Dem Meltdown: Investigate Kennedy Resignation Because Trump Might Be Behind It
It’s been the better part of a week since Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was retiring from the Supreme Court. The Democrat desperation, I would have thought, would have worn off at this point. This isn’t Bush v. Gore or even the Jill Stein recounts. There’s literally nothing that the Democrats can do except crazy stuff.
Then I remembered the one thing that the Democrats excel at: Crazy stuff.
Take Alex Shephard of the New Republic. In a piece that reads like a tryout for InfoWars, Shephard writes that, after reading a New York Times piece published the day after Kennedy’s resignation, he thinks there’s something shady going on.
“The connections between Kennedy and Trump, per the New York Times report, are surprisingly deep, given the president’s general lack of DC experience—and Trump and his allies exploited them to perfection, encouraging the swing justice to retire before the 2018 midterms, which could return control of the Senate back to Democrats,” Shephard wrote.
“Trump nominated Neal (sic) Gorsuch, a former Kennedy clerk, to replace Scalia shortly after assuming office. Ivanka Trump visited the Supreme Court a week before Kennedy’s retirement as the justice’s guest. Kennedy has, over the last two years, sided with the Trump administration in a number of narrow rulings.
“Finance is, of course, deeply involved in every level of American government; the connections between Trump and Kennedy have been reported over the last two years. There is no reason to believe that Kennedy’s ties to Trump affected any of his votes. But as this new report details, these ties coincided with ‘a quiet campaign’ to ensure Kennedy’s retirement and give Trump a chance to fill a spot on the Supreme Court.”
The Times’ report actually suggests much, much less. It notes that Justice Kennedy’s son Justin “spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.”
“During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history,” the report continues.
According to a CNN report from 2017, Deutsche Bank was also fined $630 million for its part in a Russian money-laundering scheme (oh, there’s Russia! Gotta report that!) and its records were subpoenaed by the Mueller investigation, according to Bloomberg.
If that sounds fishy, remember, Deutsche Bank is one of the world’s largest with almost 100,000 employees. Justin Kennedy almost certainly had nothing to do with this. Not even The New York Times thought it was worth mentioning.
But the NYT report makes much of “a quiet campaign” to get Kennedy to retire on the part of the White House, which the story admits involved “no direct efforts to pressure or lobby Justice Kennedy to announce his resignation” and “was hardly the first time a president had done his best to create a court opening.” There is, in other words, no evidence anything untoward happened.
But why let the facts get in the way? Richard Painter — former Bush ethics lawyer-turned Democrat-turned Minnesota Senate primary challenger — believes this is all a great big conspiracy.
The circumstances of Justice Kennedy’s resignation must be investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee before any replacement is considered. The Constitution does not give Trump the power to use underhanded means to induce Supreme Court resignations.https://t.co/S6m5oLg9mV
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) June 30, 2018
Yes, Painter now wants the Judiciary Committee to investigate this insane conspiracy theory. Of course, that’s not the only insane thing Painter tweeted, particularly when it came to frontrunner Amy Barrett.
As the cult of Roe reversal moves in on Justice Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat, follow your handmaid where she is leading you. Back in time….
What it was like to leave the country for an abortion before Roe vs. Wade https://t.co/8yruw1JFFv
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) July 1, 2018
This is not about Catholicism. It is about a potential SCOTUS nominee’s membership in a separate fringe organization with very authoritarian characteristics and a concerted effort by extremists to use this Supreme Court seat to overturn Roe v. Wade and other civil liberties. https://t.co/Mm6vR8asJ4
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) July 1, 2018
A cult of authoritarian religious extremism helped make our border policy. Now it could remake our Supreme Court. https://t.co/OJF4hcuKFZ
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) July 1, 2018
Painter is referring to Barrett’s membership in the mostly Catholic religious organization People of Praise, which has inspired more conspiracy theories of late than Opus Dei.
A request to the Deity: Please, please, please let Painter win the nomination. There is nothing more I want in September and October of a midterm year than a man from the party of Al Smith treating a potential Catholic Supreme Court nominee the same way that the KKK and other bigots treated Al Smith.
Oh, and Barrett’s a woman, too, just in case you’ve stopped noticing gender pronouns. Like Painter’s infamous ads, this is going to be a dumpster fire. I personally can’t wait.
Painter may be a mainstream Democrat, but he’s also legit crazy, which kind of not really excuses this behavior, but at least makes it funny. What’s The New York Times’ excuse? Or The New Republic’s?
The fact that two venerable left-wing media institutions felt the need to debase themselves (or rather, further debase themselves) through this sort of farcical insinuation is proof of just how far standards of journalistic sanity have deteriorated in the era of Trump.
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