Justice Clarence Thomas sold a one-story family home and two vacant lots to a personal friend for $133,000. That's it. That's the story that set off the latest round of coordinated attacks on an entire branch of America's national government.
A holding company in which Justice Neil Gorsuch owned a 20 percent stake sold a house to a Democratic Party donor for far less than asking price. The Democrat said that when he offered to buy it, he had no idea Gorsuch owned a stake in it. That's it. That's the follow-on story over which the attacks continue.
The wife of Chief Justice John Roberts made about as much as a legal recruiter as she likely did when she was a law-firm partner. That's it. That's the new bombshell Leftists in Congress and the media think will explode the Supreme Court.
Over the last several weeks, regime apparatchiks have sought to highlight these lame reports, carefully spaced across news cycles to create the appearance of a burgeoning scandal where there is none. To commend these anticlimaxes to the public's limited attention, the attackers have had to resort to reality-TV sizzle. But the real stories are piddling. The Chief Justice's wife had worked at the nation's largest legal-recruiting firm for many years. A bungalow and a pair of dirt lots got sold nearly a decade ago. Nobody cares.
The Left tried packing the Court with partisans. It tried cowing the Justices with mobs. Its latest attack is modeled after Genghis Kahn's Mongol horde fanning out, lightly armed and spurting forth in rapid, synchronized sallies. The charges themselves are dull swords, but together the horde hopes for more than the sum of its weak parts.
The Left wants the public to lose trust in the Supreme Court—just as it wanted to shake confidence in President Donald Trump's election and, as it later hypocritically charged, President Trump wanted to shake confidence in President Joe Biden's. It's all the same vile scheme: tear down the institutions of country to build up the institutions of party. These schemes must fail.
The Left attacks the Supreme Court because the Court is legitimate, not because it's illegitimate. As a legitimate institution of government, it stands in the way of the Left's lawless rule. Congressmen and presidents will do whatever they can get away with and refuse to explain themselves. They lie often, rarely make sense, and hide their moves—as virtually every American knows.
The Supreme Court, by contrast, is empowered only to follow the law. It must work through its decisions in open oral argument and then explain them in written opinions. In resolving a case, it must recount the key facts, cite the applicable rules of jurisprudence, and respond to each relevant argument. No such constraints hamper the typical loudmouth in Congress or the White House.
Far from a mini-Congress, the Court's decisions are most frequently unanimous. It has ruled in big cases for the Republican side but also for the Democratic—as when it allowed the release of President Trump's tax returns or turned away a lawsuit contesting procedures used in the 2020 presidential election. And even in response to the latest attacks, the Court has issued a thoroughly researched brief, signed by all nine Justices, explaining itself.
Contrast that with President Biden. Documentary evidence shows over 30 million dollars have sloshed out of communist China into Biden family members' financial accounts in exchange for nothing of discernible value. Biden's response is just to ignore it.
It's not so much the Court but the rule of law that stands in the way of the Left today—so the Left seeks to cow the Court into ditching the rule of law for the rule of the Left. The Court must remain united and steadfast.
Some of the Justices, as creatures of an elite culture, can scare too easily whenever certain legacy media outlets bare their fangs. Fair public judgment within one's lifetime can be a luxury denied to men of great public duties. But the Justices may take heart that today, opprobrium from the Left is honor in the heartland.
Sean Ross Callaghan is an attorney, tech entrepreneur, and onetime federal law clerk.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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