Mitchell Epner: 5/5 It turned out that Trump was right and I was a naive fool. Trump carried around Supreme Court justices in his pocket like so many nickels & dimes.

1/ I often write: The only thing I know *for certain* about the future is that it has not happened yet. Yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling is a perfect example of how much I need to heed my own mantra. For years, I heard Donald Trump was saying that he was certain that “his Supreme Court justices” . . .

2/ . . . would ride to his rescue. I scoffed at his “stupidity” and “naïveté”, confident that he did not understand how Supreme Court justices worked. I felt comfortable that “conservative” Justices would care more about their jurisprudence and institution than protecting one man. I thought SCOTUS

3/ . . . would deny cert. and leave the DC Circuit’s opinion in place. I was wrong. I thought that SCOTUS would quickly dispatch of Trump’s appeal, perhaps in tandem with deciding the Insurrection Clause challenge to Trump’s candidacy. I was wrong. I thought that even if though there . . .

4/ . . . was delay, that only meant that one or two Justices (likely Alito and/or Thomas) were doing Trump’s dirty work by withholding their dissents to the last possible minute, in order to make it impossible for Judge Chutkan to conduct the trial before Election Day. I was wrong.

5/5 It turned out that Trump was right and I was a naive fool. Trump carried around Supreme Court justices in his pocket like so many nickels & dimes.

To be fair to you (and me), before this opinion I’d say SCOTUs wasn’t making any “I’ll do anything for Trump” moves — they didn’t intervene in the 2020 election and rejected some other outrageous demands. This was a huge huge jump in the depth of the tank they are in.

The mistake was assuming the Texas billionaire was the only one bribing the judges.

“gratuitying the judges.” Bribes are passe. RVs, Bali vacations, jet rides to vacations at private ski and hunting lodges took place AFTER whatever. It’s all very legit. the six judges ruled for Snyder because they can now point to it and say, ‘well, that mayor did it. And we said that was legal.’

The public got too uppity with all its news stories documenting Thomas being in the tank.

Because "the Thomas" are (plural) in it (J6) full steam!

These men always believe Nixon should have gotten away with his crimes. That is their literal origin story. That is BORK BORK BORK that they scream like muppets at us. This is the least surprising ruling in the history of Bork Bork Republicans.

To also be fair to you both, we are in a profession that inherently requires some belief in the rule of law. The concepts of ethics and justice also often play a part, despite all our cynicism. With that as our foundation, I think we can be forgiven for not seeing this coming.

I understand you not seeing this coming, but I trust you'll understand that I'm re-evaluating some of my other expert-informed opinions, e.g. whether a given Res is RICO.

This is where I was. When I saw Roberts had the opinion I thought, oh thank goodness. That relief lasted a blip of a moment.

I do wonder if the Clarence Thomas bribes expose was a trigger for the rest of them to realise that there were no penalties for doing whatever the hell they wanted. "Well damn, if it's gonna be that sort of party..."

I've seen it stated elsewhere that Roberts had said that the Supreme Court gets to decide what is and isn't covered, which struck me as suggesting a power grab for judicial supremacy. But I may be far wrong.

Dobbs and the subsequent fizzled response to it encouraged them.

I haven't heard other experts talk about what a baseline Roberts court ruling on presidential immunity would have looked like in a non-Trump world. I'm with everyone else in horror, but the possibility that this is fairly close to their pre-Trump opinions anyway has occurred to me. Any thoughts?

It's possible that Roberts and one or two others were motivated more by being in the tank for Nixon than devotion to Trump per se, but the result is the same

I think they are probably implicated, or perhaps being blackmailed. And they know what Trump is guilty of, or at least some of their patrons, do and it's pretty bad stuff.

It's simpler than that. They want power for their faction, so they just took it. "It's our country now. You have to kill us to take it back. And by the way, its legal for our guy to kill you." I hope Biden and other leading Dems understand this.

The best way hear God laugh? Tell him that we’ll get ol’ Donnie this time

I rolled my eyes when he said years ago that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support. Now, I know he was right.

He has a knack for having people manifest shit for him that scientists will be studying for another century.

He was always right about that - what's new is that now it wouldn't even be illegal

I kind of still can’t believe it, even though I know it’s true.

same

Me too, but I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that the SCOTUS would bless it in advance.

When I heard the hearing, my immediate reaction was that Roberts was on board with it. Then a lot of analysis convinced me I was wrong. Should have trusted that instinct.

Roberts is a federalist pick too eh?

All GOP-appointed jurists are members of the Federalist Society. They won't be nominated otherwise.

I’m honestly shocked. Wow.

This has been the project for *decades*. Souter and O'Connor were such disappointments they vowed to never let an unknown be appointed again.

To say nothing of Nixon & Ford appointee John Paul Stevens.

Radicalization complete. So here we are.

The Federalist Society is anything but heh. Much like how people draped in their flag are the least patriotic.

The heart of darkness imo.

My pessimism knows no bounds and this still shattered my expectations. There is no bottom.

Yeah, I saw people panicking as I was listening to Dreeben’s presentation and thought maybe Roberts is just aggressively questioning both sides and Barrett seemed in play.

I would suspect that the fear of Trump's violent mobs that Romney says drives a lot of actions by Senators, is no less a factor for the Court, even after their ideological predilections.

The amazing part is that this has clearly changed over time--somehow they've all gotten much worse since 2020, when they ignored Trump's demands. Even the seemingly saner of them are now all-in on embracing caudillo governance. This bodes very poorly for what happens next, even if Biden wins.

I was a naive fool, too. What the hell happened to our profession? Was it all just idealistic nonsense masking a cynical, corrupt system all along? Or has it become corrupted by patient fascists playing the long game? I'm 34, so maybe I just hadn't picked up on the true nature of things yet

Souter and O'Connor were disappointments. When Souter turned almost liberal and O'Connor refused to overturn Roe, the FedSoc vowed to never let an unknown entity on the court again. The backlash to Harriet Miers is indicative of what they saw as their right to control the court. Never again.

We live in a time when the foolish have traded what they called principles for something they perceived as power. Their followers fawn over 'sticking it to someone else' and soon enough will find they're among the 'stickees' too.

Is there a scintilla of a chance this could work, even if he wasn’t President yet?

Trump seeks to set aside New York hush money verdict hours after Supreme Court rulingapnews.com His lawyers argue that a Supreme Court decision confirmed that prosecutors should have been precluded from introducing some evidence they said constituted official presidential acts.

Who knows? They're clearly well into "making shit up" to serve their king territory, so I wouldn't put it past them at this point

And all this is part of why Biden must, to fulfill his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, use his full authority to remove the possibility of a second Trump administration. It will only be worse.

It's still those billionaires who have the Justices in their pockets. It's just that they know Trump is their last hope and are ready to fast-track an end to democracy.

You believed that what we've spent decades defending was worth a shit. Silly you. I should have been a plumber.

Respectfully, a big problem with Americans in general is that they are way too optimistic and think the final outcome is always gonna be somewhat good. As an European, I tend to be the opposite and unfortunately these days, I’m often right to believe that the worst is yet to come.

I don't think it's optimism. I think it's laziness.

How much of this is because Democrats started investigated Thomas's ethics violations? How much of this is Roberts going, "Well, I tried to uphold our legacy as respected jurists, but everyone hates us now, so we may as well be Lords."

I thought at the very least these judges wouldn’t be so stupid as to stick their whole fuckin face in the leopard’s cage like he won’t eat it Guess they really are that stupid

I don't know. I still believe that it's not his Supreme Court. I believe that Trump thought that he gained enough grip and power over the party to get them in his pocket. Because he managed to sideline McConnell. After the elections they reminded him who was the boss.

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