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Donald Trump Supreme Court appeal: A legal Twilight Zone
of lies
Donald Trump is hanging
the entire Supreme Court appeal he filed this afternoon on what we might call
the founding decision of American jurisprudence, Marbury v Madison, the 1803 Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice
John Marshall. According to Donald
Trump, it’s all down to a Supreme Court decision written 220 years ago which
found that because all executive authority is “vested” in the president,
“Questions … which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the
executive, can never be made in this court.” According to John
Marshall, “discretionary acts are only politically examinable,” and thus a
president’s official acts “can never be examinable by the courts.” In order to use Marbury, Trump needs everything he did to be an “official act,” so
right at the top of his appeal, in the first paragraph of what they called a
“Statement” to the court, it says, “President Trump Was Indicted for His
Official Acts as President.” So, let’s have a look
at what were those official acts Trump’s appeal is talking about? Well,
that’s easy: it’s everything he did in 2020 and 2021 after he lost the
election for the presidency. First, the appeal
claims that Trump used “official channels of communication” including tweets
and “other public statements…contending that the 2020 federal election was
tainted by fraud and irregularities that should be addressed by government
officials.” That would be, uh,
let’s see, all the lies he told that he won the election, that it was
“stolen” from him, and that Joe Biden lost. In other words, every time
he opened his mouth. Official act number one. “Second, indictment
alleges that President Trump communicated with the Acting Attorney General
and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice—which he oversaw as an
integral part of his official duties as chief executive—about investigating
suspected election crimes and irregularities, and possibly appointing a new
Acting Attorney General.” You remember that
don’t you? Some minor league goof from the Department of Justice in
charge of environmental law, of all things, gets himself a meeting with Trump
in the Oval Office and Trump tells him it would be a good idea if he wrote a
letter to state legislatures telling them that the DOJ had serious doubts
about the legitimacy of their elections to jump start them into holding a
bunch of phony hearings on “election irregularities” that didn’t exist.
The guy’s name was Jeffrey Clark. He’s under indictment in Georgia for
listening to Trump’s lies and following Trump’s directions to draft a letter
to the Georgia legislature telling them a lie that the DOJ had evidence the
Georgia election was illegitimate, which the DOJ didn’t have, and the Georgia
election wasn’t. The letter was drafted but the Acting Attorney General
refused to send it because it was a lie. Official act number two. “Third, the indictment
alleges that President Trump communicated with state officials about the
administration of the federal election and urged them to exercise their
official responsibilities in accordance with the conclusion that the 2020
presidential election was tainted by fraud and irregularities.” That would be the lies
Trump told to state legislators from Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states
during which he told them that the election was stolen from him, and the
legislatures should go into special session and appoint new slates of
electors and submit them to the National Archives to be certified on Jan.
6. The “official responsibilities” Trump told the legislatures they
had, well, they didn’t have them, so that was a lie, too. He told them
they should do a bunch of stuff they didn’t have the authority to do, yet
another lie, so Trump could win the election he had lost in their states.
Official act number three. “Fourth, the
indictment alleges that President Trump communicated with the Vice President
in his capacity as President of the Senate, the Vice President’s official
staff, and other members of Congress to urge them to exercise their official
duties in the election certification process in accordance with President
Trump’s contention that the election was tainted by fraud and
irregularities.” For “contention” in
the above paragraph, read “lie.” In a meeting in the Oval Office and in
several phone calls, Pence told Trump that he did not have authority under
the Constitution to consider slates of electors that were not officially
submitted by the states. Trump told him a big fat lie that he did have
the authority and called him a “pussy” for not doing what Trump told him to
do. Later, Trump would tweet during the insurrection that Pence did not
have the “courage” to do what Trump told him to do, thus endangering the life
of Pence. Official act four. “Fifth, the indictment
alleges that other individuals organized slates of alternate electors from
seven States to ensure that the Vice President would be authorized to
exercise his official duties in the manner urged by President Trump.
According to the indictment, these alternate slates of electors were designed
to validate the Vice President’s authority to conduct his official duties as
President Trump urged.” Just wow. The
“other individuals” Trump is talking about were Republican officials,
including some elected officials, who were instructed by lawyers working for
Trump to commit felonies by putting their names to official documents saying
they were legitimate electors from their states, when they were not.
Trump’s lawyers lied to them on Trump’s instructions by saying what they are
being told to do is completely legitimate, when it is not. Many of
these fake electors end up getting indicted back in their states for making
false statements on official documents, “false statements” being themselves
lies. So, a lie from Trump begets lies from fake electors to enable the
lie that Trump told Pence that he could accept slates of fake electors that
were themselves lies. Official act five. Are you with me?
These are the official presidential acts Trump told the Supreme Court today
are protected by John Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison, because of course, way back in 1803, what the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court said was, if you tell enough lies, you can fool
most of the people most of the time and get away with pretty much anything
you want to do. Makes sense, doesn’t
it? Here’s John Marshall, who played a key role in the ratification of
the U.S. Constitution in the state of Virginia, who was elected to the
Virginia House of Delegates and subsequently to the U.S. House of
Representatives. He was appointed Secretary of State by John Adams, and
then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This early American
revolutionary who volunteered for service in the Revolutionary War, fought in
numerous battles as part of the 3rd Virginia Regiment,
including the Battle of Brandywine, survived the brutal winter at Valley
Forge, this is the man who Trump’s appeal tried to make a case
believed that anything a president does…anything …is legal as long as the president labels it an “official
act.” To go down that road,
the Supreme Court will have to find that any future first term sitting
president who loses an election and is unhappy about it will be able overturn
the election he just lost by telling lies, suborning perjury, inducing others
to commit felonies, committing felonies himself, even incite an insurrection,
so long as he labels everything he does an “official act.” That’s old John Marshall
for you. That’s what the Chief Justice meant when he sat down to
write Marbury v Madison in 1803 and looked into the future and said to
himself…let me see, how can I maneuver the Constitution to help to make the
president of the United States just like the King of England I just fought a
war against. See how easy that
is? First, you tell a gigantic lie that you won the election that you
lost, then you spread that lie around by committing multiple crimes and
inducing others to join you in those crimes, and then you hire a bunch of
lawyers and get them to tell a whopper of a lie to the Supreme Court that it
was all legal because John Marshall said so. This, folks, is what
is known in New York City as chutzpah. |