The Supreme Court from Hell, Part III

By Morgaan Sinclair. A grand manipulation for Trump. Justice delayed is justice denied. Period.

Image: Adobe Stock

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied

The bottom line, as the adage points out, is that justice delayed is justice denied.

If Trump can use a watered down, ambiguous Supreme Court immunity decision that delays prosecution of an insurrection case, the justices essentially allow Trump to invoke the tactics espoused by Steve Bannon: If the media doesn’t like it, Bannon said, we’ll “flood the zone with shit.”

And this follows another Bannon prescription: “This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.”

And how that’s done, of course, is to employ delaying strategems first and foremost. The “flooding the zone with shit” part comes with flooding the courts in New York, in Florida, in Georgia, and in Washington with endless motions in support of delay.

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But that, of course, is unnecessary if you have the Supreme Court of the United States in your pocket—if you’ve appointed three of the five conservative justices yourself—if you have a court with a super-majority of conservatives, some of whom have a decided antipathy for the freedoms and choices of women, for which you, as a man, have not the slightest respect. Among those are

• Clarence Thomas, whose vile sexual harassment of Anita Hill almost tanked his nomination—and who, financial evidence suggests, is guilty of staggering graft and pay-to-play schemes that have profited him millions. The involvement of his wife Ginni in the January 6 insurrection should have forced his recusal form the immunity case. Or, where the hell was John Roberts on this one?

• Samuel Alito, who had been trying to roll back Roe v. Wade for decades and finally succeeded. He is also implicated in pay-for-play schemes crafted by wealthy benefactors.

• Brett Kavanaugh—whose alleged college-era rape of Christine Blasey Ford consumed his confirmation hearing—voted to gut Roe, no surprise to anyone. Kavanaugh also racked up immense debts and resolved them under the cloudiest of circumstances and was asked by other judges if he needed treatment for a gambling addiction. According to former Speaker of the House and Fox News mouth Newt Gingrich, Republicans fought hard for Kavanaugh because getting him on the high court would ensure that Donald Trump’s tax returns would not be released to the public. Exhausted from the battle to get Kavanaughty on the bench, Gingrich said.

  “Now we’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it”

  Clearly, it was.

• Neil Gorsuch has pay-to-play skeletons in his closet as well. To quote Vice:

  Just nine days after the Trump appointee was confirmed in 2017, a Colorado property partially owned by Gorsuch was sold to the chief executive of a top law firm that’s since had nearly two dozen cases come before Gorsuch and the Court, Politico reported.

  Gorsuch made a killing on the deal and reported only part of his gains. In other troubling transactions, he had undisclosed personal dealings with people and companies whose interests appeared before the court more than two dozen times. He is corrupt, like Thomas and Alito—and Atonin Scalia before them, who died at a posh Texas resort ranch under a cloud of suspicion as to who paid for the stay and for the flights and what influence Scalia was providing to get such perks.

• Amy Coney Barrett. Hand-picked by the religious right, whom Trump owed big-time, Coney Barrett lied to Congress on abortion. Here’s what she said:

  • “I ... don't think the core case — Roe’s core holding that, you know, women have a right to an abortion — I don't think that would change,” said Barrett, then a Notre Dame law professor. She said limits on what she called “very late-term abortions” and restrictions on abortion clinics would be more likely to be upheld.

    • But even to say this was a lie. In the United States, abortions after 21 weeks accounted for only 1% of all abortions on the day she said it. Late-term abortions were at the time illegal and only performed in the case of fetal abnormality or threat to the mother’s life. THOSE RULES DID NOT CHANGE WITH DOBBS. They were always the case. See https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/abortions-later-in-pregnancy-in-a-post-dobbs-era/

• John Roberts is considered by some—including the esteemed Robert Reich—to be the worst chief justice in history.

Why I still think John Roberts is the worst Chief Justice since Roger Taney

Despite ricocheting between conservative and liberal positions, the most fateful of his decisions have gutted women’s rights and upheld elitism in Ivy League college admissions. He came perilously close to throwing people of color under the bus in Alabama. He was the prime mover of Citizens United which opened the floodgates of corporate election-buying by declaring corporations as people who may give unlimited sums of money to political candidates.

Now, by supporting the unsupportable delay in bringing Donald Trump to justice, Roberts threatens to destroy the democracy of the United States. That democracy may flawed, but it’s a damned sight better than the dictatorship we’ll get if Donald Trump does NOT stand trial because he is given “presidential immunity” for engineering an insurrection.

There is far, far more to this—and its even uglier underbelly involves the melding of racist, patriarchal, and elitist backlash against a culture that has, in the last 75 years, leaned into the promises of equality inherent in the Deist Constitution the Founding Fathers gave us.

A deep dive into hydra of white supremacy, misogyny, elitism and religious appropriation of American institutions—through MAGA and the Supreme Court—follows in The Supreme Court from Hell: Parts IV and V, coming this week.

Meanwhile, we’d like to direct you to some of our earlier posts that directly address this issue:

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More later this week. Thanks for staying tuned.