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SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Trump v. Mazars

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So we all know, the DNC controlled House of Representatives not only hates Trump and are working hard day and night to remove him from office legislatively, if not at the ballot box. As a libertarian who dislikes Trump immensely, even I am put off by the amount of effort going into this by Democrats who are playing politics at the level of full-blown hatred, instead of just accepting that this is our current situation with Trump, and they should only make efforts to win in 2020.

Well, here’s another instance of them abusing their authority. Despite having no credible evidence of a crime, Congress has demanded Trump’s personal financial records, in hopes to uncover some wrongdoing. They’ve presented it as they need this info to consider how to draft new law.

Meaning they’re acting as though they aren’t looking to convict him of anything, they just want to be able to write good law, and his financial records will somehow help them. Is there anyone who believes this bullshit one iota? I hope not. Congress wouldn’t even elaborate on what law they’re looking to write.

So despite congress’ assertion, let’s assume they’re lying political hacks, because they have a good record of being exactly this. Let’s also assume that they’re using this in hopes to find an impeachable offense in the records, because they also have a record of this.

Here’s a couple of issues with this.

First: If the professionals at the IRS who most assuredly audited him didn’t find anything worthy of indicting him on, it is unlikely congress will either.

Second: Any write-offs he took advantage of, that the assholes in congress passed in the first place, will be used to argue Trump is just a greedy rich asshole, instead of that they passed a shitty law, favoring some of their favorite assholes, which Trump was able to exploit too.

Third: And this is most important, in a free country, my personal financial records should be none of anyone’s fucking business ever. EVER!!! The fact we have an income tax which penalizes people for success, instead of a consumption tax which merely takes a fair cut of commerce, is disgusting.

Fourth: We don’t subpoena records to see if there is a crime in them potentially, which is what congress is doing. We have evidence of a crime occurring, and then subpoena records that would confirm or exonerate someone of that crime, based on the evidence suggesting that the crime which occurred has evidence in those records.

Anyway, enough of my own personal opinions, let’s talk about this case.

Trump sued his accounting firm to prevent them from complying with his subpoena. That’s why it’s argued as him against them as opposed to Trump against the government.

Trump is claiming that this is an undue burden on him. But the respondent is arguing that Trump literally doesn’t have to do anything. The subpoena is for his accountant, and doesn’t require any work at all.

However, in this testy exchange, Justice Alito clearly saw through this shenanigan of an argument.

Stephen G. Breyer

Yes, you emphasized it goes to a private person and it’s for tax returns.

But the subpoenas that I’ve seen go far beyond that.

They apply to 15 Trump-affiliated entities.

They ask for all documents related to opening of accounts, due diligence, closing, requests for information by other parties, et cetera. Now that’s a lot of information, and some of it’s pretty vague.

And if somebody subpoenaed you for that information or subpoenaed your tax accountant or subpoenaed somebody in your business, wouldn’t you at least want to know what was being turned over? Wouldn’t you want to ask them? And might that not take time? And might that not take effort? So my problem is there may be burdens here, third-party or not, and not just political burdens.

The job of the House and Senate, in part, as the President, is politics.

That doesn’t bother me. But the Clinton v. Jones information does bother me.

And the fact that what I hold today will also apply to a future Senator McCarthy asking a future Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman exactly the same questions, that bothers me. So what do I do?

Douglas N. Letter

Justice Breyer, I fully understand that concern.

None of the subpoena recipients have complained about burden.

The reason these subpoenas go back a ways is because, as you know —

Stephen G. Breyer

I’m sorry to interrupt you.

I’m not talking about their burden.

I’m talking about the President’s burden in having to monitor, decide if there are privileges, figure out what his answers are to all those documents you are requesting which go, in my opinion, way, way, way beyond just tax returns.

SCOTUS is now charged with determining if Trump must comply with these unreasonable and clearly dishonest requests from congress.

SCOTUS opined that they understand this shit had deep political implications, and potentially opens the door for congresses of the future to go after any sitting president they dislike.

The president argued that congress should demonstrate a specific need, and SCOTUS said, “Nah, dawg.”

But the House argued that that they only needed to have a valid legislative purpose, and SCOTUS said, “Nah, dawg” to that, too, fearing it opens the door for a malicious congress to harass a president.

SCOTUS instead, decided to write their own rules for this.

  1. The courts have to prove only the president’s records will help, and not some other asshole’s
  2. Courts can’t make this shit any broader than is needed for what they’re doing
  3. Courts should review it, to make sure it’s legit, kinda like a warrant
  4. The courts should determine if the president is being harassed, or the subpoena is legit.

Thomas said Congress should simply not have the right to ask for private and unofficial documents from anyone, in his dissent. Alito felt like the House hadn’t met the burden of the test laid out by SCOTUS above. The rest sided with Mazars.

 

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Mathena v. Malvo

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So if you’re old enough, you’ll remember the D.C. sniper shootings back in 2002. It was all over the fucking news. Well, it was two assholes, Lee Boyd Malvo (then 17 years old) and John Allen Muhammad. Muhammed was an adult, tried, convicted, and sentences to death, that all around piece of shit was executed in 2009.

When SCOTUS, in 2012, decided Miller v. Alabama, they decided that it was cruel and unusual punishment to give a minor mandatory life in prison without parole. In a later ruling in  Montgomery v. Louisiana they decided that Miller must be retroactive as a matter of constitutional law. So Malvo, didn’t get a mandatory sentence, but he did get life without parole. So Malvo’s cheeky counsel is creatively trying to say that the ruling was about life, not about it being mandatory, and asked for relief.

Petitioner Mathena, chief warden of Virginia’s high-security Red Onion State Prison on the other hand, thinks this whole thing is some bullshit. Malvo is a first class scumbag, and at 17, certainly knew WTF he was doing, and deserves the sentence he got. It wasn’t mandatory, it was the sentence the jury came to. So Miller and Montgomery don’t fucking apply here.

The case was dismissed, being withdrawn by Malvo, due to a passage of new legislation which passed in Virginia on February of 2020 saying that if someone is given a life sentence under the age of 18, they are eligible for parole after 20 years.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Trump v. Vance

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Related to the Trump v. Mazars case, where the House of Representatives are trying to subpoena Trump’s financial records, here is a case where some douchebag New York county prosecutor is trying to go after Trump, and issued a subpoena for his tax records from Mazars as well.

Trump is again suing to quash the subpoena, the issue at play being whether he has executive privilege of such information, and therefore a right to not comply.

Whereas the house was arguing these records were requested to help draft legislation, this county prosecutor is more honest, claiming that they have reports of illegal activity by the Trump organization in New York County over the last ten years, and these subpoena’s are to aid in that investigation.

Again, it seems we have a situation where there’s no evidence of a crime, but the government just believes he’s a bad guy, and are hoping to find evidence of something they can prosecute. This is not me being a political hack. If Trump did commit a crime, I want his ass to pay for it. But no party can or has reported an actual crime that occurred that they are investigating.

I think Trump’s petitioner summed it up quite nicely.

Jay Alan Sekulow

Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. Let me start with this, and there’s some agreement.

The New York district attorney, New York County district attorney, acknowledges that their subpoena implicates Article II issues and burdens.

They also agree that there is harms that could arise to the presidency.

We say those harms have actually existed. The other aspect of this is the ordering, who carries the burden here.

That seems to be the issue that’s left open.

This Court’s decision in Cheney answered that very clearly, that said that the exacting standard is carried by the party requesting the information. So it would be carried by the Respondent in this particular case. There has been no showing and no findings of heightened need standards being met here.

That — and I think it’s again also important to remember — and I think this came up in the context of earlier questioning — there’s a different stigma that attaches to criminal process than civil litigation.

And I don’t think that stigma should be ignored in a case like this. But the irony of all of this is that the House of Representatives and the district attorney issued essentially the same subpoenas to the same custodian for the same records. The House said it wants the records so it can legislate, not for law enforcement reasons.

The district attorney says he wants the same records for law enforcement reasons; he has no legislative authority. But what’s really happening here could not be clearer.

The presidency is being harassed and undermined with improper process that was issued, in our view, for illegitimate reasons.

The copying of the subpoena speaks to that. The framers saw this coming, and they structured the Constitution to protect the President from this encroachment. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.

In a 7:2 decision where Alito and Thomas dissented, agreeing that a president is not above the law, but Thomas saying that in situations such as this, they felt a sitting president should potentially receive relief from an overzealous prosecutor, and Alito believed that the prosecutor should have a higher burden to go after a sitting president.  SCOTUS determined that there’s nothing in the Constitution what increases the burden on a county prosecutor when pursuing criminal action against a president.

They also decided that there is nothing unreasonable to ask a president to provide evidence in the pursuance of a criminal investigation.

It’s also worth noting that the two dissenters were NOT Trump’s two appointees, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. So if there was a concern of them being biased towards the person who appointed them, I guess you can through that shit in the trash.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: McGirt v. Oklahoma

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Pretty simple case here. Native American grade A scumbag Jimcy McGirt got busted molesting a kid. However, this act occurred on land reserved for Native Americans by the federal government.

So Jimcy, trying anything imaginable to beat this heinous act, is trying to argue the state of Oklahoma doesn’t have jurisdiction here, since it occurred on federal lands. As such, state laws such as the one he’s accused of violating, do not apply to him on the reservation.

So now SCOTUS gets to decide if states can prosecute Native Americans committing major crimes on land reserved for native Americans by the federal government.

In a 5:4 majority (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch), SCOTUS ruled that the Major Crimes Act gives the federal government the sole right to prosecute assholes like McGirt. That McGirt committed his crimes on federally-reserved Creek Nation land. That just because it wasn’t initially called a reservation, doesn’t mean it isn’t, and that Congress can’t just take away their land.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Fulton v City of Philadelphia

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Philadelphia, like most cities, has a foster child program. They use private services to place kids with foster parents. In 2018, they barred Catholic Social Services (CSS) from fostering, because they won’t let any same-sex couples foster kids through them.

CSS was all like, “Bless you my son, but I believe this is a violation of the first amendment. Amen.”

But the City of Philadelphia was like, “Thanks for the blessings, but respectfully, go fuck yourself. You’re anti-gay bullshit doesn’t fly with us. We don’t care about your religion. It’s your anti-gay bullshit we object to. Even the pope has come around you dumb fucks.”

Justice Breyer queried,

Stephen G. Breyer

Well, you don’t have to say, according to them, whether the couple is married, whether it’s not married, whether it’s same-sex, whether it’s different sex.

You just put that to the side, make a note that you’re putting it to the side, and say, other than that, they’re okay or they’re not okay.

That’s all you have to do. Now what’s the problem? I still don’t quite see it.

You said in your response that you don’t want to do it, which I understand that you don’t.

But they say they’re imposing a requirement that does not interfere with your (religion), they can’t figure out how does it interfere.  And now tell me once again what’s the problem.

His argument being, that they’re not forcing them to adhere to any religious objections, they are just asking them to ignore it.

So now SCOTUS must decide if Philly is denying the CSS their ability to practice their religion.

In a unanimous decision, SCOTUS sided with Fulton. This is a plain violation of the first amendment. Mostly because the law itself was neutral in text, it allowed for the commissioner to discriminate. That’s a no-no.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-123

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: California v. Texas

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You all remember the days when the Affordable Care Act was challenged in SCOTUS, and Chief Justice Roberts argued that the penalty was a tax, and therefore constitutional, right?

Well since then, Republicans, unable to repeal Obamacare outright, made the penalty zero. So now that the penalty is zero, Republicans are now arguing it’s no longer a tax, and therefore the individual mandate is an unconstitutional mandate, and the law should be repealed entirely.

The ACA supporters will argue that the mandate is severable, meaning SCOTUS could remove the mandate clause and leave the rest of the law in tact. But Republicans are like, “That’s how the fucking law was paid for. So you can’t fucking sever it.”

So basically SCOTUS is being asked to re-review this case in light of this new change.

With regards to severing the law, Congress reduced the tax to zero, but didn’t repeal the law. If they had the power to do one, they had the power to do the other. So the argument is then made that it must be severable, because if congress wanted the law to be repealed, they’d have repealed it, not reduced the tax to zero.

But the argument to that, is that congress didn’t have the votes or support for a full repeal, but by removing the tax, they’re hoping SCOTUS will nullify it, effectively trying to make SCOTUS the “bad guy” in all this shit.

At one point, Justice Kavanaugh asked:

Brett M. Kavanaugh

Are you aware of any other examples in the U.S. Code at least where Congress has enacted a true mandate, not something hortatory, but a true mandate with no penalties?

Essentially questioning the validity of such a law knowing there’s no other instance where congress forces you to buy something. Social Security is forced retirement income, but you don’t go out and buy it, government just takes it as a tax.

The reason this is Texas v. California, is because Texas challenged the law, and California and other states are defending it.

In a 7:2 decision, where Alito and Gorsuch dissented, SCOTUS ruled in favor of California. Texas may not sue California over this bullshit. Texas hasn’t shown in any way how they were harmed by California and company, and therefore they have no grounds to be suing here.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-840

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Van Buren v. United States

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Scumbag cop Nathan Van Buren was “friends” with another scumbag, Andrew Albo. Albo liked the ladies. Especially the ones he paid to have sex with him. Van Buren decided to shake Albo down, and asked him for $15k to cover his son’s medical bills.

Here’s the rub, Van Buren’s son was perfectly healthy, and it was clearly just a shake down.

Albo, not the dullest knife in the drawer, recorded the conversation, and took it to the FBI who decided to set up a sting. They had Albo ask Van Buren to look up a woman he wanted to hire as a prostitute, to make sure she wasn’t a cop. Van Buren did so, and boom! Busted his ass.

So now he’s charged with wire fraud, using law enforcement databases for unlawful purposes. Van Buren’s argument is that he was authorized to use that database, and therefore it wasn’t fraud. So now SCOTUS has to decide whether using a database you’re authorized to use, but using it in a manner the job doesn’t provide for, constitutes wire fraud under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits anyone who “exceeds authorized access” on a computer, specifically it defines that as “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accessor is not entitled so to obtain or alter.”

Counsel for Van Buren launched the opening salvo by arguing:

The CFAA is an anti-hacking statute. It prohibits obtaining information from a computer without authorization.

And to ensure comprehensive coverage, the statute also prohibits “exceeding authorized access.” As Judge Kozinski put it, this ensures that the statute covers not just outside but also inside hackers. In this case, however, the government seeks to transform the supplemental prong of the CFAA into an entirely different prohibition.

In the government’s view, this prong covers obtaining any information via computer that the accessor is not entitled “under the circumstances” to obtain. It is no overstatement to say that this construction would brand most Americans criminals on a daily basis.

The scenarios are practically limitless, but a few examples will suffice.

Imagine a secretary whose employee handbook says that her e-mail or Zoom account may be used only for business purposes.

Or consider a person using a dating website where users may not include false information on their profile to obtain information about potential mates.

Or think of a law student who is issued a log — log-in credentials for Westlaw or Lexis for educational use only. If the government is right, then a computer user who disregards any of these stated use restrictions commits a federal crime.

He makes a pretty valid point. And it seems odd that there isn’t just a specific law to prevent government officials who have access to our private information, from obtaining that for any non-business related use, and sharing it, or something like that. Seems like they know it’s wrong, but just don’t have a proper law to charge him with.

Neil Gorsuch thinking likeme asked,

Neil Gorsuch

And then, on the reverse parade of horribles we’ve heard from the other side, I guess I’m struggling to imagine how — how long that parade would be given the abundance of criminal laws available. So, if this one didn’t cover that kind of conduct, but there were troublesome forms of it, like your client’s behavior in this case, misusing a police database, I assume there are ample state laws available that criminalize a lot of that conduct.

Am I mistaken?

Jeffrey L. Fisher

No.

In fact, this case comes from Georgia, and Georgia itself has a statute about — about hacking or otherwise misusing computer information.

The government, as we point out in our — in our reply brief, the government gave a few hypotheticals in its brief, and almost every one of them is already addressed by some other provision of the — even the U.S. Code, let alone state law. And — and even — remember, my client himself has already lost his job and has other forms of punishment that have already been brought to bear.

In a 6:3 non-partisan decision, SCOTUS ruled for Van Buren. He’d have had to obtain info he was not authorized to have in order to have committed a crime. Sure, this was some personal and troubling bullshit, but it’s info he otherwise had access to. So while it’s kinda immoral, it isn’t illegal. If they don’t like it, they need to pass laws specifically to prevent it.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-783