Will the Supreme Court rescue Alex Jones, and Kavanaugh as chief justice?
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Alex Jones hopes the Supreme Court will rescue him like it always rescues Trump
Well, it’s time to figure out if Alex Jones has the juice. Jones is asking the Supreme Court to hear his attempt to overturn the $1.4 billion judgment a Connecticut jury slapped on him for his genuinely horrifying defamation and harassment of the parents of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
This is the case where Jones refused to obey court orders or provide discovery, leading to the judge issuing a default judgment, which is rare but neither unheard of nor illegal. Judges don’t issue default judgments very often because they don’t often have people blatantly refuse to participate in the case. After the default judgment and the jury award, Jones began whining about how he didn’t get a fair trial, it’s too much money, and so on.
Now, the Supreme Court should never take this case. Jones’ case was in the Connecticut state court, and if the judgment of that state court rests on state law, the Supreme Court will not review any federal question from the case, even if the state court decided the federal question wrongly. Now, the only questions are whether the court’s conservative majority even cares about those kinds of rules any longer and whether they’d further shred their own tattered reputations by giving Jones the Trump red carpet treatment.
8th Circuit suddenly rediscovers executive overreach
Hey everyone! The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has finally found an occasion to declare that the president simply went too far.
Wait, did you think that meant Donald Trump? Absolutely not. The Eighth Circuit’s concern about the scope of presidential power is about the terrifying overreach of former President Joe Biden when his Department of Energy dared to promulgate a regulation about how to calculate fuel economy equivalent estimates for electric vehicles.
Sure, the Biden administration went through the entire rulemaking procedure, including a notice-and-comment period. And sure, the rule details the specific laws the Department of Energy relied upon as authority to issue the rule. And sure, the rule provided detailed information on the methodology of calculating the estimates, but nope, said the Eighth Circuit. The Biden administration didn’t have the authority to enact the rule and violated the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act.
So, to recap: full-fledged rulemaking undertaken by agency experts is a bridge too far, but Trump destroying agencies via executive order and imposing his bigoted views on the entire nation with nary a law passed is totally cool. Heck, he doesn’t even have to bother with enacting regulations.
Sure would be neat if there were any consequences for Emil Bove’s behavior
Emil Bove, one of Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyers who was rewarded with a high-level Department of Justice job, managed to escape any consequences for his antics at the DOJ thanks to Trump nominating him to a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Back in February, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal filed a complaint with the New York State Bar, alleging that Bove’s quid pro quo offer to New York Mayor Eric Adams to drop criminal charges if Adams assisted with Trump’s immigration crackdown violated a host of ethical rules. The state bar sat on the complaint for three months and then, only after Trump had tapped Bove for the Third Circuit, transferred the complaint to the DOJ, saying the DOJ was “better suited” to investigate the conduct of an acting attorney general.
Needless to say, there does not appear to have ever been any sort of DOJ investigation of Bove. However, the New York bar does still have authority over Bove because he is licensed to practice in the state. So, Whitehouse and Blumenthal have renewed their request that the bar investigate Bove’s conduct, but who knows if the state bar will just find another way to duck dealing with Bove’s flagrant ethical violations.
The Heritage Foundation isn’t done wrecking the country
We are all now distressingly familiar with how bad Project 2025 is and how corrosive it has been to American democracy. But what if there was basically another Project 2025, but for the Constitution? If you’re shuddering at the thought, you’re not alone.
Apparently, a Heritage Guide to the Constitution is in the works. The Heritage Foundation was behind Project 2025, but they must have decided that wrecking the Constitution would require its own targeted effort. The “judicial advisory board” behind this mess includes a cavalcade of Trump appointees known for using their judicial opinions as an audition for a Supreme Court nomination, including Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neomi Rao. Fifteen members of the 18-member board were nominated by Trump, and, unsurprisingly, none of the remaining three were appointed by Democratic presidents.
So now, the Heritage Foundation, under the watchful eyes of the worst federal judges, is going to give us all an originalist constitution. What does that look like? Well, one of Trump’s appointees to the Eleventh Circuit, Judge Andrew Brasher, has an essay about how there’s no right to a speedy trial, and another Trump appointee, the Ninth Circuit’s Lawrence VanDyke, is here to say there’s no constitutional right to counsel. Terrific.
Imagine sucking up to Brett Kavanaugh
In the topsy-turvy world of conservative judicial thought, one thinker, Josh Blackman, has
settled on the real issue: that Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure has been marred by too many leaks. The solution: Roberts should step down, and Trump should name Justice Brett Kavanaugh as the new chief.
How would having Kavanaugh head the court cut down on leaks? Blackman’s piece is a little light on detail on that part. Instead, he’s waxing rhapsodic about Kavanaugh because Kavanaugh is willing to write opinions justifying the Supreme Court becoming nothing but a rubber stamp for Trump, but Roberts will not. It’s unclear how having longer explanations of lawless decisions is an improvement, but it’s also moot: no one is going to pry the court out of Roberts’ hands, not even Trump.