Tag: clarence thomas
The Supreme Court's 'Immunity Club' And The Advent Of Fascist Jurisprudence

The Supreme Court's 'Immunity Club' And The Advent Of Fascist Jurisprudence

I just watched a full hour of some very, very smart legal eagles analyzing what it means that the Supreme Court has decided to hear Donald Trump’s immunity appeal. Six experts were interviewed by Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. She’s good. Every one of the experts was good. The whole show did an excellent job of running through all the permutations and combinations of what it could mean that the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments of the Trump appeal on April 22, and what that could mean in terms of when they might issue a decision, and what that would mean about when the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan might come to trial.

I don’t care how you cut it, this is the terrifying result you get when you elect a raving fascist lunatic like Donald Trump and he gets the opportunity – aided and abetted by right wing puppets in the Senate and their right-wing corporate puppeteers – to appoint a gaggle of starry-eyed authoritarian moonies to the highest court in the land. It takes only four justices for the Supreme Court to agree to hear a case. We learned today that four of the justices who went through the authoritarian training camp run by the Federalist Society, which is backed by a small group of fascist billionaires, got together and decided to hear Trump’s case, which makes the absurdly authoritarian claim that he, and he alone, is above the law.

Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife participated in Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, has been supported monetarily by one of the right-wing billionaires that funds the Federalist Society. Although the court didn’t announce the names of the justices who voted to take the Trump case, it is a certainty that Thomas was one of them. The other three are no better, because all six of the Republican appointed justices attend Federalist Society private functions, they give speeches to Federalist Society gatherings, they hire clerks approved by the Federalist Society.

It's almost like it wasn’t the Supreme Court, it was the fucking Federalist Society that voted today to hear Donald Trump’s appeal.

The details of the arguments the court will hear in April are almost too depressing to go through. Trump’s lawyers told the D.C. Court of Appeals that his claim of immunity would cover him if while president, he had ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political opponent, because that would have amounted to an “official act,” and thus it would come under his immunity from prosecution. If that isn’t enough for you, Trump’s lawyers told both the D.C. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court that anything Trump did to overturn the election, such as interfering with the counting and certification of electoral ballots, would fall under his claim of immunity, because what he did was an official act.

In fact, at least two of the legal experts on MSNBC this afternoon said the argument before the Supreme Court in April will come down to the court deciding what is an official act, and what isn’t.

The same Donald Trump who is claiming absolute immunity for anything he did as president is yapping at his campaign rallies that the first thing he will do if they elect him president is prosecute Joe Biden for pretty much everything he has done as president since the day he took office, even though unlike Trump, he has been charged with no crimes.

Do you think that incredibly obvious contradiction – that Trump has immunity, but Biden doesn’t -- will be argued at the Supreme Court on April 22? Do you think it will even be mentioned?

Not at the Supreme Court immunity club, it won’t

One of Clarence Thomas’ close friends bribed him with a “loan” of about $250,000 to buy a luxury motor home. The “loan” was never paid back. Another of his close friends, Harlan Crow, bribed Thomas by buying his mother’s house, renovating it, and then allowing her to continue living in it rent-free. Thomas never paid a dime of taxes on what was, on its face, a gift from Crow.

Clarence Thomas has been allowed to live a life of bribery and corruption. But nothing has been done to him because the lack of a Supreme Court code of ethics makes him effectively immune from prosecution.

How do you think he will vote after the Trump immunity case is heard on April 22? How about Brett Kavanaugh, who got away with sexually harassing a young woman while he was in high school and then perjured himself about it before the Senate? He’s in the immunity club. How do you figure he’ll vote?

How about Justice Samuel Alito, who flew for free on a billionaire’s private jet and stayed in a $1000-a-night luxury fishing lodge and whooped it up with his billionaire benefactor and his billionaire pals and drank their expensive liquor and then flew home on the private jet – all without spending even a dime of his own money to pay for his luxury vacation? He’s a paid-up member of the immunity club. Got any guesses how he’ll vote?

Amy Comey Barrett hasn’t taken any billionaire bucks that we’ve heard about, but she doesn’t need to, because her immunity comes from the same place her instructions do – from God himself. Amy believes the United States is a “Christian nation,” and wishes fervently that its laws adhered to the laws of the Bible, which of course immunizes all kinds of people from punishment for all sorts of things. Hers is an immunity club membership with a special dispensation. She’ll just follow God’s will. That’s immunity enough.

There are four votes to hear the Trump appeal.

All they need is one more. And even if they don’t end up endorsing Trump’s arguments that he can commit murder and get away with it, and all this other stuff is just chicken feed, all they’ve got to do is dick around deciding the case until the end of their term on July 1, and that alone will make it nearly impossible for Judge Chutkan to start the Trump trial before October 1, and what do you know, but that’s within the DOJ window before an election when no prosecutions or investigations of a candidate for election can begin.

Is the fix in? Not completely, but it’s just terrifying how close we’re getting to having a country run by a small club of billionaire fascists who of course are all paid-in-full members of the same immunity club their paid-for Supreme Court justices are members of.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Ginni And Clarence

Growing Pressure On Thomas To Recuse From Trump Cases (VIDEO)

The Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot is almost certainly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. When it gets there, Justice Clarence Thomas should not be allowed to participate in the court’s deliberations. That’s the message from retired Judge LaDoris Cordell, discussing the issue on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes Tuesday night.

“There should be only eight justices on the Supreme Court hearing this case when it comes up,” Cordell told Hayes.

I say that because Clarence Thomas has no business hearing this case. Why? Because his wife was a major player in the whole insurrection. And he should, he should, if he had principles, recuse himself. But I will guarantee you this: Clarence Thomas will recuse himself when Ginni flies.

That’s where Chief Justice John Roberts comes in: If Thomas won’t recuse himself, Roberts has to make it happen. That’s the message Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent to the chief justice on Tuesday. It was sent before the Colorado court ruled, but it remains relevant. The Democratic Judiciary Committee member urged Roberts to “take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Clarence Thomas recuses himself” from one of the other pending cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“The federal recusal statute requires that any ‘justice, judge, or magistrate judge … shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’” Blumenthal writes. “In addition, recusal is required when a Justice ‘or his spouse … is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; [or i]s to the judge’s knowledge likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.’”

There’s precedent, as Blumenthal points out. Back in October, Thomas recused from deliberations as to whether the court should take an appeal from John Eastman, the architect of many of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election who was also a close contact of Ginni Thomas. That might be precisely why Thomas recused: The appeal was over the release of emails to the House Jan. 6 committee, and plenty of those emails would have been between Ginni Thomas and Eastman. With the Jan. 6 committee long disbanded, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal and Thomas didn’t explain why he didn’t participate in that decision.

Blumenthal cited that recusal in his letter to Robert, saying it was “proper” and should be repeated, in this case regarding the pending case concerning Trump’s presidential immunity from prosecution. He wrote that considering “Mrs. Thomas’s involvement in challenging the 2020 election results, Justice Thomas’s impartiality in a related case ‘might reasonably be questioned,’ giving rise, at a minimum, to an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

House Democrats have also weighed in, directly asking Thomas to recuse. As Cordell says, he’ll do that “when Ginni flies.” Roberts needs to make it happen. As Blumenthal points out in his letter, Roberts and the court just made a big point of releasing a code of conduct, which they insist has been informally guiding the justices all along. As Blumenthal points out, though, it “very unfortunately does not provide any enforcement mechanism,” but “it mirrors the statutory standard for recusal.” If Thomas won’t do it himself, Blumenthal tell Roberts, “it is incumbent upon you to assure that the Code is followed to ‘dispel the misunderstanding’ that ‘Justices … regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.’”

That’s true for the immunity question. It’s true for this Colorado case and for any case coming to the court involving Trump’s—and Ginni Thomas’—efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Ginni And Clarence

Why Is The Supreme Court Looking For Ways To Excuse A Violent Insurrectionist?

The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear an appeal by a January 6 defendant on the scope of the charge against him for obstructing an official government proceeding. Many if not most January 6 defendants were charged under the same law, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which makes it illegal to corruptly obstruct, delay, impede or influence any official proceeding. The charge against these defendants, nearly all of whom have been found guilty of violating the statute, relates to their attempts to delay or stop altogether the counting and certification of electoral ballots by the Congress on January 6.

The Congressional proceeding to accomplish its duties under the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution was delayed on January 6, as both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, were forced to go into recess during their separate certification of ballots due to the mob that threatened to overrun both chambers. The Senate chamber was occupied by Trump supporters, but the House chamber, protected by armed guards, was not successfully invaded and occupied.

Joseph Fischer isn’t just any January 6 defendant. According to the charges brought against him by the Department of Justice, he urged fellow rioters to “charge” and “hold the line” during the assault on the Capitol. He also entered the Capitol building, yet another illegal act on January 6. In texts he sent to other rioters, Fischer claimed he was going “to war” to send “democratic Congress to the gallows.” Members of Congress, Fischer texted, “Can’t vote if they can’t breathe ... lol.” Which sounds a lot like threatening the lives of members of Congress in the Democratic Party.

The fact that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal by Joseph Fischer, a former police officer who is also charged with having “a physical encounter” with a Capitol Police officer, is significant because the obstruction statute at issue is one of the four laws Donald Trump is charged with having broken on January 6 and before. Trump’s lawyers will no doubt seek a delay in his trial date while the Supreme Court hears arguments and decides the appeal by Fischer.

Trump faces charges under both 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) and 18 U.S.C § 1512 (k), which is a conspiracy charge related to the other 1512 count. Charges against Trump under both statutes could be affected if the Supreme Court decides that they do not apply to the actions taken on Jan. 6 that resulted in the disruption of the counting and certification of electoral ballots.

Trump faces two other charges that would not be affected by this Supreme Court challenge. He is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 371, which makes it illegal for any two people to conspire to commit an offense against the United States or defraud the United States. The Supreme Court has previously defined “defraud” as “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government.” The department of government in this case would be the Congress.

Trump also faces charges under 18 U.S.C. § 241, which makes it illegal for “two or more persons [to] conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” The right under the Constitution that Trump is charged with threatening under this statute was the right of all citizens to vote and have their votes accurately counted. Interfering with the counting and certification of electoral ballots, awarded to candidates voted for in an election, would apply in this statute.

Another reason cited by the Supreme Court to take the appeal is to determine whether the actions taken by Fischer were “corrupt.” Assaulting the Congress on January 6 may sound like it would be “corrupt” on its face, but there are variations in how the court has defined “corrupt” in the past. One definition requires only that an action be “wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil.” A second definition requires that an action be taken with “corrupt purpose or through independently corrupt means, or both.” Yet a third definition requires that the conduct must result in “financial gain or other benefit to oneself or a benefit of another person.” Again, the attack on the Capitol, or Trump’s actions would appear to “benefit” Trump in his goal to overturn the results of the 2024 election. But that’s the problem with the Supreme Court in general, and this Supreme Court in particular.

They could choose to define “benefit” or “actions” or even “corrupt purpose” any way they want, and one or more definitions might be used to exclude Fischer’s and Trump’s conduct.

The main question is, why did the Supreme Court take this case in the first place? The Justice Department has pointed out that the defendant making the appeal, and two others who signed on to the same appeal, have not gone to trial on the charges against them for obstruction. The Supreme Court could have taken up a case challenging the obstruction charge after the defendants are found guilty. That the court did not wait until this eventuality suggests that they were fishing for a case that might affect the charges against Trump. Or maybe not. Maybe they’re just so worried about the rights of Joseph Fischer, who advocated taking Democratic members of Congress to the “gallows,” that they just had to decide on his rights under the law right now.

Under the Supreme Court’s normal rules in this case, which was not filed under the expedited conditions as the Special Counsel’s filing for certiorari earlier this week, means that the court will schedule submissions of briefs and oral arguments for sometime early in 2024 and may not issue a decision until June.

Meanwhile, Trump will be campaigning on his lie that the entire case against him was ordered by Joe Biden – which it wasn’t – and that the case is election interference – which it is not.

So here we go, folks. Yet another instance in which the future of our democracy is in the hands of a very conservative Supreme Court, on which sits a Justice whose wife was intimately involved in trying to influence what happened on January 6, and who will no doubt refuse to recuse himself.

All of which means our votes next November will be more important than ever.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Another Day, Another Massacre: 18 Dead And 13 Wounded In Maine

Another Day, Another Massacre: 18 Dead And 13 Wounded In Maine

Dear readers, I ask you: how many of these stories have I written about mass shootings in my Substack column? I lost count some time ago and cannot remember the last one. Was it the shooting in Nashville, when a 28-year-old gunman killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at a private school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church using two AR-15 rifles, one of them configured as a pistol with a folding stock so it could be easily concealed? Or was it Uvalde, when 19 children and two adults were killed at the Robb Elementary School by an 18-year-old who had bought two AR-15 rifles soon after he reached the age when it is legal to buy such firearms in Texas?

I know I wrote about two more mass shootings in Texas, one at a private home in Cleveland, when five were killed by a shooter with an AR-15 rifle, and the other at an outlet mall in Allen, when a shooter killed eight and wounded seven using, once again, an AR-15 rifle.

And now I’m writing about last night’s mass-shooting in Lewiston, Maine. Robert Russel Card, age 40, is the man police suspect of killing seven people in a bowling alley and eight people in a bar and wounding 13, again using an AR-15 rifle. Three of the wounded died later in a hospital. He is described as a sergeant in the Army Reserves and a “trained firearms instructor.” He has not been captured by the police and is at large as I write this, described as armed and dangerous.

I think the first story I wrote about a mass killing was in 1998, about the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, when two boys, age 13 and 11, used rifles taken from the home of one of their grandfathers to kill four of their fellow students and a teacher, shooting at them from a hill overlooking the schoolyard when the kids were at recess. I wrote the story for the New York Times op-ed page. What astounded me about the shooting was the fact that both boys had been taken to so-called practical shooting courses by their parents, where participants were taught to shoot and move in a tactical military fashion using human silhouette targets.

At that time, it had been 30 years since I had fired a rifle on a shooting rage at a human silhouette target. I did it during marksmanship training at West Point, using first an M-14 and then an M-16, the military progenitor of the AR-15 rifle used by nearly every shooter in every mass shooting in recent years.

The M-14 was a big, unwieldy rifle with a wooden stock that weighed 10 and a half pounds when loaded with its 20-round magazine. The M-16, which the Army had begun using in Vietnam, was smaller, had a composite stock and a shorter barrel and weighed only seven and a half pounds and used a magazine carrying 30 rounds of ammunition. The M-14 fired a 7.62 mm bullet and had a sharp kick that would leave you with a bruise on your shoulder after a few hours of shooting it. The M-16 fired the much smaller 5.56 mm bullet and had almost no recoil at all. It was easier to carry, easier to shoot, and was just as accurate as the M-14 had been.

I’m telling you all this because every time I type “AR-15,” what I’m doing is using the designation for a weapon that was designed for and is still in use by the military for combat. It is, therefore, a machine invented and manufactured for killing human beings, which is what I was being trained to do when I first fired an M-16 at a human silhouette target at West Point in 1965.

Firearms training was a serious business. There was such a priority on safety that we initially fired the M-16 for most of a day using single bullets which we hand-loaded and fired on command by the range officer. Then we were issued magazines, which we loaded with 30 rounds of ammunition and fired with the fire selector set on single-shot for at least a couple of days. Later, we were taught to fire the M-16 with the selector set on three-round bursts and then full-automatic, enabling you to empty the magazine of all 30 rounds with a single pull of the trigger.

I used to get criticized by gun enthusiasts when I called an AR-15 rifle “military grade,” but their criticism was bullshit. The AR-15 is identical to an M-16 with only one difference: It does not have a selector switch enabling burst and full-auto fire. The AR-15s are manufactured for single-shot fire, but it is well known that many of them can be easily altered to fire on full-auto by purchasing a kit at a gun show or on the dark web. We don’t know if the gunman in Maine had altered his AR-15 to shoot on full-auto, but as an Army Reserve sergeant and a firearms instructor, he would certainly have the know-how to do it.

But it doesn’t matter whether the AR-15 used by the shooter in Maine had been illegally altered. Even in its legal form, the weapon is as deadly as they come. The bullet fired by the AR-15 is the same bullet fired by the Army’s M-4 carbine, the modern replacement for the M-16. It shoots with an extremely high muzzle velocity, and when the bullet hits the human body, it is designed to penetrate the skin and immediately tumble as it goes through the body, shredding muscles, bones, and organs. It is designed to kill, and last night, bullets fired from yet another AR-15 did just that in Maine.

It is madness that I am describing for the umpteenth time the AR-15 rifle, its military history, how deadly it is, and yes, how it has become ubiquitous. There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these terrible things in private hands in this country, and they are the weapon of choice for people who are looking to kill a lot of people very quickly. And yet, you can walk into a gun store in every state in the union but the ten that ban the sale of the AR-15 and buy one.

Wait. Make that nine states that ban the gun, because a federal judge in California last week ruled in a case involving the AR-15 that the state’s ban on sales of the weapon violates the Constitutional right to bear arms. That decision is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but if upheld, would apply to the laws in all 10 states that ban sales of the gun.

The Supreme Court has upheld a law in Illinois banning the sale of the AR-15, but it did so temporarily on its so-called shadow docket, meaning a case involving the legality of the AR-15 for sale and ownership will eventually reach the Supreme Court and be heard on its merits. If the doctrine put forth by Justice Clarence Thomas in his Bruen decision holds – that gun laws today cannot differ materially from those in place in 1791 – well, we can already see which way the court will rule.

If the Supreme Court rules that because the Founders thought owning a flintlock musket was pretty cool, and that every American should have the right to buy, own, and shoot an AR-15, we will be seeing each other again in these online pages when yet another AR-15, or more likely, many AR-15s are used in more and more mass shootings.

It’s madness, sure, but it’s our madness because citizens of this country have elected the politicians who put the jurists on the court who make these things legal, and the same voters put the legislators in their seats who refuse to pass laws to make AR-15s illegal.

I pray that one day, my grandchildren will look back and wonder what their country was thinking when their grandfather and his generation allowed such deadly guns to be sold to anyone who wants one. The saddest thing is, right now, I don’t have an answer for them.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.