No There, There
What part of cover-up does Chief Justice Roberts not get?
America is asking ’where’s the beef? No, not that ‘beef’…not the announcement that the Court couldn’t find who leaked the memo…no… the time when the memo was leaked to Politico.
That ‘beef.’ (1)
Sounds like a garden variety coverup.
Since the mid-term elections, America has not performed well at keeping and sharing public documents: first, the investigative report on COVID-19 response accountability was aborted; next, the House Select Committee staff scrambled to get the transcripts and testimony collected by the J6 Committee away from a partisan House Oversight Committee to the National Archives; next, the on-going legal struggle with the Secret Service and former SS Chief Tony Ornato’s poor memory over disappearing SS cell phone communications January 5 and 6 … the list goes on.
It has been said that one half of justice is gathering evidence — the demonstrating part. The other half is the effort to prevent obstructing the process of presenting evidence — the convincing part.
A ‘smoking gun’ is not a smoking gun if one turns their head.
Publicly, America has demonstrated an avoidance at demanding fairness and transparency of its institutions tasked with defending democracy. The verb ‘stinks’ comes to mind, and a ‘history’ told by a Danish Prince. America has watched as the US House self-immolates, and last Thursday, the US Supreme Court.
So quickly, it seems, America demonstrates its reaction/avoidance by self-justification. “There must be intent.”
At what… for whom?
It seems less than a heartbeat transpires before the media musters out the “reasons:” sagging public opinion, bad judgement, worse security, absence of enforcement and ‘independent investigation,’ tone-deaf public relations… rinse and repeat. (2)
IMO, here’s the ‘beef’ in power point style:
1.The Supreme Court has not made public an opinion since November;
2.The weekly public briefings have abruptly ceased — decisions are dumped unceremoniously on the SCOTUS web site;
3.Media interviews are kept at a minimum;
4.Public opprobrium of these tactics are either dismissed by Roberts or obfuscated by claiming that sharing judicial decisions is a political act in an increasingly partisan and hence unfavorable environment.
In other words, America doesn’t need to know.
Returning from a golf outing, the former President and sole declared campaigner for President in 2024 was quick to offer his opinion of the ‘need to know’ on Truth Social. (3)
“They’ll never find out, & it’s important that they do. So, go to the reporter & ask him/her who it was. If not given the answer, put whoever in jail until the answer is given. You might add the editor and publisher to the list.”
Trump’s scapegoat du jour — the Press — is to blame. Except the memo was leaked to the press, not by the press. Plausibly, the Justices hatching the cover-up are the ones Trump had a hand in appointing.
Internationally and domestically, much is known about turning “high courts” into institutions that can be corrupted for political purposes. America’s friends, Israel, Hungary and Poland, are recent examples. (4)
“When the new Polish government came in in 2015, they immediately manipulated the appointment system for the Constitutional Court and appointed their own majority, which then allowed them to pass legislation which probably would have been ruled unconstitutional. They basically set up a system where they were going to replace lower judges and so they were going to grow themselves into a majority of the court. And that’s led to controversy and rulings outside the mainstream that have led to protests, while the European Union is withholding funds and such from Poland because of this manipulation of the court…
In Hungary, Victor Orban was a really radical leader, and when he had a bare majority to change the constitution, he wiped out all the previous jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. I don’t think the Israeli government would do that. But still there is this kind of worrying sense that they’re able to manipulate interpretation of law for their own particular political interest…
Suppose they (Israeli Knesset, ed.) pass these laws and the Israeli Supreme Court says, “Well, wait a minute, that interferes with our common law rules that we are bound by, going back to the British Mandate.” It conflicts with the basic law and they invoke what legal scholars call the “doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments,” which is basically saying that an amendment goes against the core of our democratic system and violates, for example, Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic society. Israel has never done this, but it is a kind of tool that one sees deployed around the world in these crises. And if that happened, then I think you would have a full constitutional crisis on your hands in Israel.”
In America, Biden’s attempt to deliver on a 2020 campaign promise to reform the Supreme Court has rendered a self-fulfilling prophecy not a path forward. The White House Commission on Reforming the Supreme Court released a report over a year ago which ‘concluded’ ’that because the country was so divided there was little consensus or agreement on reforms. As one Commission member and esteemed Harvard law professor, Prof. Laurence Tribe summarized, the Court is so low in the public estimation that any reform is worth initiating — who’s to argue? Currently the only glimmer of public accountability is the effort by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to investigate influence peddling and corruption of the Court. (5)
Ironic then is the dismissive response from Chief Justice Roberts that the Court as ‘institution’ should be defended, not criticized, for its ‘unpopular’ opinions.
Where’s the beef?
January 20-22
Notes
2-MSNBC, Michael Steele, Deadline: White House, January 19
3-https://thehill.com/homenews/3820172-trump-calls-for-jailing-journalists-who-broke-supreme-courts-draft-abortion-decision/
4-https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-top-us-law-professor-worries-israel-could-become-the-next-hungary/
5-https://www.rollcall.com/2023/01/12/lawmakers-set-to-press-supreme-court-on-ethics-standards/
