SCOTUS justices thought Trump was ‘setting them up’ at White House ceremony: report
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Supreme Court justices were suspicious of former President Donald Trump in the days immediately after he got Brett Kavanaugh confirmed, and suspected he was “setting them up” to be used as political props, reported CNN on Monday.
“Two days after the official swearing-in of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in October 2018, the president arranged a televised ceremony at the White House and invited all the justices,” reported Joan Biskupic. “Justices had declined to attend similar White House events under previous presidents, resisting the optics that would conflict with separation of powers. This time, they especially worried about being used for political purposes and were concerned that an appearance by the full contingent of sitting justices could look like an endorsement of the president.”
The justices’ fears were confirmed, the report continued, as they “sat stone-faced, disturbed by what Trump said during the event and by being unwitting participants in a political exercise.”
As the report noted, the Kavanaugh hearings themselves roiled the sitting justices.
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“Trump’s choice of Kavanaugh for his second Supreme Court appointment triggered an enormous political fight that had not ended with his Senate confirmation. News networks still buzzed that October with coverage of the Senate hearings, especially Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while a teenager and Kavanaugh’s denial,” said the report. “Some of the justices later privately revealed that they found the hearings too painful to watch. The sessions stirred their own anxieties from their time in the witness chair, and even those who found Ford credible shuddered at the public thrashing of Kavanaugh. They knew he was destined to join their ranks and already felt some institutional allegiance.”
This comes after the former president has repeatedly erupted with rage at the Supreme Court on the occasions it has ruled against him, including when they ordered his tax returns handed over to Congress. The former president has attacked the court system generally, not just federal courts but state ones as well, slamming New York Judge Juan Manuel Marchan as “hand-picked” by Alvin Bragg to facilitate the hush money case against him, which he has declared to be an illegitimate “Witch Hunt.”
It also comes amid increased public scrutiny over conduct and ethics at the Supreme Court itself, which in recent years has lurched to the right from Trump’s appointments and ripped up precedent, often without a proper hearing. The court’s self-managed “investigation” into who leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade has come under massive criticism for barely investigating whether any of the justices themselves were in on the leak. The court is also under mounting criticism for refusing to create a mandatory code of ethics for itself — the only federal court in the land that doesn’t have one.
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