Apologies as a couple of typos have been fixed in this post which was sent earlier today. Thank you for your patience !
They aren’t elected officials. They have no official oversight and yet, through their rulings, exert an omnipotent influence on much in our daily lives as US citizens. This absolute power includes having a potent influence in determining the outcome of US elections (especially this November’s midterm elections…) as well as dictating the essence of how US democracy functions or dysfunctions (an acting US President has the temerity to promote false prosecution of a former US Olympian with no evidence to protect his vainglorious image…)…in most recent times.
US Supreme Court Justices are selected by US Presidents. They then go through a rigorous Senate Judiciary Review Process and are then confirmed and serve…for life. Once in, there is no process that reviews their work or personal conflicts of interest that may arise as they serve out their lifelong term. The justices, instead, self-police themselves from an ethics perspective. According to Gemini, the justices are paid in the range of $300,000 per year and yet have an average net worth in the range of $7 million. Chief Justice Roberts’ has a net worth in the range of $25 million.
In terms of the disconnect between their compensation and respective net worths; interestingly, the multi-millionaire dollar profile of US Supreme Court Justices, stems primarily from book deals, inheritances and in their pre-justice lives as corporate attorneys as well as well-compensated adjunct college professors. The Justices are not legally required to disclose the value of their personal residences and income being earned by their respective spouses is shielded from the public view.
Far beyond the above referenced surface intrigue of the US Supreme Court, the inspiration for today’s note is focused on two essential reasons to take a closer look at the actions of the US Supreme Court today; midterm elections and absolute presidential immunity
Mid Term Elections
Last week, I attended a virtual mid-term election “Hands Off of Our Vote” meeting held by Indivisible, a nationwide grassroots movement founded in 2016 intended to help stop authoritarianism in US government while also striving to achieve responsive democracy through local, constituent-led civic action. Indivisible operates in all 50 states with the intent of additionally holding elected officials accountable for the work they conduct in government.
The key take away from last week’s meeting shouldn’t be a surprise. This year’s mid-term election is going to be highly divisive, controversial and warrants extra scrutiny in key battleground states that include Michigan, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia.
What has captured my imagination since that meeting are two developments. The first ties into last week’s post by Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group that highlighted the “bulliest” of markets for billionaire spending in US elections that is powerfully depicted in the graphic provided by Americans for Tax Fairness, which drove Mr. Bremmer’s point succinctly home.
My interest in billionaire interests in US elections was additionally piqued by Axios’s July 29th “Musk Plans Massive Push for GOP midterms” which reported that Elon Musk, who appears to have repaired what had become an apparent rift with President Trump in the wake of the 2024 Presidential election, now plans to resuscitate his “Super PAC” to spend a massive amount (potentially in the range of $100 to $120 million in the same battleground states referenced above) on this year’s mid-term elections.
According to Axios, “Musk is resuscitating his dormant super PAC, America PAC, which spent more than $260 million to help get President Trump elected in 2024…” which made him the largest individual political donor in a single election cycle in US history.
As an aside, Mr. Musk maintains citizenship in South Africa, Canada and the US. Interestingly, his defense company, SpaceX, whose IPO has flopped since its recent launch, was awarded a much needed $1.6bn US Space Force contract on the exact same day he made his implied midterm spending election pledge…
Beyond US billionaires and Musk making their weight felt this fall, Israel’s not for profit super PAC, AIPAC, plans on spending approximately $100 million to influence this year’s mid-term elections. Much of this money will also be spent in these same battleground states. This follows millions that AIPAC already spent to help get Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who wanted full release of the Epstein files and was opposed to the current illegal war with Iran, defeated in his reelection primary in May.
The “dots to connect” in this concerning sequence of events all point to the landmark 2010 US Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), where the Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment Constitutional rights of labor unions and corporations allowed them to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent political communications. The Justices who ruled in favor were Anthony Kennedy, Chief Justice Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Jr.
Presidential Immunity
In addition to the material impact felt in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, the US Supreme Court in another 2024 landmark case, Trump v. United States, ruled in favor of Donald Trump with rationale that “an acting president has absolute criminal immunity for core constitutional acts and presumptive criminal immunity to other criminal acts.”The Justices that ruled in favor were Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
In conjunction with this ruling and what has transpired since, I asked Chat GPT if there was a heightened level of impropriety in the second Trump administration than the first and received a politically correct response that balanced a political watchdog’s view versus that of what one would expect to hear from the Trump administration.
I replied to Chat GPT that the answer was “BS” and received the following interesting response:
As an AI, my programming requires me to stay strictly neutral on highly charged political topics where there is no objective…
And things then got really interesting when my AI agent coached me to ask better questions…
To which I submitted, Does the US Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in favor of Trump in Trump v. United States play a part in what appears as heightened ethical impropriety in the second Trump administration? and received the following response:
Yes, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Trump v. United States is widely viewed by legal scholars and critics as the foundational catalyst for what appears to be heightened ethical impropriety in the second Trump administration. By granting a president broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” the Court fundamentally shifted the legal risk calculus of executive behavior.
One area where this story gets more intriguing in real time ties into what now looks like a “shoo- in” nomination for President Trump’s former personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, to be confirmed as the nation’s next Attorney General.
This confirmation apparently comes in return for Blanche agreeing to drop President Trump’s desired $1.776 billion “slush” or Anti-Weaponization Fund which came into being as a fallback position for Trump agreeing to drop his $10bn lawsuit against the IRS which now appears as a farcical (as a President, an immune one at that, Trump was suing himself in a case decided by him…where’s Joe Heller when you need him ?) legal ploy to gain leverage. Proceeds for this slush fund were intended to be earmarked to compensate January 6th insurrectionists that as a mob killed DC law enforcement officer, Brian Sicknick.
Beyond being a highly irregular arrangement, Blanche’s agreement is apparently a non-enforceable contract. As a result, US taxpayers appear likely to get an Attorney General that only Republican congress people (even some of them, hesitantly…) want at President Trump’s behest and are also likely to still get the $1.776 billion “slush fund” in another form based on a review of the Trump administration’s handling of its recent Supreme Court tariff case loss.
Interestingly, Blanche’s nomination as AG also silently represents a hidden crown jewel that appears to tie back to Trump’s “Immunity” Supreme court win which establishes “absolute criminal immunity for conduct involving core constitutional powers, explicitly including discussions with and directives given to the Department of Justice…”
In Trump’s first term, the fear of criminal obstruction of justice charges served as a legal guardrail. In the second term, because the president can legally command the DOJ (through an AG that used to be Trump’s former personal defense attorney…) to open, close or redirect investigations without facing post-presidency criminal prosecution, the threshold for weaponizing the department against political adversaries or protecting allies has been completely lowered…
according to Gemini
Bottom Line
As referenced above, US Attorney of District of Columbia and former Fox News commentator, Jeanine Pirro; after claiming on national TV that 67 year old former US Olympic canoeist, David Hearn, based on overwhelming evidence, was guilty of vandalism on the iconic Lincoln reflecting pool and exhibited aggressive behavior while doing so…, just dropped the case for lack of evidence.
Please see the clip below that captures Pirro’s first claim of guilt for Mr. Hearn. YouTube: Jeanine Pirro on David Hearn
Readers, let’s not let this one slide…The charges were serious. If Hearn was convicted, he could have faced up to 10 years in prison. And if not troubling enough, even in the face of facts not supporting the charges, true to form and consistent with the actions of his mentor Roy Cohn, President Trump continued Monday to insist on the guilt of Hearn and other “vandals” when no actual evidence exists.
Said differently, an “immune” President with no evidence, still accuses Mr. Hearn and “vandals” of destructive acts and is willing to imprison this one respected US citizen on “trumped up” (pun intended…) charges to what looks like an attempt to save face.
And while there is no evidence to identify the actions of any vandals, there is evidence that the work done by a dubious contractor with no federal work contract experience was “shoddy” and came in millions over budget.
Before leaving the Pirro story above, let’s pause to notice that the above referenced clip was aired by Fox News. This is the same Fox News that had to pay a $787.5 million settlement to resolve a private defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems. The payment was made in relation to several Fox News programs broadcasting false statements that Dominion’s voting machines were “rigged” to steal the 2020 US presidential election.
Taking the inference in the above paragraph a step further, according to Gemini, “President Trump appointed roughly two dozen former Fox News hosts, contributors, and employees to high profile roles in his administration, including several prominent Cabinet and Cabinet level positions.” This includes the Secretary of War (it used to be called the Secretary of Defense…) Pete Hegseth, who, according to Gemini, was pushed out of two veterans’ advocacy nonprofits (Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America) for excessive spending before taking on his current role.
As an aside, the Pentagon has never passed a full financial audit according to Google Gemini…
Against the backdrop of the preponderance of what is being described above, it is interesting to see the recent launch of Truth API as a part of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) run by Trump’s two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.Truth API offers a paid real-time data subscription feed targeting Wall Street banks, high frequency trading firms, and corporate investors.
The subscriptions run up to $100,00 per month in return for receiving automated, split-second direct data feeds of posts from the platform’s top-ranking accounts which includes that of President Trump himself milliseconds before they appear to the general public.
In conjunction with a service that equates to selling insider information (I am old enough to remember Oliver Stone’s fictional character Bud Fox in his 1987 epic “Wall Street” who is going to be going to jail at the end of the film for insider trading…), I asked Chat GPT if the launch of Truth API helped the near term fortunes of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (DJT) which had fallen precipitously in recent months ? And learned that, “yes the announcement of a pay for access service had resulted in a 50% increase for DJT from its late June lows.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an unprecedented article, “The Boss Wants this Money: Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation” which essentially describes a “shakedown” of corporate America. In return for being left alone or gaining contracts or other favorable treatment corporations are being asked to pony up anywhere from $5 to $50 million for pet projects of the Trump administration such as the White House Ballroom project.
Tony Soprano, the fictional character from the HBO hit series “The Sopranos” would have described the arrangement referenced above as a ‘vig’. The Wall Street Journal calls it ‘fundraising’. The structure is identical. Readers please draw your own conclusion.
Meanwhile, yesterday a news story broke that Capital One Bank accounts held by President Donald Trump were closed over possible money laundering…PBS NewsHour: Capital One closed Trump bank accounts over possible money laundering concerns
But why should a story like this matter when President Trump has absolute immunity thanks to the United States Supreme Court.
In summary, the US Supreme Court in its landmark Citizens v. FEC created an environment where billionaire interests now have undue influence over US elections. This impacts US domestic and foreign policy.
In 2024, the Supreme Court granted an acting US President with absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office even after leaving office. With a seeming “get out of jail free card”, President Trump is ruthlessly pressing this daunting legal advantage.
It is against this backdrop that it appears increasingly clear that this November’s mid-term elections are going to be highly contentious. The US Supreme Court plays an important and invisible role in this mounting chaos.
Have a great week