Speaker 1: Rowe was egregiously wrong from the start, Its reasoning was
Speaker 1: exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences and
Speaker 1: far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue,
Speaker 1: Roe and Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division. We
Speaker 1: hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. I am
Speaker 1: not simply speaking for myself and Senator Ted Cruz. I
Speaker 1: am reading the words of Justice Samuel Alito, who is
Speaker 1: apparently writing the majority opinion of the Court in a
Speaker 1: leaked document, a document that was leaked in what the
Speaker 1: Chief Justice John Roberts calls a singular and egregious breach
Speaker 1: of trust on the Supreme Court. We're gonna be talking
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Speaker 1: a whole lot about the issue, and a whole lot
Speaker 1: about what happens now. This is verdict with Ted Cruze.
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Speaker 1: tactus to six five five three two. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowls, Senator. I have
Speaker 1: seven bazillion questions to ask you about this. You've just
Speaker 1: come from the Capital. We have not even had a
Speaker 1: prep call yet, we have not talked about anything. Tell
Speaker 1: me everything that I need to know about this leaked
Speaker 1: document from the Supreme Court. Well, let's start on the substance.
Speaker 1: The substance is this is a big damn deal. Assuming
Speaker 1: that the report warding that a company that this league
Speaker 1: is accurate. It turns out what you and I discussed
Speaker 1: on this podcast days after the oral argument appears to
Speaker 1: be exactly right. On this podcast, you and I talked
Speaker 1: about what the justices were likely to do. I had
Speaker 1: listened to the argument very carefully, and what I told
Speaker 1: you at the time is that I believe there were
Speaker 1: six votes to uphold the Mississippi law, the Mississippi law
Speaker 1: restricting abortion after fifteen weeks. And I also thought there
Speaker 1: were five votes to overrule Row versus Wade in its entirety.
Speaker 1: So there's a distinction to be out there because the
Speaker 1: case at issue, or the law at issue, is this
Speaker 1: pro life law in Mississippi. So you could have a
Speaker 1: world in which you have different judges voting to uphold
Speaker 1: or strike down that law. Then you would have to
Speaker 1: go all the way back and overrule Revue Weight and
Speaker 1: planned parenthoodbe Casey, which invented the constitutional right to an abortion.
Speaker 1: That that's exactly right. And what Maya's assessment was from
Speaker 1: listening to the oral argument is that John Roberts, the
Speaker 1: Chief Justice, seemed prepared to uphold the Mississippi law, but
Speaker 1: he wanted to find a way to do it without
Speaker 1: overruling Row versus Weight. And remember I went into this
Speaker 1: argument deeply skeptical. I was not convinced there were five
Speaker 1: votes on the Court to overturn Row. I knew there
Speaker 1: were two. I knew Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, They'd
Speaker 1: both been quite public about that. But I had real
Speaker 1: skepticism about Kavanaugh, about Gorsitch, and about Barrett. From listening
Speaker 1: to the oral argument, all three seemed to be clearly
Speaker 1: leaning in in support of overturning Row, and from this
Speaker 1: opinion it appears that's exactly how they voted. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess we also have to establish first, this leaked document
Speaker 1: that went to Politico on Monday night and then was
Speaker 1: released to the broader public, the document is legit correct.
Speaker 1: This is an actual draft opinion from the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: So it is the Court has confirmed that that this
Speaker 1: is a real draft opinion. And I got to say,
Speaker 1: that is a big damn deal. Like when this came out,
Speaker 1: that this came out Monday night, I was having dinner
Speaker 1: with some friends. You know me, Well, I am rarely
Speaker 1: at a loss for words. It's true. I was genuinely speechless.
Speaker 1: And it's difficult to convey to someone who doesn't regularly
Speaker 1: practice in front of the court, who doesn't interact with
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court often, the magnitude of the breach this represents.
Speaker 1: It is stunning at a level that is horrifying. In
Speaker 1: over two centuries of our country's history, never, not even once,
Speaker 1: has a draft opinion leaked from the US Supreme Court
Speaker 1: for this to happen. The Court has been this goes
Speaker 1: right to the heart of the integritegrity of the court,
Speaker 1: and it goes right to judicial independence. And I promise
Speaker 1: you this entire day has been like an earthquake at
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court because it undermines the ability of the
Speaker 1: Court to do its job. And what it means happened?
Speaker 1: I think in all likelihood, what it means is that
Speaker 1: there was a left wing law clerk who was upset
Speaker 1: at how the justices voted and decided to leak this opinion.
Speaker 1: And just as a matter of procedure, you've got all
Speaker 1: these law clerks and what are they Are they on
Speaker 1: an email threat or something? You know, this draft goes
Speaker 1: back to February. So obviously the justices and the clerks
Speaker 1: have been working on this for a long time. And
Speaker 1: is it just that any clerk can see any of
Speaker 1: these drafts? Is there any Is there gonna be any
Speaker 1: way to identify who actually did this? I guess is
Speaker 1: what I'm asking. So there may well be. So the
Speaker 1: way it works is when a case is argued, shortly
Speaker 1: after the argument, either on Wednesday or Friday, the court
Speaker 1: meets in conference. Now, conference is a special room. The
Speaker 1: conference room is actually attached to the chief justices chambers,
Speaker 1: So there's a conference table. In conference, it is only
Speaker 1: the nine justices. There's nobody else in the room. There's
Speaker 1: no law clerk, there's no secretary. It's the nine justices. Actually,
Speaker 1: the door leading to the conference room there two doors.
Speaker 1: There's a door and then there's about three feet of space,
Speaker 1: and then there's a second door. And the junior justice
Speaker 1: is expected to get coffee for the others. And if
Speaker 1: for some reason someone needs to pass a note to
Speaker 1: the justices, you open the outer door, you put the
Speaker 1: note on the floor, you knock on the inner door,
Speaker 1: You close the outer door, and then the junior justice
Speaker 1: goes and opens the inner door and gets the note.
Speaker 1: It's it's like an airlock. At conference, the justices cast
Speaker 1: their initial votes. In this instance, assuming the reporting is accurate,
Speaker 1: six justices voted to uphold the Mississippi Statute and five
Speaker 1: justices voted to overturn Row versus weight. When that happens,
Speaker 1: the senior justice in the majority assigns the majority. Given
Speaker 1: the line up here, it appears likely that that was
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas, who was the senior justice in the majority,
Speaker 1: and he chose to assign it to Justice Alito, who's
Speaker 1: the next most senior justice in the majority, and Justice
Speaker 1: Alito is a masterful opinion writer. Do you have any sense, Senator,
Speaker 1: at knowing some of the people involved here and having
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time around the court, why would
Speaker 1: Thomas not want to keep this for himself. This could
Speaker 1: be the most important decision in the last hundred year.
Speaker 1: I mean, this could be one of the most important
Speaker 1: decisions in American history. Yeah, I look, I don't have
Speaker 1: a great answer to that. I'm actually a little bit surprised.
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas didn't assign it to himself because he had
Speaker 1: that prerogative. But he made the judgment, and as the
Speaker 1: chief Justice, by definition, is the most senior justice in
Speaker 1: the majority. But in this instance, he wasn't voting to
Speaker 1: overturn Row versus Wade, so he would be writing his
Speaker 1: own independent opinion. If he could get five justices, he
Speaker 1: could assign the majority, but he was not willing to
Speaker 1: overturn Row, according to the reporting, and so Thomas made
Speaker 1: the assignment. Now, the way it works, once that's assigned,
Speaker 1: the justice who's assigned the majority opinion goes back to
Speaker 1: his or her chamber, and each justice has four law clerks.
Speaker 1: There will be one law clerk who is the lead
Speaker 1: law clerk on the opinion. So if there are four
Speaker 1: of you, each of you have a quarter of the
Speaker 1: cases before the term. The justice and the law clerk
Speaker 1: will work together drafting the opinion, and when you prepare
Speaker 1: an initial draft, you circulate it to all nine justices.
Speaker 1: That's what this is. So that was the first draft.
Speaker 1: Justice Alito circulated it to all nine justices. When that happens,
Speaker 1: at that point, nobody has joined the opinion, So it's
Speaker 1: not the opinion of the court. It is your draft
Speaker 1: that you're circulating to the other justices to get their opinions.
Speaker 1: What happens next is multiple iterations of edits, where you'll
Speaker 1: have individual justices that will say, hey, I don't like
Speaker 1: this paragraph. Hey, can you change this sentence? Can you
Speaker 1: add this footnote? Can you delete this footnote? Now, I
Speaker 1: don't like the way this is structured. And on a
Speaker 1: run of the mill opinion, you could get dozens or
Speaker 1: even hundreds of edits. On an opinion like this of
Speaker 1: this magnitude, you would expect hundreds, if not even thousands,
Speaker 1: of edits. This is for the history books. Every justice
Speaker 1: has to decide whether he or she will join the
Speaker 1: opinion in particular, the five justices and the majority here
Speaker 1: have to make a decision whether they will join the opinion.
Speaker 1: They may have all sorts of changes to it. And
Speaker 1: if they don't join the opinion, then they write their
Speaker 1: own concurring opinions, So they would they would be still
Speaker 1: voting to overrule Row. But they might say, I just
Speaker 1: don't agree with the way Alito is going about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they could do that, And you do get opinions.
Speaker 1: You get sometimes cases where you have multiple opinions, concurring
Speaker 1: opinions to sending opinions concurring in part to sending in part.
Speaker 1: I mean it can get complicated. In order for the
Speaker 1: opinion to be the majority opinion, the opinion of the court,
Speaker 1: five justices have to join it. So it's consequential to
Speaker 1: have a majority opinion because the opinion of the court
Speaker 1: is precedent. And in this instance, I think the five
Speaker 1: justices who presumably are voting to overturn Row, want there
Speaker 1: to be an opinion of the court. So there's a
Speaker 1: high unless there's something you cannot live with an opinion
Speaker 1: with five justices as qualitatively different as legal matters. In
Speaker 1: an opinion with just four. Also in response to the opinion,
Speaker 1: other justices are working on a concurring opinion. So Roberts,
Speaker 1: assuming he wants to uphold the statute but not over
Speaker 1: rule Row, would file a concurring opinion where he concurs
Speaker 1: in the judgment. In other words, he agrees with the
Speaker 1: judgment that the law being challenged is valid, right, but
Speaker 1: he concurs for a different reason. So he would not
Speaker 1: overturn Row. But for whatever reason, he would lay out
Speaker 1: he thinks that the law is valid. And then the dissenters,
Speaker 1: presumably the three liberals on the court would write one
Speaker 1: or two or even three to cents. My guess is
Speaker 1: all three will write dissents. In this case, there will
Speaker 1: probably be a lead dissent, and that's typically a signed
Speaker 1: by the senior justice in the minority, But anyone can
Speaker 1: write a dissent, and so someone is given the nod
Speaker 1: of you be the lead dissenter, but there can be
Speaker 1: additional ones. What happened here is somebody handed over to
Speaker 1: the press the first iteration of this. You know, when
Speaker 1: you start as a clerk, your first week as a clerk,
Speaker 1: you sit down an orientation and they stress secrecy, They
Speaker 1: stress everything done in the courts confidentially. You don't talk
Speaker 1: about anything that happens at the court. You don't bring
Speaker 1: draft opinions home. You do your work in the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court building. So in any given night, the court is
Speaker 1: full of law clerks at midnight, one in the morning
Speaker 1: working on draft opinions and doing your work because you
Speaker 1: don't bring the opinions home. And so there is a
Speaker 1: a primacy on confidentiality and trust that somebody violated in
Speaker 1: a way that is truly historic and stunning. So what
Speaker 1: is going to happen to person? I know that the
Speaker 1: Chief Justice sent out this statement today. He said, yes,
Speaker 1: we're confirming this was a draft opinion. This is egregious.
Speaker 1: This is a singular breach of trust here, and I'm
Speaker 1: ordering the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation
Speaker 1: into the source of the league. One is he going
Speaker 1: to be able to identify the source? And two? Did
Speaker 1: this person break a law? I mean, is this going
Speaker 1: to be a little slap on the wrist by John
Speaker 1: Roberts or are we talking about jail time? So we're
Speaker 1: talking about something very very serious. Let's start with the
Speaker 1: first thing. I very much hope they find out who
Speaker 1: the leaguer is. I think it is incredibly important that
Speaker 1: they find this person. The Marshal of the Court, they
Speaker 1: have considerable resources. There's a whole police force at the Court.
Speaker 1: They're about five hundred officers at the Court. So the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court takes separation of powers very seriously, so they
Speaker 1: don't want they don't allow capitol police into the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: So the US capital has a whole capitol police force,
Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court they're a third branch of government.
Speaker 1: They're not part of the Congress, and so capital pet police,
Speaker 1: in their view, have no business in their building. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't generally handle law enforcement investigations. What the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court police typically do is stop protests and threats to
Speaker 1: the justices of the Court. But that being said, they're
Speaker 1: pretty considerable security measures at the court. And it's also
Speaker 1: a limited universe. So at several reporters asked today what
Speaker 1: if it was a justice that did this. I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, I just don't believe that. It is such
Speaker 1: a grotesque violation of trust. To me, it is beyond
Speaker 1: imagination that a justice would do this. It to use
Speaker 1: the nuclear code example, it's it's like the president handing
Speaker 1: the nuclear codes to putin it just I cannot believe
Speaker 1: even the most left wing justice would do this. I
Speaker 1: think it is very very likely a law clerk, and
Speaker 1: it is very very likely a law clerk for one
Speaker 1: of the three liberal justices. That means there are twelve
Speaker 1: human beings who are your likely suspect pool. That's not
Speaker 1: a big likely suspect pool. It is likely to be
Speaker 1: someone who is a hard partisan and who was willing
Speaker 1: to burn the place down because he or she was
Speaker 1: so upset about what happens. If I were to guess
Speaker 1: the most likely justice for whom the law clerk is
Speaker 1: clerking as Sonya Sotomayor, because she's the most partisan of
Speaker 1: the justices and so she's the most likely to hire
Speaker 1: wild eyed partisans as clerks. I have no evidence of that.
Speaker 1: I'm just just making an inference. And with respect to
Speaker 1: the chain of custody, Look, the Supreme Court has technology.
Speaker 1: Actually when you print out opinions, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get into the details of how, but they are printed
Speaker 1: out with identifying materials that forensically you can find out
Speaker 1: where they were printed out from, whether they are able
Speaker 1: to track that down or not. In this instance will
Speaker 1: depend on whether they can get a copy of the
Speaker 1: actual opinion. Politico just put up a PDF. But the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has taken pretty significant steps towards security. So
Speaker 1: as a law clerk, for example, when you're editing an opinion,
Speaker 1: you do it on the computer. If you print an
Speaker 1: opinion out, you can print it and read it in
Speaker 1: your office and you can edit it, but you never
Speaker 1: take it home. And when you're done with it, you
Speaker 1: throw it in a burn bag. And every law clerk
Speaker 1: has a burnbag, typically under your desk. And the burn
Speaker 1: bag is about this tall, and it's a kind of
Speaker 1: brown and red striped bag. And that bag is sealed
Speaker 1: and then it is shredded twice horizontally and vertically, and
Speaker 1: then it is burned and it is rendered completely unreadable
Speaker 1: before it leaves the building. And that is that's the
Speaker 1: level of security they take in that building. One question
Speaker 1: we don't know was this individual how smart a crook
Speaker 1: were they? We know the reporters who publish the story.
Speaker 1: One of the natural inquiries is going to be, particularly
Speaker 1: of the twelve likely suspects, what contexts did they have
Speaker 1: with those reporters? Did they know the reporters Did they
Speaker 1: go to school with the reporters? Do they have emails
Speaker 1: with the reporters? Do they have phone calls with the reporters?
Speaker 1: Do they have text with the reporters. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to any of that. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: these are master criminals or not. But it strikes me
Speaker 1: that it is very possible there is an electronic trail
Speaker 1: or a personal trail. Now, in terms of the consequences,
Speaker 1: if they identify the perpetrator, I am confident the perpetrator
Speaker 1: would be fired on the spot, but instantaneously you would
Speaker 1: lose your job. I am also confident that the perpetrator
Speaker 1: would be disbarred. That assuming the perpetrator was already a
Speaker 1: member of the bar. Sometimes clerks and members of the
Speaker 1: bar sometimes they're not yet. Like I was not yet
Speaker 1: a member of the bar when I was a clerk
Speaker 1: because I didn't I had not yet had time to
Speaker 1: take the bar exam. I took the bar exam right
Speaker 1: when I finished my clerkship. If this clerk, you know,
Speaker 1: presumed clerk, were not yet admitted to the bar, could
Speaker 1: they be preemptively held from from ever entering the bar.
Speaker 1: I don't think any bar would admit this person, I
Speaker 1: think this person's legal career is over if they If
Speaker 1: they are okay, and and by the way, that's a
Speaker 1: big deal. To be a Supreme Court clerk is the
Speaker 1: pinnacle of legal achievement for a student coming out of
Speaker 1: law school. They're only thirty six in the entire country.
Speaker 1: You get a signing bonus at a law firm as
Speaker 1: a Supreme court clerk. I think the current bonus is
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The day you walk
Speaker 1: into the door at the law firm one I was clerking,
Speaker 1: it was fifty grand, so so you can see inflation.
Speaker 1: It makes a big difference. But at a minimum, the
Speaker 1: perpetrator would be fired and would never practice law. But
Speaker 1: there's a very real possibility. So in the course of
Speaker 1: the investigation, the investigators will question the clerks if they
Speaker 1: lie to the federal officers. Section one thousand and one
Speaker 1: or the Federal Criminal Code makes it a felony to
Speaker 1: lie to a federal officer that carries prison time. And
Speaker 1: so if they lie in the course of the investigation,
Speaker 1: I think they should be prosecuted and they should serve
Speaker 1: the maximum prison time possible. If they don't lie. It's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated whether they've in fact violated a
Speaker 1: criminal prohibition or not. I've actually asked my team to
Speaker 1: try to do some deep dive research on that. But
Speaker 1: I think regardless, the penalty should be as significant as
Speaker 1: possible because the damage to the court will be far lasting.
Speaker 1: It is going to make it incredibly difficult for the
Speaker 1: justices to trust the process of deciding cases in a
Speaker 1: collaborative matter, sharing drafts, going back and forth. If people
Speaker 1: treat it as just another political process, that does massive
Speaker 1: damage to the court's ability to do its job. So
Speaker 1: putting this criminal aside, you know, hopefully we can deal
Speaker 1: with this person. They're disbarred, they get thrown in jail
Speaker 1: and alcatraz, and they throw away the key. I almost
Speaker 1: don't even care about that person in spite of the
Speaker 1: attacks on the court and the institutional integrity, because I
Speaker 1: care so much about the case. So I don't want
Speaker 1: them to take away the joy that pro lifers should
Speaker 1: feel here in that it looks right now like the
Speaker 1: Court is going to overrule Row and Casey. This is
Speaker 1: something we've been waiting for for half a century. Sixty
Speaker 1: two million babies have been killed throughout since the Revuewaghe decision.
Speaker 1: So this is huge news unless it isn't. This was
Speaker 1: just a draft from February. So where does the case stand. Well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. And that is the single most dangerous
Speaker 1: thing about this league. The reason in all likelihood that
Speaker 1: this league happened is a left wing law Clark was
Speaker 1: trying to direct political pressure to the five justices to
Speaker 1: cause them to switch their vote. And justices switch their
Speaker 1: votes all the time. It's not a majority opinion, it's
Speaker 1: not a holding of the court until the opinion issues.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's just a draft. And this one
Speaker 1: of the things understand about this league. This is the
Speaker 1: most egregious manifestation of a multi year campaign by Democrats
Speaker 1: to politicize the Court and to pressure it. And you know, look,
Speaker 1: I'll give you some example. So Senator Schumer stood on
Speaker 1: the steps of the Court a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: held a press conference and here's what he said. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will
Speaker 1: pay the price. You won't know what hit you if
Speaker 1: you go forward with these awful decisions. So you had
Speaker 1: then the Senate Minority leader, now the Senate majority leader,
Speaker 1: directly threatening justices if they didn't vote the way he wanted.
Speaker 1: Sheldon Whitehouse is a senior Democrat in the Judiciary Committee.
Speaker 1: He filed an amicus brief in the court stated quote,
Speaker 1: perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands
Speaker 1: it be restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics,
Speaker 1: particularly on the urgent issue of gun control. A nation
Speaker 1: desperately needs it to heal. These are partisan democrats threatening
Speaker 1: and trying to intimidate the court to decide cases the
Speaker 1: way they want. That manifested even further in the campaign
Speaker 1: to pack the court to add four new left wing
Speaker 1: justices and grow it to thirteen. And by the way,
Speaker 1: not just that. So there's a whole dark money network,
Speaker 1: what's called the Arabella network of wealthy leftist who played
Speaker 1: wage dark money campaigns on judicial confirmations. They went to
Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh's house trying to intimidate him personally and threaten
Speaker 1: his family with Justice Brier, the reliably liberal democrat Justice
Speaker 1: Brier Demand Justice, which is which is the kind of
Speaker 1: main front group for the leftist launched a campaign to
Speaker 1: force justice Brior to retire, including creating a mobile billboard
Speaker 1: truck to pressure Justice Brier. These are partisan Democrats and
Speaker 1: so after this league happened, let me tell you what
Speaker 1: some of these leftist activists have said. Guy named Brian Fallon,
Speaker 1: who is the executive director of Demand Justice, used to
Speaker 1: work for Chuck Schumer. He tweeted out, quote, Scotus leaks
Speaker 1: are good elite lawyers on both the left and right,
Speaker 1: treating the court as precious. All these years have been
Speaker 1: given cover to an institution that is wholly unaccountable. The
Speaker 1: veil off. There's another guy, another leftist guy named Ian Millheiser,
Speaker 1: who tweeted the following serious seriously shout out to whoever
Speaker 1: the hero was within the Supreme Court who said ef it,
Speaker 1: although he didn't abbreviate f ef it. Let's burn this
Speaker 1: place down. That is what the left is doing with
Speaker 1: ending the filibuster, with trying to take over federal elections.
Speaker 1: They're trying to burn the Senate down. They're trying to
Speaker 1: destroy our institutions, and this league reflects the manifestation of
Speaker 1: that multi year campaign to burn the court down. And
Speaker 1: their activists are cheering this. So will it work? Senator.
Speaker 1: Will this pressure campaign and the league and the whole
Speaker 1: operation here, will it work to pressure one of the
Speaker 1: five justices to flip the vote? Are we going to
Speaker 1: see the ruling anytime soon? Are they going to wait
Speaker 1: for a month or two, or are we going to
Speaker 1: get it? We've already seen a draft from February. What
Speaker 1: is the status of the case right now? So I
Speaker 1: don't think it will work. The Chief Justice today put
Speaker 1: out a statement saying that it will not work, that
Speaker 1: it will not intimidate the court. This is an obvious
Speaker 1: attempt to pressure the justices to change their votes, and
Speaker 1: I think it is likely to backfire, that it's likely
Speaker 1: to cause them to dig in even more. Because for
Speaker 1: any justice at this point, when it's publicly known that
Speaker 1: you were voting one way, for you to give into
Speaker 1: the political pressure and flip would do possibly permanent damage
Speaker 1: to the credibility of the court. It would be to
Speaker 1: transform the court into a nakedly political body. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: I think nobody is more dismayed about this than John Roberts.
Speaker 1: Even though according to the Politico report, he doesn't agree
Speaker 1: with overturning versus Wade, he cares deeply about the institutional
Speaker 1: credibility of the Court. As you know, I know John
Speaker 1: Roberts very very well. I am certain he is horrified,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think I have no doubt all
Speaker 1: nine Justices are horrified. I mean to give you a
Speaker 1: sense of the character of the place. I clerked for
Speaker 1: Chief Justice Rehnquist nineteen ninety six to nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: At the time there was a tradition where the law
Speaker 1: clerks for each justice would go and have lunch with
Speaker 1: each of the other justices. It's very cool tradition. So
Speaker 1: you got to go have lunch with each of the
Speaker 1: other eight. At the time, I clerked Byron White, who
Speaker 1: was a retired justice, but he still went into work,
Speaker 1: and we very much wanted to have lunch with Byron White.
Speaker 1: He refused to have lunch. And the reason he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have lunch is because of the Brethren. So Bob Woodward,
Speaker 1: the reporter of Woodward and Bernstein, wrote the book The Brethren.
Speaker 1: It came out in the seventies and it's like this
Speaker 1: tell all from within the Supreme Court, with lots of
Speaker 1: gossip and lots of internal information about the deliberations of
Speaker 1: the court. A number of law clerks after the fact
Speaker 1: talked with Woodward. There's there's speculation at least one justice,
Speaker 1: likely Potter Stewart, talked with Woodward, and it was a
Speaker 1: scandal at the Court of Massive Proportions. So I read
Speaker 1: The Brethren when I was in high school. I think
Speaker 1: I was fifteen when I read it, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: this like being a Supreme Court law clerks, sounds like
Speaker 1: the most amazing job on the face of the planet.
Speaker 1: I want to do this more than anything else. And
Speaker 1: it worked out that I got to. But ever since
Speaker 1: the Brethren, Byron White said I won't sit down and
Speaker 1: talk to other law clerks. I'll talk to my own clerk,
Speaker 1: but I won't talk to other law clerks because of
Speaker 1: the Brethren. That's and by the way, this was decades
Speaker 1: later that White still would not have lunch with clerks
Speaker 1: from other chambers. I think the repercussions of this will
Speaker 1: also be decades long. But I also think it is
Speaker 1: likely to harden the five justices in the majority of fact.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's impossible Roberts joins them because of
Speaker 1: this league. I doubt it, but the chances aren't zero
Speaker 1: that Roberts writes something that said, this league is unprecedented,
Speaker 1: wholly unjustified, an assault on the integrity of the court.
Speaker 1: You know, the closest analogy is the Obamacare case that
Speaker 1: upheld Obamacare, and in that case, after the decision came down,
Speaker 1: there was widespread leaking that Roberts had initially voted to
Speaker 1: strike down Obamacare and then had switched his vote to
Speaker 1: a hold it. And I have no reason to doubt
Speaker 1: that reporting. Now that was prior to this, the greatest
Speaker 1: breach that had ever happened. It was really dismaying to
Speaker 1: see the clerks leaking like this, But that was a
Speaker 1: qualitatively different situation because those leaks all came after the fact,
Speaker 1: after the opinion was down, just providing some explanation and context.
Speaker 1: In this instance, the league happened before the opinion was issued,
Speaker 1: and it's an effort to intimidate the justices into changing
Speaker 1: their votes. It's why it's a threat on the independence
Speaker 1: of the judiciary, because it's designed to try to move
Speaker 1: their votes. I think the effect will be the opposite,
Speaker 1: and that it will harden them because no justice wants
Speaker 1: to show that they're so unprincipled they can be moved
Speaker 1: by this. Right now, before I let you go, Senator.
Speaker 1: I know it's been a very long day and there's
Speaker 1: still much more to do, but I've got to turn
Speaker 1: to your particular branch of government now because one of
Speaker 1: the consequences of this league is you've got all of
Speaker 1: the elected Democrats up to and including Joe Biden saying
Speaker 1: that we need to codify Roe versus Weight into law.
Speaker 1: If the Court is going to behave in this irresponsible
Speaker 1: manner and strike down row View Wade, then we need
Speaker 1: a national pro abortion law. Can Joe Biden get that done?
Speaker 1: I do not believe so. I think he can pass
Speaker 1: it through the House. They've got a majority in the House,
Speaker 1: and I think the Democrats will stick together, and you
Speaker 1: may have a couple of Republicans in the House. I
Speaker 1: don't I haven't followed the kind of abortion lines in
Speaker 1: the House, but there may well be some pro choice
Speaker 1: Republicans in the House. In the Senate, he will not
Speaker 1: get it done because to get it done will require
Speaker 1: sixty votes because of the filibuster he would get. He'll
Speaker 1: get all fifty Democrats and I'm sure we'll vote on it.
Speaker 1: He will get Susan Collins, and I think he will
Speaker 1: likely get Lisa Murkowski, you get to fifty two, I
Speaker 1: don't know that you get any higher. The other forty
Speaker 1: eight are on record that Row is wrong in this case.
Speaker 1: I filed an amicus brief with the court along with
Speaker 1: Mike Lee and Josh Holley, arguing to the court specifically
Speaker 1: that it should overturn Roe versus Wade. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any universe in which we get to sixty votes.
Speaker 1: So I assume the Democrats will try to force a
Speaker 1: vote on it, and they'll lose the vote. Now, there
Speaker 1: is some danger that Schumer. In fact, I think it
Speaker 1: is certain that Schumer will use this to try to
Speaker 1: end the filibuster. Right, there's some danger he succeeds, and
Speaker 1: if this becomes the issue they blow up the filibuster on,
Speaker 1: they will have succeeded in in permanently damaging two branches
Speaker 1: of government instead of just one. So you think there
Speaker 1: is a chance that, as they've already said explicitly, I
Speaker 1: think that not only will they try to get rid
Speaker 1: of the filibuster on this issue, but they would actually
Speaker 1: succeed in doing so. They could get a maybe a
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin or a Kurston cinema or who knows. I
Speaker 1: think it is possible. I don't know that it would happen,
Speaker 1: but I think their plan is to try one fast point.
Speaker 1: I don't believe any Democrats senator has condemned the League today.
Speaker 1: If they have, I haven't seen it and I was
Speaker 1: watching for it. It is ominous that the Democrats are
Speaker 1: not even willing to condemn the League, and it everyone
Speaker 1: should condemn. The League is as grossly a gross violation
Speaker 1: of trust. And it's ominous that if Democrat senators did so,
Speaker 1: I didn't see it. Wow, that is spooky and does
Speaker 1: maybe tell you something about how they're thinking about a
Speaker 1: national abortion law or ending the filibuster. On that scary note,
Speaker 1: we must leave you. We will see you on Apple podcast, YouTube, Spotify,
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Speaker 1: the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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