This is Michael Popo for the new legal AF MTN YouTube channel. Just take a moment, go look for that oval button that says "subscribe," and hit it. It keeps this content at the intersection of law and politics, and I'm curating coming to you uninterrupted.
Let's talk about John Roberts—yes, the Chief Justice. Do we have to? We do.
Uh, new reporting out there from people who are close to John Roberts— you know, the people that are closest to him, they call him Chief Justice Roberts—have said that he's perplexed, he's confused; he doesn't understand why the American people are so upset with him and the rest of the Supreme Court and the MAGA for the immunity decision that favored Donald Trump and basically put that presidency—and presidencies—levitated above the other two branches of government. And then we no longer have a checks and balance system; one of the co-equal branches is no longer co-equal because of John Roberts. They'll write that in his obituary, among other things: John Roberts, who completely dismantled the three delicately balanced co-equal branches of government and the checks and balances inherited from our Founding Fathers and our Framers.
Rest in peace, Chief Justice Roberts. He didn't author one, he didn't author two; he authored all three decisions this summer in this last term that benefited Donald Trump. The Colorado insurrectionist keeping Donald Trump off the ballot—rejected.
John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, right? Uh, Fisher—the Fisher case in which two of Donald Trump's obstruction of an official proceeding counts against him in the D. C.
election interference matter—are now on life support. You can thank John Roberts. And three, who wrote the immunity decision?
John Roberts. Who is going to write the immunity decision, according to a leaked memo? Maybe Sam Alito.
Until John Roberts thought, "Well, maybe the optics of an upside-down flag—a flag of insurrection—in front of Sam Alito's two houses is not a good look," but kept Sam Alito voting on all the cases involving Donald Trump regardless of what his quote-unquote wife was flying. What is John Roberts smoking? That's what I'd like to ask.
And how is he so out of touch? This is what happens when these justices get a lifetime appointment; when they're about 50, now they're pushing 70, they've been hermetically sealed in the stale air of this echo chamber of a Supreme Court. They don't get out; they're cloistered.
They barely talk to each other, let alone anybody else, except when the right wing goes out for dinner, and junkets, and golf trips, and hunting trips with the Federalist Society led by Leonard Leo. This is a hand-picked combination of court by Leonard Leo because Donald Trump outsourced to the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo the selection of judges all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Donald Trump is just a meat puppet for the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo—the real president of the United States during Trump's term, where it mattered, was Leonard Leo.
Now, John Roberts wasn't picked by Leonard Leo, but all the rest of the people around him that helped him get these votes done were: Kavanaugh, Leonard Leo; Gorsuch, Leonard Leo; Amy Coney Barrett, Leonard Leo. So for John Roberts to tell some friends over a bar cart that "I don't know why people— I wasn't helping Donald Trump, I was only helping—I was trying to protect the presidency. I just care about the presidency," there's people that know—I don't know John Roberts that well, but I know people well that know John Roberts well, including some that have been on with me during frequent interviews, like Judge Michael Ludic.
Judge Michael Ludic is very public about it, even though he knows the guy; he's friends with the guy, has no influence over the guy apparently. And he said John Roberts, apparently, the majority of the Supreme Court led by John Roberts wanted to help one person be able to compete during the election cycle, and that's Donald Trump. Heaven help us; now that they've created a Supreme Court-sanctioned criminal presidency, you think Trump one was bad?
Wait till you see if he gets anywhere near the White House again. Number the silverware, number the White House china, make sure all the paintings are nailed to the wall because you thought the last time was a kleptocracy and a violation of the Monuments Clause? Wait till Donald Trump gets back in again.
He's just a meat puppet for the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and Leonard Leo. They don't care about him; they just want to get back into power. It's the naked thirst for power that we're watching.
And so, for John Roberts to say, "I don't understand why the Supreme Court isn't more respected in the public," are you—what are you smoking? How about we start here: every time the Senate writes you a letter about an ethics scandal involving your Supreme Court, you write a patronizing, contemptuous, sarcastic letter back in which you say you won't subject yourself to even answer questions about ethics—that anything the Supreme Court does is ethical because they've done it. The tautology of, "It's ethical because we say it's ethical"—that's his entire response.
He refuses to appear before Congress in a hearing; he says he's above it, right? Because there are three co-equal branches of government, except he set the presidency above it all and has it levitating above the two other branches. So he knows co-equal and checks and balances when he wants to, and I don't—when I, John Roberts, don't want to go to Congress.
I say, well, that’s a violation of the separation of powers, and the co-equal branches of government can’t do that. But what did you just do when you unleashed Donald Trump on the world, now not restrained at all by criminal law or the Constitution? So he won’t—Don John Roberts won’t go appear before Congress; he won’t answer for it; he won’t respond properly to letters.
Like, there’s a new one out by Jamie Raskin and AOC asking him to account for the leaked memo that The New York Times got their hands on that said John Roberts took Sam Alito off writing the opinion in the immunity decision but didn’t take him off deliberation or making a vote related to it or participating in the caucus related to it. How did that help? How is that cauterizing the wound created by Sam Alito?
And so we have another scandal. You know, I know John Roberts sits around, wrings his hands, and blames the Democrats and the media for the scandals, but we’re not the ones that are selling property through the Federalist Society, taking millions of dollars of undeclared gifts and trips courtesy of the Federalist Society arrangements from Leonard Leo or from a Trammell Crow real estate heir or any of these other MAGA—MAGA they are. And so this is one of the reasons that the country has no respect for the Supreme Court.
What a terrible place to be, where one of the three branches is so disrespected because of their own actions, their own activities, and their own Chief Justice. For the good of the country, John Roberts, you should step down as Chief Justice, especially if Kamala Harris wins the election. You should go off and retire and allow her to pick the next Chief Justice.
It doesn’t even have to be from the existing justices, although she could well elevate somebody like Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, in her 50s, would be a really great Chief Justice. She could do that, but it has to be an opening. So if Chief Justice Roberts wants to solve the problem, he can do that, but he’s not going to do that because the leaked memo that got into the hands of The New York Times, if it told us anything, it tells us that John Roberts is megalomaniacal in his own way—that he hasn’t been dragged to the right by Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch; he’s willingly gone there.
You know, the analysis is that John Roberts was so singed when he saved Obamacare by MAGA—or the precursor to MAGA, the Tea Party Movement—and the far-right Republicans that he never recovered. And that was the last brave thing he ever did—saving Obamacare. Ever since then, all he’s done are things that are despicable under our United States Constitution.
I mean, that obituary that’ll be written about John Roberts will go on for pages: Chief Justice responsible for destroying the separation of church and state placed there by our framers and founders. John Roberts, Chief Justice, who on his watch—the only time in American history that a constitutional right found in the Constitution was ripped away from a group—it was granted to Roe v. Wade’s decision, taking away a woman’s right to choose.
John Roberts—the destruction of the delicately balanced co-equal brand and separation of powers doctrine. John Roberts, I mean, I feel like this is an indictment, literally, and I’m reading off the charges of an indictment. I can go on: destruction of the administrative state and destruction of the regulatory scheme around which our American public is protected; workers from injury and workplace disasters; clean water; clean air; proper energy policy; proper drilling policy; proper regulation of fossil fuel industries; the destruction of all of that, John Roberts!
Yeah, and I could go on. You know, we’ve rolled back so many rights since I graduated law school that I never thought I’d have to do a show like this. Although I’m happy to do it, I never thought I’d be talking about a time where my wife and my daughter have less rights than my mother in 1973 in this country.
There’s no other way to put it: my mother had more rights. I thought we’d be moving towards more equality, a more perfect union, more equal protection under the law—not less! Instead, I’ve had to brush up on the Insurrection Act.
I’ve had to brush up on the Alien Enemies Act, the Alien Sedition Act. I’ve had to brush up on the Logan Act and the Comstock Act and all of these old-timey laws from our deep, dark history because Donald Trump either violates them or wants to use them to crush dissent and put fellow Americans in Trump internment camps. So I’ve got to learn about it so I can fight back.
And that’s what you’re doing—that’s part of what you’re doing here on Legal AF. Did I show you the logo? You’re here; you’re participating; you’re making a difference; you’re getting knowledge and information, and you’re taking it off from now through the election and beyond—into the streets, into the Thanksgiving table, into the kitchens, into the work and break rooms—to try to save democracy, to try to save our constitutional republic from going down the drain.
It’s circling it now, but there’s a way to stop it: through the court system, through justice, through calling it out in places like this, and going into the streets and going to the ballot box and making sure that we don’t have to talk about this again and I can talk about other things on Legal. At the intersection of law and politics, the reality is, even if Donald Trump were to lose—and he should, and he will, by God, he will—but even if he, uh, if he loses, his movement, the thing that he started, the hollowing out of the Republican Party, the destruction of the, uh, the Republican Party, the magnification of the Republican Party will live on. Right?
It will live on. Mitt Romney, that coward who can't bring himself to vote for Kamala Harris because he wants to rebuild the Republican Party, I’ve got news for him: it's already built; there's nothing to rebuild. What's the old joke about born-again Christians?
I don't need to be born again; I was born right the first time. There's nothing—sorry, there’s nothing to rebuild; it’s built. It is built in Donald Trump's image, and that is the party.
The person that comes to take the mantle next will be worse than Donald Trump, and we won’t have a Supreme Court as the last firewall to protect democracy. Now, I’m not trying to make this apocalyptic, right? I’m not saying, "And then the zombie—then the asteroid hit the world, and, um, you know, a disease got into everybody’s brain, and we all became flesh-eating zombies.
" No. November 5th—make sure you register now; make sure you get people to register now! Get souls to polls, get friends to the polls, get the enthusiasm up.
If all the constituent parts of the Democratic Party, the Independent Party, the independent voters, the liberals in America, the progressives in America, the women in America, and the men who support women in America all come together, Donald Trump doesn’t have a chance. Donald Trump doesn’t have a chance! If we vote.
If we don’t vote. If we sit home, if we allow him to capture the enthusiasm gap and we don’t stand in line for long hours on Election Day, or we don’t go through the process of absentee, or mail-in, or Drpbox voting, or whatever—if you live abroad and you don’t vote because you don’t think it matters, it matters! The last election came down to 70,000 votes spread out among three states—that’s it—out of hundreds of millions cast.
Your vote matters; you don’t know which of the votes matter! Vote! I’m going to continue to follow it.
I appreciate you being along here as part of my journey—making our journey your journey. Appreciate that! Welcome to Legal AF.
Until the next, uh, thing that I do here—whether it's the Legal AF podcast, the Legal AF content work with Court Accountability, or our new show, Unprecedented, about the United States Supreme Court—what else? This is Michael Popok, and I’m reporting in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. We just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel.
Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I’ll be curating the top stories at the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at Legal AF TN. That’s at Legal AF TN.
