Joe Biden, D.C. Judges Pressure SCOTUS on J6

Unsubtle messaging from Joe Biden and federal judges seek to intimidate the Supreme Court into keeping the status quo on key J6 matters.

Even petty tyrants usually understand their limits.

As they plunder their nation’s resources, enrich themselves and their relatives, incarcerate dissidents, subject their countrymen to demagogic screeds detached from reality, and spread misery across the largely helpless populace, the lowest of low-rent dictators often yield to the hand that feeds them.

Which brings us to Joe Biden. 

Equal parts authoritarian, street bully, fabulist, dunce, and Irish blowhard, Biden respects no boundary when it comes to imposing his political will. No bar is too low--including exploiting and misrepresenting the tragic death of his oldest child--for Biden to crawl under in his shameless pursuit to retain power.

But despite Biden’s evident mental decline among other maladies, Democrats and most Republicans in Washington continually capitulate to his demands. So, Biden now is targeting the entity he views as the sole threat to his unbridled whims—one which holds his future in its hands: the U.S. Supreme Court. 

While several matters of political consequence are pending before the court—including high profile cases that will impact the 2024 presidential election—Biden is abandoning what he considers his persuasive charm to instead lowkey bullying the court into getting his way.

During Thursday’s State of the Union address, Biden directly confronted Supreme Court justices in attendance over the court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Quoting Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the landmark opinion, Biden garbled a passage related to how women can decide the issue at the state level. 

“With all due respect, justices, ‘women are not without electrical’—excuse me—’electoral or political power.’ You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.”  As Democrats cheered, the justices sat expressionless.

Biden over the weekend redoubled his criticism of the highest court. In deciding Dobbs, SCOTUS “made a mistake” and “read the Constitution wrong,” Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart in an interview.

But Biden isn’t just taunting the judges about Dobbs—he also warned the court not to imperil the legitimacy of the January 6 “insurrection” narrative.

Turning Up the Heat on a Court Under Fire

Next month, Biden’s Department of Justice will defend the government during oral arguments at SCOTUS on two crucial J6 questions: whether Donald Trump is entitled to presidential immunity in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related case (the DOJ opposes) and whether the DOJ lawfully applied 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, against more than 330 J6 defendants including the former president.

The latter poses a potentially lethal blow to the DOJ’s unprecedented and ongoing prosecution of Jan 6 protesters as well as Smith’s criminal indictment against Trump for Jan 6 since 1512(c)(2) represents two of the four charges.

With six justices—John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—seated directly in front of him, Biden reiterated his warped view of the events of January 6 in an effort to salvage the crumbling storyline:

“Just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy. Many of you were here on that darkest of days. We all saw with our own eyes. The insurrectionists were not patriots. They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power, to overturn the will of the people.

Jan. 6 lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed a great, gravest threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War. But they failed. America stood. America stood strong and democracy prevailed. We must be honest. The threat to democracy must be defended.”

In other words, if SCOTUS overturns how the DOJ used 1512(c)(2), resulting in the evisceration of the most common felony associated with the “insurrection,” justices will rule on the side of Americans who tried to murder “democracy” on January 6. Justices who vote to reverse 1512(c)(2) essentially support the confederacy.

Not exactly a subtle ultimatum.

Desperate Judges Send Message to SCOTUS

Biden is getting help in his pressure campaign from federal judges in Washington. As the D.C. district court handles a flood of requests from individuals charged, convicted, and/or imprisoned over 1512(c)(2) pending SCOTUS’s decision on Fischer v. USA, the case that will be heard by the highest court on April 16, judges are signaling their support of the charge.

In granting early release for two J6ers convicted of 1512(c)(2), Beryl Howell, the former chief judge of the district court, last week cautioned that defendants “may be overly optimistic that the Supreme Court’s resolution of Fischer may be favorable” to their case.

Howell noted that all of her colleagues except one endorsed the government’s use of obstruction of an official proceeding in J6 cases over the past three years; in a footnote, Howell listed cases tied to 14 judges—from Trump appointees down to Reagan appointees as well as the current chief judge—who denied motions to dismiss the obstruction count. (The total number of judges who consented to the government’s interpretation of 1512(c)(2) is 17.)

Howell’s message to SCOTUS was clear: the reputation of more than a dozen federal judges in the nation’s capital is at stake.

Don’t do it.

In a rant disguised as a court order, Judge Royce Lamberth, 80, in January blasted attempts to downplay the events of January 6. The Reagan appointee, who falls asleep during court proceedings and cannot get out of his chair without assistance, also sent a message to his higher-ups. “On January 6, 2021, a mob of people invaded and occupied the United States Capitol, using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the Constitution and our republican heritage,” Lamberth wrote in a resentencing memo for a J6er in his clutches. “The rioters interfered with a necessary step in the constitutional process, disrupted the lawful transfer of power, and thus jeopardized the American constitutional order. [In] my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream.”

Lamberth continued his tirade. “[The] Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”

By the way, the defendant in this case was convicted of “parading” in the Capitol, a petty offense, not insurrection or anything comparable.

And what about the presidential immunity question? The court fast-tracked Trump’s petition to reverse lower court decisions by D.C. judges denying his claims of immunity from prosecution for his conduct in office before and on January 6; oral arguments in that historic matter are set for April 25.

As the historic clash at the highest court nears, will Biden continue his PR offensive against the court? Will his calculation pay off as a politically aware court, one that just unanimously sided with Trump in the Colorado disqualification case, tries to split the J6 baby?

Will Biden’s petty tyrant act win once again?