Members of the Supreme Court should be investigated for role in insurrection

At least two members of the dominant Trump faction on the Supreme Court are worthy of being investigated for their possible roles in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Justice Samuel Alito was considered the “go-to” member of the court by one-time Donald Trump election challenge attorney Sidney Powell. Powell, whose veracity on a number of issues has been shown to be severely lacking, may have acted out of character by revealing the game plan behind Trump’s encouragement of his supporters halting the congressional certification of the Electoral College count on January 6.

Powell and John Eastman, another Trump election challenge attorney, as well as Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) were attempting to have Alito issue a Supreme Court emergency injunction halting the January 6 certification process by Congress under the provisions of the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. Powell, in a September 24 interview with a right-wing media outlet, indicated that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) were involved with Gohmert’s and Powell’s gambit to have Alito stop the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The Trump coup conspirators had the ultimate aim of decertifying the electoral votes of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which would have thrown the election into the House where the Republicans have a majority of state delegations. A majority of state delegation votes for Trump would have “re-elected” him as president.

It has become clear that the purpose of the siege of the Capitol was to delay congressional certification of the Electoral College vote long enough for Alito to stop the process entirely and give time for Trump and his allies in Congress to invoke the 12th Amendment.

On January 2, 2021, just four days prior to the siege of the Capitol, Eastman, Trump, and GOP state legislators from Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania conspired in a Zoom call to pressure Vice President Mike Pence, as the ceremonial president of the Senate, to either reject the electoral votes of the four states or accept a rival slate of Trump electors, thus switching the states’ votes from Biden to Trump and handing a second term to the scheming president. When Eastman met with Pence on January 5, the vice president, who had seriously considered breaking with the Constitution and assist Trump in retaining the White House by hook or crook, was advised by his vice presidential counsel, Greg Jacob; two conservative legal scholars – John Yoo and former federal judge Michael Luttig – all members of the right-wing Federalist Society; and former Vice President Dan Quayle that the vice president had no constitutional authority to either alter or change the Electoral College vote count. Luttig had once been described as a “mini Scalia,” a reference to the right-wing late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Eastman’s support for the outrageous conspiracy theories on the 2020 election that were advanced by Giuliani, Powell, and others eventually cost him his job as dean of the Chapman University Law School.

Alito would have been a natural choice for the election coup plotters to seek an election certification injunction. Alito was very sensitive about being linked to the Mafia, especially when it came to his home town in New Jersey, West Caldwell. One of Alito’s first public statements after being confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court in 2006 was his criticism in a speech at Rutgers University of the popular television series, “The Sopranos,” which depicted a fictional Italian-American mafiosi family living in North Caldwell, next door to Alito in West Caldwell.

Alito referenced the “insidious connection popular culture often makes between being a gangster and being Italian.” Alito was also unhappy that pizza restaurants used the names Little Caesar’s, Godfather’s, and Capone’s. Alito also denounced the connection of New Jersey to the Italian mob, stating, “You have a trifecta—gangsters, Italian-Americans, New Jersey—wedded in the popular American imagination.” This editor is a native of New Jersey and Alito did protest a bit too much. The reason why the mob is connected to New Jersey is precisely because it is connected to New Jersey. A cursory glance at New Jersey history will show that after the 1920s and 30s, when it was the German-American community that dominated politics in New Jersey, that dominance was eclipsed by Italian-Americans.

Alito would have had everyone believe that the mob and Atlantic City was purely in one’s imagination. It wasn’t in Donald Trump’s. His chosen enforcers for his casinos in Atlantic City were those working for Atlantic City and Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, Sr., who, conveniently for Trump, died on January 13, 2017—seven days before Trump became president—while serving a sentence at Butner Penitentiary in North Carolina. On October 10, 1989, three executives of the Trump Organization and their pilot and co-pilot died in a helicopter crash over the Garden State Parkway, just outside of Atlantic City. The three executives were scheduled to be interviewed by the FBI on reported ties between Trump and the Scarfo organization, particularly Trump’s contracts to Scarfo’s Atlantic City cement business, and Russian money laundering through Trump’s casinos.

From 1977 to 1980, Alito served as assistant u.s. attorney in the District of New Jersey. This was the period when Trump, using mob construction contractors, began building his casinos in Atlantic City. In 1987, Alito became the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. This was during the time that the FBI and state law enforcement in New Jersey and Pennsylvania began investigating the Trump casinos’ links to Scarfo rackets and Russian mobsters. Alito also, for a little over a year, worked closely with his counterpart, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one Rudolph Giuliani.

It was while Alito was in his position as the chief federal prosecutor in New Jersey that the investigation of Trump’s mob ties and the possible murder of the three Trump executives and their pilots was dropped. In 1990, Alito became a justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, all principally involved in Trump’s mob activities.

Alito would, of course, be the justice of choice for Trump’s coup plotters, even more so than the justices he picked for the court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Then there is Clarence Thomas. The role of his wife, Ginni Thomas, in promoting the January 6th events on her Facebook page, resulted in her apologizing to her husband’s former law clerks. She wrote, “I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions.” A rift had opened up on the Thomas Clerk World email group between former Thomas staffers over January 6. One of those active in the group was none other than Trump election attorney John Eastman, who bragged about seeking the truth about the 2020 election. That brought an angry response from another former Thomas clerk, Stephen F. Smith, a Notre Dame law professor and a faculty colleague of Amy Coney Barrett: ““If by ‘truth’ you mean what actually happened, as opposed to a false narrative, then I agree. I hope (and trust) that you—and everyone on this list—agree that the search for truth doesn’t in any way justify insurrection, trying to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, attacking police officers, or making common cause with racists and anti-Semites bent on wanton violence and lawlessness.”

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2021 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

If need be, Alito, Clarence Thomas, and his wife should be subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on January 6th. If they refuse, they should be charged with contempt of Congress and, of course, they can always just “tell it to the judge.”

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2021 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).