Chief Justice Throws Entire SCOTUS Under Bus in Report

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1:16Michael Popok:Fresh off the presses, we've got Chief Justice Roberts' final retort to Donald Trump to end the year, his final report about the third branch, the judiciary, and boy, does he take gone Donald Trump. Just what you would expect, folks. He goes after Donald Trump for his lawlessness, for his capture of the Department of Justice, for his corruption, his defiance of judges, his attack on individual judges leading to their getting death threats, the attack on the rule of law, the attack on lawyers and law firms and unpopular causes to try to rein him in. Yeah, it does nothing of the sort. It's seven pages of complete and utter pablum.

1:57Michael Popok:It could have been written by ChatGBT. If your seventh grade social studies student in your life had written this, you would tell him or her to go back to the drawing board. I'm Michael Popok with the final report by John Roberts. You know you're in trouble when half of the first page is just a photo of the Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence and other things were signed. and that's how we kick it off. Like he's some sort of Ken Burns documentarian giving you a fourth grade version of how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how they're different, wrapping himself in a flag, devoting one paragraph, this sounds familiar, to actually talking about the third branch and it's only a pep talk.

2:46Michael Popok:Get in there, you've got an oath, do your job. Are we ready, everybody? Everything else that you would want and expect in a reasonable, authentic report is missing. No mention on the attack on the judiciary. No mention about the open warfare between the district courts and the Supreme Court, between the appellate court and the Supreme Court, about the use of the shadow docket. There's no mention of the shadow docket or emergency docket at all. In fact, he cooks the books on his statistics that are put in the back of his report to prove the old saying, you know, there's three types of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

3:34Michael Popok:I pull it all together for you right here. Happy New Year, Midas Touch Network. We're bigger, stronger with you than ever in 2026. that we're going to need to be, because you see what the feckless, weak judiciary is doing about it. 2025 year-end report on the federal judiciary comes out. I'm one of the first readers of it on Jan 1. Can't wait to get my hands on it. In the past, John Roberts was at least a bit more robust, a bit more willing to take on Donald Trump. A couple of veiled references to something that Donald Trump had did or a case before the court. Not this time. Now it's about Thomas Paine and common sense and the Declaration of Independence versus the Constitution.

4:21Michael Popok:That's it. And I got news for him. You obviously haven't read Common Sense, probably the most influential pamphlet in history written at or around the time of our founding by Thomas Paine. Because what Thomas Paine would say about John Roberts and the Supreme Court would go something like this. the Supreme Court, like the monarchists that we left, believe through title, they have superior knowledge and intellect to be able to tell the rest of us what to do. And they are wrong. He would be a critic of John Roberts, not a fan, and of this United States Supreme Court. And this goes on for most of the seven pages, that's it, of John Roberts.

5:08Michael Popok:We get that, we get pictures of Thomas Paine. We get pictures of the Declaration of Independence. This is called make weight. Again, if your seventh grade or younger social studies or history student gave you this to turn in as a report, as a parent to review, you tell them to start all over again. All right, we go through the whole debate. And then things that he just misses the irony of, like the irony that he's relying so heavily on Thomas Paine and Thomas Paine would hate John Roberts and what the MAGA Supreme Court has done. He says on page five, for instance, that the concrete provisions of the 1787 Constitution fell short of honoring the abstract principles set forth in the 1776 Declaration regarding liberty and equality.

6:04Michael Popok:Well, you're doing a good job at screwing up liberty and equality and your rulings, why don't you try to actually move towards the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence in the way that you rule? But of course, that's lost on him. Here's the one, all right, one and a half paragraphs on page seven, and I'll tell you what's missing. Those of us in the third branch must continue to decide the cases before us according to our oath, doing equal right to the poor and the rich. Is that what we're watching? Equality before the court, poor and rich, and performing all of our duties faithfully and impartially under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

6:48Michael Popok:Then he quotes Calvin Coolidge with the following quote, amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. And this is how he ends it. This is commentary. True then, true now. True, well, just write true dat. I have an honor of being a judge. I mean, this is just, you know, you just want to throw up in your mouth. What's missing?

7:27Michael Popok:All right, let's cap off this year. open warfare between the district court judges who are ruling in favor of democracy and justice and the rule of law more than 95 percent of the time in the more than 400 cases before them brought to reign in a lawless department of justice in Donald Trump at war with the United States Supreme Court who is not backing the district court judges and is ruling in favor of Donald Trump on the emergency docket 86 percent of the time. The appellate courts caught in the middle, also at war with the United States Supreme Court in a way I've never seen in 35 years of practice and probably in our history.

8:06Michael Popok:How about that? How about Donald Trump's destabilization of the rule of law and his flouting the rules and undermining our justice system and the third branch through his frequent and constant open defiance of court orders? He's already been found in criminal, improbable, the Justice Department has been found, pardon me,

8:31Michael Popok:the Justice Department has been found in probable criminal contempt and the administration by one judge. They're about to get another case tossed this year for vindictive prosecution in Tennessee. You've got the attacks on individual judges. You have a violence against judges, death threats doxing where's that in the report where is donald trump's capture of the independence of the department of justice and corruption of the department of justice and what it does to our justice system the fact that grand juries are rejecting this justice system this department of justice because they have no faith in it and is not returning indictments juries are doing the same thing judges who do not give the department of justice the uh the assumption or presumption of regularity because nothing is normal in the Department of Justice.

9:23Michael Popok:Where is that? Where is the discussion about ethics at the United States Supreme Court level as Clarence Thomas and the MAGA-6 continue to line their pockets with money from their donors and trips from their donors? Where is that? Nowhere. How about the use of, not just the use of the emergency shadow docket to bring on dozens and dozens of cases, which he conveniently leaves out, John Roberts, in this report from his statistics. But the fact that the Supreme Court MAGA 6 is complicit in empowering, over-empowering the presidency under Donald Trump to defeat the other two branches through the use of the shadow docket, no mention.

10:07Michael Popok:Instead, I got to be subjected to a sophomoric, immature, third grader, fourth grader interpretation of American history like he fell asleep during Ken Burns' American Revolution on PBS recently. Or maybe he left his chat GBT on and that's what came out. Maybe. Let me go to the statistics that he puts to the back. Again, without any commentary and he leaves out big parts of it. Let's start with his overview of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court filings. He starts with sort of bragging about the lower amount of cases that have been filed at the court. So here on page 8 of 10, he puts up a chart about Supreme court cases argued by term.

11:08Michael Popok:When I graduated law school, they were doing about 100 cases a year out of tens of thousands of cases that are filed every year. Now he says it's down to 73 cases this past year. It's a decrease of 9%, everybody. Okay. That's because you took 20 cases on the emergency docket that are not reflected in the stats. These are just Supreme Court cases argued. That means oral argument. That's code word for actual proper writ of certiorari appeals. You know what I mean? Three briefs, oral argument, deliberation, and an opinion, You know, the old fashioned way, the way we expect our decisions. And then a 50 or 100 page opinion with dissents and concurrences that can guide the lower courts instead of one paragraph coming out of a shadow docket and then claiming that that is precedent to go bash district court judges.

12:11Michael Popok:You didn't follow our precedent. And district court judges like Judge Young in Massachusetts are saying that one paragraph was your precedent. What kind of guidance is that? But because he slyly uses the word Supreme Court cases argued, he gets to cut off all the shadow docket. It doesn't mention the shadow docket, doesn't mention it at all, or their complicity in working with the Trump administration effectively to do an end run around and come in the back door to the Supreme Court on a short track, short circuit, no oral argument. You know, just go to your political corners and make a vote. No mention.

12:52Michael Popok:He then talks about the increase in certain courts, of course, under the Trump administration. We have over 400 cases filed against the Trump administration. Is there any wonder that cases about administrative agencies and all other like constitutions is up 12 % and 16 %? That's the Trump effect, don't you think? No mention of it. On criminal cases, listen to this stat. In criminal cases, immigration, criminal immigration, up almost 30%. drugs are down, firearms are flat, violent crime is flat, justice system attacks down 9%, but 27 % up on immigration. Who paid for this? Who's paying for this?

13:39Michael Popok:Who voted for this? But this pablum issued by Roberts tells you everything you need to know that he's completely, it's not only that he's given up because that suggests that he's been in opposition to Donald Trump. He's not in opposition to Donald Trump. He has been since the moment he got onto that court and then got the numbers with the additional bought and paid for members of the Supreme Court by lobby groups like the gun lobby and the abortion lobby, anti-abortion lobby. He finally got the numbers to reshape the court in his image. And all he's wanted to do is empower the presidency and put it above the other branches, including the judiciary.

14:25Michael Popok:And if any other branch is going to get empowered, it's going to be his branch and Congress is going to be a doormat. That's the legacy, among other things, of John Roberts, the worst chief justice in our history. He will go down that way. The destruction of precedent and stare decisis, the destruction of a woman's right to choose, ripping out a constitutional right, first time in our history that a constitutional right once given by the Supreme Court was taken away in the Dobbs decision about a woman's right to choose, the complete destruction of the separation between church and state in ruling after ruling after ruling, allowing the completely unauthorized, unconstitutional reshaping of the relationship between the executive branch, the presidency, the federal government and the U.S.

15:17Michael Popok:people? I mean, I could go on. All that conveniently missed. Instead, I've got to hear, this is how he starts his thing. I'll end it this way. I'll end where he starts. Page one. 250 years ago this week, a recent immigrant to Britain's North American colonies put the finishing touches on a manuscript in which he hoped to express plain truths about his newly adopted home. This is the third grader's version of Thomas Paine Common Sense. I'm Michael Popak I'm glad you're here take a minute come over to Legal AF Substack hit the free subscribe button and thank you all for helping us build our Legal AF Substack we ran a sale over the holidays almost 2 ,000 people joined us come over to Legal AF Substack that's where independent media is living that's where you can support us become a paid member for about 7 bucks a month that keeps us on the air so until my next report I'm Michael Popak can't get your fill of legal af me neither that's why we formed the legal af sub stack every time we mention something in a hot take whether it's a court filing or a oral argument come over to the sub stack you'll find the court filing and the oral argument there including a daily roundup that i do call wait for it morning af what else all the other contributors from legal af are there as well we got some new reporting we got interviews we got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack.

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