General Discussion

John Roberts' Secret Trump Memo Revealed in Huge SCOTUS Leak

by Corbin Bolies
Daily Beast, September 15, 2024

The Supreme Court was hit by a flurry of damaging new leaks Sunday as a series of confidential memos written by the chief justice were revealed by The New York Times. The court’s Chief Justice John Roberts was clear to his fellow justices in February: He wanted the court to take up a case weighing Donald Trump’s right to presidential immunity—and he seemed inclined to protect the former president.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” Roberts wrote to his Supreme Court peers, according to a private memo obtained by the Times. He was referencing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow the case to move forward. Roberts took an unusual level of involvement in this and other cases that ultimately benefited Trump, according to the Times—his handling of the cases surprised even some other justices on the high court, across ideological lines. As president, Trump appointed three of the members of its current conservative supermajority.

Such was the case in March that debated whether Colorado, or any state, had the authority to remove an official from a federal ballot. Roberts persuaded the other justices to make their opinion—that states could not unilaterally drop a federal candidate from the ballot—unsigned to authoritatively signal their unanimity, according to the Times.

The judges agreed, until the conservatives sought to include an additional proposition that mandated anyone seeking to enforce the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionist candidates get congressional approval. Four justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett—thought that idea went too far, and wrote concurrences in disagreement. Roberts himself wrote the majority opinion. Roberts also took charge of the court’s ruling that declared the government went too far in charging those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-roberts-secret-trump-memo-revealed-in-huge-scotus-leak?ref=home?ref=home

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