Is this the fail-safe scheme in the plot to steal the 2020 election?
Let's put this in the form of a question at a confirmation hearing – although, when Lindsay Graham moves straight to a Judiciary Committee vote by claiming that hearings are just for Democrats to play politics, I sure won't be surprised. So there's that fight, too.
“Judge Barrett, you're 48 years old and you have been nominated for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. The President who nominated you, who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes but still claims he was robbed, has been actively working to undermine the integrity of the presidential election. This is a fact. He has stated publicly, loudly, and repeatedly that he will not accept the results unless he wins. He has implemented a strategy to mount legal challenges to any results he doesn't like. He is famously a 'transactional' person, and many point to extensive evidence that he only acts in ways that benefit himself. And that he expects favors to be returned – that's what transactional means. And he has said he wants this seat filled specifically because of the upcoming election and the legal challenges that he is prepared to file to claim victory. So I'm concerned that a person accepting a nomination under these circumstances in the first place may be a person who would be expected to provide a payback.
“I'm worried that in a quid pro quo, your vote is expected to be the quid and a second term for Donald J. Trump is the quo. I'm worried about this, regardless whether anyone has discussed this with you directly or indirectly. I'm worried about this because it's entirely consistent with the past four years of this President and his party.
“Meanwhile, the same Republican senators whose votes you seek denied a Democratic president's nominee the right to even receive a hearing nine months before an election, but are rushing to have you seated on the Court in time to rule on an election where trust is sabotaged from our highest offices and voting has already begun.
“Under these circumstances, doesn't the rush to appoint a judge – you - whose first case may be to safeguard the position of the man who nominated you for this incredibly prestigious lifetime appointment, doesn't this seem to undermine trust in the core principles of an independent judiciary and, indeed, the entire project of American democracy?
“Isn't it too much to ask the American people – with a transactional president, a president in potential legal jeopardy in a range of cases, a president who seeks foreign interference in America's elections for his own benefit, a president actively subverting faith in our elections, with legal teams already in place to throw doubt on any results he doesn't like, with the Supreme Court determining the outcome of an election just 20 years ago against the popular vote and with two Justices on the Court today as result of that decision, with the turn-about by Republican senators on when a Supreme Court justice should be nominated, and with this great rush to have you seated in time to decide any potential election case that may appear before the Court – isn't it too much to ask the American people to just trust you? To just trust this President? To just trust Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham? Doesn't this have the appearance of a corrupt bargain? Won't it mean there would forever be a stain on your own legitimacy, on the entire Judicial branch, and even on your very honor?
“If you accept this nomination under these circumstances – and I urge you not to - can you at least guarantee that if you are confirmed by this partisan process that you will recuse yourself from any case arising to the benefit or detriment of Donald J. Trump, including the outcome of his reelection campaign? Can you guarantee this to the American people so that they know their votes will count, that our Constitutional order is intact, and that Supreme Court nominations aren't bought and sold for political payback? Under these circumstances your seat, and indeed Justice Gorsuch's seat as a result, will always be labeled with asterisks. Knowing this, and accepting the nomination anyway, are you really part of a corrupt bargain to provide an election fail-safe to Donald Trump and the Republican Party? Or can you, at the very least, guarantee this recusal?”
Want to smoke Trump out on this? Just ask him: “Sir” (he loves that), will you agree that any Justice appointed before the election is fully settled should agree to recuse themselves from any case to settle it?” You know how he’ll respond to the idea of a recusal from giving him payback. Absolutely not. Ghost of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. He’ll say it out loud. He wants payback. He doesn’t even understand it’s wrong, since he wants it. Just ask. McConnell, Graham: they’ll lie. He’ll speak from his ego.
Stealing the election: That's the issue, and that's the question.
To be clear, of course this seat will determine questions of women's rights, the ACA, and so much more that hangs in the balance. But this is a brazen attempt to steal the election first, and to find someone they hope will help them do it. This is a corrupt bargain unlike anything we've ever seen in our country. THAT is what we must tell the American people, and that is what they'll clearly understand.
Will McConnell and Graham even allow a hearing? Or will they move on from the Kavanaugh precedent of limited questioning and limited evidence to no questioning and no evidence? Will Lindsey Graham - Judiciary chair, McConnell acolyte and Trump sycophant - simply say that hearings are a Democrat plot to “play politics” with a candidate, and that hearings are unnecessary because the same committee heard from the same nominee just three ago (for a different position and not in a plot to steal an election) and got three Democratic votes? Yes, if he can – of course he will.
If we cannot find 3 or 4 Republican senators quivering in the slime under some rock who are willing to slither out and act with honor by voting No, then we must have a prior commitment from the nominee to recuse on all matters pertaining to the President, the presidency, and the 2020 election at all levels.
This outrage makes the Corrupt Bargain of 1824 (whether it existed or not) look like child's play, much like Trump's bondage to Putin and the Ukraine bribery scandal made Watergate look like a game of jacks.
Corruption. Corrupt Bargain. Stealing an election. Payback. Scheme. Plot. Rigging. These should be Democrats' unified language on this outrageous power play to steal the presidency.
Remember: any justice who accepts a nomination under these circumstances is a nominee who cannot be trusted to safeguard the election with blind justice.