Chief Justice John Roberts is increasingly being targeted by the left, with the latest barrage arriving in the form of another leak of sensitive court documents.
The leaked documents, in which Roberts critiques a lower court ruling and employs the common court practice of seeking consensus in a future ruling, are being spun by the left – as well as complicit never-Trumpers – as the moderate-conservative George W. Bush appointee subverting court norms to do the bidding of Donald Trump.
The latest missive follows the bombshell leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade in May 2022. That leak was widely speculated to be an attempt to intimidate one or more justices to reverse their vote.
The Left has also lobbed attacks against Republican-appointed justices for alleged ethical violations while ignoring similar actions by Democrat-appointed justices.
In the now-leaked confidential memo sent in February by Roberts to his eight colleagues, the Chief Justice critiqued a lower court for greenlighting special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the election. He said the court “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.”
“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote.
In that case, the court ruled in July that presidents do enjoy some level of immunity for official actions taken while in office.
In a Sunday piece, the New York Times dutifully portrayed that decision by the Roberts court, as well as a unanimous decision by the court that Trump could not be barred from the ballot in Colorado on dubious Fourteenth Amendment grounds and a decision that prosecutors overreached in using statutes dealing with white-collar crimes to prosecute January 6 defendants (Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with Roberts), as Roberts “deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump.”
Yet in making that determination, the Times ignores the unprecedented nature of lawfare against Trump which elevated those three cases to Roberts’ court to begin with – essentially focusing on the end destination instead of the starting point.
By zeroing in on those court cases, the Times also neglected another trio of events taking place November 2022 which suggests White House coordination may be responsible for those three cases decided by the Roberts court.
On November 18, 2022, only three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid, President Joe Biden’s third-highest-ranking Department of Justice official quit to join the Manhattan office investigating Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to revitalize stalled investigations into Trump, and White House attorneys met for eight hours with Nathan Wade, an attorney working for Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis’s investigation into Trump.
Events of that day, first reported by Breitbart News, followed Biden’s November 9 press conference in which he promised “we just have to demonstrate that [Trump] will not take power, if he does run, making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again [sic].”
Conservatives are pushing back against the criticism of the memo and other attacks against Roberts and conservative justices.
“Left is attacking [Chief Justice] Roberts for showing superb leadership in guiding Court through high profile cases (9-0 in Trump v Anderson) last term, and for defending Court against partisan smears by Democrats & their media allies,” D.C. heavyweight attorney Mark Paoletta wrote on X. “Left even attacked [Roberts’] wife for her work.”
Paoletta said the attacks against the Roberts court stem from the left’s unhappiness with its rulings, not any ethical lapses or misbehavior or even judicial bias.
“These leaks also demonstrate that the liberals are bent on tearing down the Supreme Court because they are not getting their way,” Paoletta said.
The Left has reverted to attacking justices based on activities undertaken by their spouses as well.
Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was attacked in the New York Times piece for raising an inverted flag days after the January 6 riot in an apparent response to a neighbor’s vulgar yard sign. The left has tied her actions to those at the Capitol on January 6, arguing that Justice Alito is somehow disqualified from sitting on the court.
And the left has repeatedly attacked conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, for her political work, making similar arguments that Justice Thomas must recuse himself from a wide swath of cases.
Paoletta, who has occasionally worked as an attorney for Ginni Thomas, highlighted the left’s double standards on political actions taken by justices, pointing out that the Times’s Adam Liptik “was downright giddy interviewing RBG [Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg] after she attacked [Trump] in 2016. He said nothing in piece on how unethical & dangerous this was. If you are liberal, you can do anything.”
Paoletta also drew attention to liberal icon Ginsburg receiving an award in 2010 from the Women’s National Democratic Club at a club event emceed by NPR’s Nina Totenberg.
With Democrats’ increasing reliance on the courts to advance their agenda and launch lawfare against their political opponents, don’t expect attacks on conservative jurists to die down.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
