upend 160 years of precedent. 

Quote

Kathryn Mizelle was barely removed from her clerkship when Donald Trump tapped her for the federal bench in the waning days of his administration.

***

Yesterday, she declared the False Claims Act qui tam provision unconstitutional. The law has been on the books since ABRAHAM LINCOLN signed it into law and existed as a concept dating back to the Middle Ages as described in the English common law treatises that conservative judges usually love to cite. It enjoys a long history in the Anglo-American legal canon as a necessary tool allowing private citizens to recover damages owed to the United States government that might otherwise go unclaimed. For this, she ginned up an Article II theory not unlike the one Judge Mizelle’s counterpart Aileen Cannon recently used to conclude that Special Counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution by existing based on a Clarence Thomas opinion (writing for himself alone!) where he complained that no one else on the Supreme Court agreed with him. Essentially, claiming that the Constitution forbids anyone from acting for the benefit of the United States unless they’re appointed by the president.

***

She says “although” the Supreme Court and her circuit have explicitly not declared the over 160-year-old law unconstitutional, she is going to decide “what if it is?”

A more conscientious and good faith DISTRICT JUDGE would apply the law as it presently exists, leaving it to higher courts to decide if they want to stop reserving this cockamamie Article II theory. An envelope-pushing trial judge could apply existing law and bloviate for 53 pages about how much they disagree with it, hoping to catch a stray nod from a future controlling opinion. It’s not particularly professional, but at least it preserves the role of a district judge. Mizelle will eschew these options.

***

One thing you might notice here is the lack of even A SINGLE CITE TO RELEVANT AUTHORITY. Zilch. Nada. Concurrences, dissents, a fart-sniffing internal Bill Barr statement. No majority Supreme Court, Eleventh Circuit, sibling circuit opinion. Not even a stray district court opinion from some far-flung district. She couldn’t even get ChatGPT to make up some fake cites for good measure. There’s just nothing here!

***

But it’s actually a much bigger — and apolitical — deal to have bottom rung trial judges running around inventing new constitutional law “although” higher courts have refused. The judiciary is tiered for a reason. Forcing trial judges to apply existing law, even if they don’t like it, discourages litigants from pursuing costly and frivolous challenges to the status quo. It also prevents the appellate courts from having to run constant clean up on rogue district court opinions when there is a presumption in favor of maintaining existing law. A predictable business litigation environment relies on stacking the deck against judges making radical changes to the law willy-nilly just to impress their friends.

One might even call this approach “little-c conservative.”

Given the makeup of the Eleventh Circuit and the Supreme Court, Mizelle might be correctly reading the tea leaves and those bodies — despite not having the votes to strike down Lincoln’s Law previously — may be on the verge of taking a sledgehammer to precedent. But that shouldn’t matter… it’s not HER job to do that. It’s her job to preside over this case and let the appellate process play out.

https://abovethelaw.com/2024/10/trump-judge-proves-again-why-shes-known-as-one-of-americas-least-qualified-jurists/

[Gap03 3303]

7 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

Coming to SCOTUS in a few years . . . completely unqualified Trump-appointed district court judge decides to upend 160 years of precedent. 

https://abovethelaw.com/2024/10/trump-judge-proves-again-why-shes-known-as-one-of-americas-least-qualified-jurists/

Thanks for posting that.  Just another warning of the damage that the Federalist Society is doing to the federal judiciary.  That article is well done, and it feels like the author was channeling Brisket on the parts about "history and tradition":  

Quote

Given the mandate of the conservative Supreme Court majority in Dobbs that laws only count if they’re “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” one might not expect a right-wing judge to throw out a law with nearly 200 years of unquestioned validity. But that presumes that “history and tradition” amount to anything more than an empty marketing slogan that these folks drag out whenever they want to say that the Framers may have had robust gun control laws but they never SPECIFICALLY said you couldn’t bring an assault rifle on an electric train.

Today’s frequent use of the FCA’s qui tam provision emerged relatively recently. Although the FCA as enacted in 1863 permitted relator suits, it took a package of prorelator amendments in 1986 to elevate the device from obscurity. At least one study found that the DOJ’s records reveal only three qui tam actions in the four decades between 1943 and 1986, see WILLIAM L. STRINGER, THE FALSE CLAIMS ACT AMENDMENTS: AN ASSESSMENT OF ECONOMIC IMPACT 23 (1996) (admitting that the records are incomplete but concluding that qui tam actions were “undoubtedly very few”), while others estimate that the “DOJ used to receive about six qui tam cases a year” before the 1986 amendments, Steve France, The Private War on Pentagon Fraud, 76 A.B.A. J. 46, 48 (1990). Whatever the precise figure, the relator amendments triggered an explosion of qui tam lawsuits. See 2023 FCA Stats at 1–2 (showing 31 new FCA qui tam matters in fiscal year 1987 rising to 712 new qui tam matters in 2023).

Credit where it’s due, Mizelle didn’t have to include the parenthetical admitting that her primary source admitted he was basically making it up based on incomplete records. On the other hand, it’s the sort of addition that should’ve kept the cite out of the opinion entirely. But this again gives us occasion to remember the risks posed by the cottage industry of building a body of “History-ish” publications for judges to cite whenever the actual record can’t back it up. It’s an accelerating problem with student journals publishing historical claims that could not pass scholarly peer review, but provide Federalist Society judges historical sounding factoids to insert into string cites. Indeed, one of the authors at the heart of the recent controversy over flimsy academic claims is right there in this opinion!

 

[Gap03 3303]

Bonus tidbits from another article written by that same guy:

Quote

Another reminder that America’s Second Amendment jurisprudence is now governed by vibes masquerading as history. A right-wing jurist of the last generation called the Second Amendment theory that would eventually be enshrined — for the first time — in Heller as a “fraud on the American public,” but years of law review articles compiling flimsy historical Mad Libs in favor of unfettered gun rights provided the Court the foundation it needed to rewrite constitutional law under the fig leaf of originalism.

[Brisketexan 105051]

14 minutes ago, Gap03 said:

Bonus tidbits from another article written by that same guy:

Yep.  Perfectionism.

I remember being a young aspiring attorney, and reading up on "modalities" of constitutional interpretation.  "Originalism" had the veneer of intellectual honesty -- it was its main attractor, actually.  But once you do ANY digging in to how it actually works....you realize that it is a trojan horse: it is perhaps the most intellectually DISHONEST mode of interpretation, cloaked in a false identity of honesty.

Originalism is sold as the bulwark against "judicial activism."  But in reality, it's the surest gateway to naked judicial activism there is.  It's total fucking garbage.

[Chad Fuck 17658]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  Perfectionism.

I remember being a young aspiring attorney, and reading up on "modalities" of constitutional interpretation.  "Originalism" had the veneer of intellectual honesty -- it was its main attractor, actually.  But once you do ANY digging in to how it actually works....you realize that it is a trojan horse: it is perhaps the most intellectually DISHONEST mode of interpretation, cloaked in a false identity of honesty.

Originalism is sold as the bulwark against "judicial activism."  But in reality, it's the surest gateway to naked judicial activism there is.  It's total fucking garbage.

Or...every accusation is a confession example eleventybillion.

For those interested in reading further, I suggest "Worse Than Nothing" by Erwin Chimerensky.

 

[Captainant 27625]

The roberts court continues to be dogshit and play politics with its unopinioned rulings 

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-emergency-abortion-texas-bf79fafceba4ab9df9df2489e5d43e72

Quote

 

Without detailing their reasoning, the justices kept in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations that would violate Texas law.

The Biden administration had asked the justices to throw out the lower court order, arguing that hospitals have to perform abortions in emergency situations under federal law. The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.

The administration also cited a Texas Supreme Court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally. The administration said it brings Texas in line with federal law and means the lower court ruling is not necessary.

Texas asked the justices to leave the order in place, saying the state Supreme Court ruling meant Texas law, unlike Idaho’s, does have an exception for the health of a pregnant patient and there’s no conflict between federal and state law.

Doctors have said the law remains dangerously vague after a medical board refused to specify exactly which conditions qualify for the exception.

There has been a spike in complaints that pregnant women in medical distress have been turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict laws against abortion.

Pregnancy terminations have long been part of medical treatment for patients with serious complications, as way to to prevent sepsis, organ failure and other major problems. But in Texas and other states with strict abortion bans, doctors and hospitals have said it is not clear whether those terminations could run afoul of abortion bans that carry the possibility of prison time.

The Texas case started after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, leading to abortion restrictions in many Republican-controlled states. The Biden administration issued guidance saying hospitals still needed to provide abortions in emergency situations under a health care law that requires most hospitals to treat any patients in medical distress.

Texas sued over that guidance, arguing that hospitals cannot be required to provide abortions that would violate its ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court Appeals sided with the state, ruling in January that the administration had overstepped its authority.

 

 

[wildcat09 29338]

There's no way to reconcile this decision with the earlier Idaho ruling. It's pure abuse of the shadow docket to impose their agenda on as many people as they think they can without inviting a huge public backlash.

[chainsaw 9854]

This should be blasted on all media outlets but it won't be

[Captainant 27625]

This supreme court is full of charlatans and drunks and fascists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/

Quote

The report, which was produced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a Judiciary Committee member and leading critic of the Kavanaugh confirmation, and provided to The Washington Post ahead of a public release on Tuesday, provides additional evidence of the tight control exercised by the White House over the FBI investigation — despite Trump’s claims to the contrary.

 

 

The report found that messages to the FBI tip line regarding Kavanaugh were forwarded directly to the White House and never probed, and that the FBI had no written protocols for the supplemental background investigation ordered by the White House. It notes that the FBI was instructed by the White House to talk to 10 potential witnesses and was not given the leeway to pursue corroborating evidence — the absence of which was cited by senators as they narrowly voted to confirm Kavanaugh, marking a major triumph for the conservative movement and locking in a right-leaning majority that would later overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

...

Trump ordered the additional inquiry following nationally televised testimony by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had groped her and tried to take off her clothes more than three decades earlier, when they were in high school at a party in suburban Maryland. Another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, had come forward in a New Yorker story, saying Kavanaugh had shoved his penis into her face during a dorm party when they were at Yale University in the early 1980s.
 

“The Congressional report published today confirms what we long suspected: the FBI supplemental investigation of then-nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was, in fact, a sham effort directed by the Trump White House to silence brave victims and other witnesses who came forward and to hide the truth,” said Blasey Ford’s lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks.

 

An attorney for Ramirez, John Clune, said of the report: “It’s really disappointing since our client was so candid about something that was a pretty awful experience.”

Kavanaugh did not respond to a request for comment sent to the Supreme Court on Monday. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Kavanaugh “was unfairly slandered and smeared with lies.”

Some of the limits placed by the Trump White House on the inquiry were widely reported at the time. The FBI did not question Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford about the allegations. Nor did the FBI interview dozens of people whose names were provided by lawyers for Blasey Ford and Ramirez who said they could have offered corroborating evidence. It was also clear at the time that the FBI was not conducting a criminal investigation in which it would have broad authority,
 

...
 

In an interview, Whitehouse said the review of the FBI probe took six years because of resistance from both the Trump and Biden administrations to providing correspondence with the FBI, access to FBI officials and answers to questions about the investigation. Until 2021, the only information Democratic senators said they were able to obtain about the procedures for a supplemental background investigation was a publicly accessible YouTube video explaining how the FBI tip line works.

 

 

“Assurances that everything was being done by the book and according to standard FBI procedures omitted the fact that for supplement background investigations, there is no book and there are no procedures,” Whitehouse said. “You simply do what the White House tells you.”
 

The report notes there was no dedicated tip line set up for the Kavanaugh inquiry; members of the public used a preexisting portal called the National Threat Operations Center. The FBI received more than 4,500 calls and electronic messages related to Kavanaugh and was directed to forward the tips to the White House without pursuing any possible leads, according to the report. Even when senators contacted the FBI directly with the names of people who claimed to have relevant information about Kavanaugh, the FBI did not contact them.
 

The report described how two days before voting on Kavanaugh, senators were
given about an hour to review more than 1,600 pages of material collected by the FBI, mostly raw information from the tip line. Neither the FBI nor the White House explained whether the tips had been reviewed, Whitehouse said.

“It all went up to the White House for a decent burial,” Whitehouse said, “with no investigation whatsoever.”

“Assurances that everything was being done by the book and according to standard FBI procedures omitted the fact that for supplement background investigations, there is no book and there are no procedures,” Whitehouse said. “You simply do what the White House tells you.”

[Nivek 16916]

5 hours ago, Captainant said:

This supreme court is full of charlatans and drunks and fascists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/

“Assurances that everything was being done by the book and according to standard FBI procedures omitted the fact that for supplement background investigations, there is no book and there are no procedures,” Whitehouse said. “You simply do what the White House tells you.”

Project 2025 is a book.

[tx 3 putt 76864]

 

[elfenix 34221]

Must allow illegal maps to stand because February is too close to an election but a state can dump voters off the rolls less than 90 days before an election (in violation of federal law) because reasons 

Quote

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Republican officials in Virginia to revive a plan aimed at removing noncitizen voters from the rolls ahead of next week’s election.

The justices blocked a federal judge’s ruling that put the program on hold and required the state to restore 1,600 voters to the rolls.

...

Groups that sued, including the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said the process drew in people who might have indicated they were not citizens at that time but have subsequently become U.S. citizens. Civil rights groups and the Biden administration both provided evidence of U.S. citizens who had likely been removed from the rolls as a result.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-virginia-purge-noncitizens-voter-rolls-ahead-elec-rcna177673

[wildcat09 29338]

Just now, elfenix said:

Must allow illegal maps to stand because February is too close to an election but a state can dump voters off the rolls less than 90 days before an election (in violation of federal law) because reasons 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-virginia-purge-noncitizens-voter-rolls-ahead-elec-rcna177673

I mean this in all seriousness, the DOJ should simply behave as if this ruling is invalid. Order state officials not to purge the rolls and arrest them if they attempt to do so.  What the fuck is Sam Alito going to do about it? 

[Firemans4Horn 18034]

29 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I mean this in all seriousness, the DOJ should simply behave as if this ruling is invalid. Order state officials not to purge the rolls and arrest them if they attempt to do so.  What the fuck is Sam Alito going to do about it? 

Fly his MAGA flag upside down 

[tx 3 putt 76864]

 

[Gap03 3303]

So is now the time to re-visit whether Kagan and Sotomayor should step down?  The Senate majority is fragile, but how do we feel about the Dems having any firmer control over the Senate over the next decade the way things are currently going?   

[wildcat09 29338]

1 minute ago, Gap03 said:

So is now the time to re-visit whether Kagan and Sotomayor should step down?  The Senate majority is fragile, but how do we feel about the Dems having any firmer control over the Senate over the next decade the way things are currently going?   

They won't but they should. Dems might actually have a shot at retaking the senate in 2026, but it won't matter then obviously and any presidential election in 2028 will be hopelessly rigged by GOP state-level officials and the courts.

[Balcones 317]

4 minutes ago, Gap03 said:

So is now the time to re-visit whether Kagan and Sotomayor should step down?  The Senate majority is fragile, but how do we feel about the Dems having any firmer control over the Senate over the next decade the way things are currently going?   

I think an area that Trump could get a bipartisan win for both sides would be to expand the SC. Maybe go to 12 or 15 Justices?  I think Biden wanted to do this originally, but didn’t have support of Congress.

[Gap03 3303]

5 minutes ago, Balcones said:

I think an area that Trump could get a bipartisan win for both sides would be to expand the SC. Maybe go to 12 or 15 Justices?  I think Biden wanted to do this originally, but didn’t have support of Congress.

I look forward to that happening ...

[tx 3 putt 76864]

2 hours ago, Gap03 said:

So is now the time to re-visit whether Kagan and Sotomayor should step down?  The Senate majority is fragile, but how do we feel about the Dems having any firmer control over the Senate over the next decade the way things are currently going?   

 

they should have steeped down year one of biden, but yes they need retire today 

 

it’ll be interesting to see how much they offer thomas and alito to step down after the next session under trump 

you know they’d love to get rid of roberts too

[wildcat09 29338]

7 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

they should have steeped down year one of biden, but yes they need retire today 

 

it’ll be interesting to see how much they offer thomas and alito to step down after the next session under trump 

you know they’d love to get rid of roberts too

They don't need to offer them shit. Alito and Thomas will gladly retire after this term or the next ends. 

[tx 3 putt 76864]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

They don't need to offer them shit. Alito and Thomas will gladly retire after this term or the next ends. 

 

thomas isn’t stepping down unless he’s give. a large check or death. he wants to tear it all down to 1789

 

 

wild card - roberts says fuck it, retires and decides he doesn’t want to be a part of four more trump years