The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Hey, we need to talk about draining the swamp today. Draining the swamp. And before we get to that, let me remind you, please visit ProAmericaReport.com, Proamericareport.com – sign up for the Daily Email there. The Daily Email is called What You Need to Know. The Daily Email goes out at 08:00 A.m. East coast, 05:00 A.m. Pacific time.
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Now today what we need to know, what you need to know. We’ve watched something happen in Washington that’s totally fake. Do you know that? It’s totally fake and nobody noticed it! I didn’t notice it until I read a piece in The Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. I had not noticed this. Totally fake. We all watched as the United States Senate had hearings. They received a nomination and they had hearings. The nomination was for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be moved from the DC Court of Appeals to the US Supreme Court.
Joe Biden made the nomination. He sent it up to the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee had hearings. They voted the nomination out of committee. It went to the floor of the Senate and it was voted on. And then nothing happened. Why? Because the law requires that the President of the United States nominate someone to fill the vacancy of a Supreme Court Justice when one occurs. And Justice Breyer did not resign. He just said he intends to resign later this year.
Now you say why does it matter, Ed? What’s the big deal? Well, A, it’s against the law, right? The law actually says that. B, it’s a separation of powers question in this case. Literally all three branches of the government are touched by it. The judiciary has a vacancy. The vacancy lifetime appointment is to be filled by an appointment of the executive, the other branch, and the third branch, the legislature gets advise and consent. It’s literally touching all three branches of our revered government. And it was a lie. It was a fraud.
Now why would they do that? Well, you can tell why Biden and the Democrats want to do it. And Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer… they wanted to get it over with. But why would our founders contemplate that the appointment should be made when there’s a vacancy? Well, one reason is it’s not like the vacancy is only for a term. It’s forever. It’s a lifetime appointment. So let’s say that the Cabinet, let’s say that the Cabinet Secretary, let’s say Department of Justice. Merrick Garland announces (attorney general), he’s going to retire on July 1.
Well, could he be fired at any time by the President? Yes, he serves at the complete will of the President. It’s a subsidiary position to the President. So the President can say, okay, good. Well, I’m going to nominate your successor and ask them to hold hearings because I want the advice and consent, but it’s not required because I have control. If I don’t like the person who I nominate and gets in office, I could fire him or her.
In other words, it’s all within one branch. The checks and balances are within one branch. The executive has control. I’m not sure I’m explaining it well enough, but the executive has control. Therefore, what he does with his own department, it may be weird. It may be weird for the Senate to say confirm Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to be the next attorney general when there’s no vacancy. But that’s kind of weird in one department. The executive. Weird in one branch, executive branch. Unorthodox in one branch.
But the law says you can only replace a justice when there’s a vacancy. And this has not happened before. I think it happened in the piece, the Wall Street Journal piece. There was some times where they sort of tried to do it, but they made it so that it was as soon as the confirmation happened, the vacancy occurred. In other words, contingent on the vacancy. I resign effective person being confirmed. So Ketanji Jackson was voted whatever date then Breyer’s out.
That’s not what we did here. Why would it matter if you had to wait until a vacancy? Well, for one thing, it shows the stability of the system, that you’re not waiting. But another thing, you would have to do it in time. You’d have to do it in the time that you’re in. So let’s say that Breyer retires on July 1. But by July 1, there’s not a Senator from New Mexico because the current Senator of New Mexico had been hospitalized for a stroke, which happened, or we’re at war, or there are three more vacancies because other justices quit, or… or… or…
We have elections supposedly on an election day because the people should vote about who they’re picking at the moment in time that they have to judge. I’m going to vote on Election Day, not six months earlier because you want all the information you can have. That’s my opinion, by the way.
But the law in this case is really clear, and the fact that nobody’s objecting, to me, is classic swamp stuff. This is classic. I had a friend of mine tell me, yeah, well, it’s probably better to do it this way because someday Clarence Thomas or Justice Alito will probably retire. And when he retires, we might have the same situation, we want to do it. I don’t know. Let’s see when we get there. Right now, I think that the senators should have said, you can nominate the person.
You can say, I’m going to put Ketanji Jackson up and she’s going to be up, and I’d ask you to consider her when Breyer’s gone. But if Breyer’s not gone yet, he’s still on the bench. We have this sort of justice in waiting? Could President Biden nominate a justice to replace the next justice he wants? Let’s say that Kagan says I’m going to retire a year and a half from now. Could he nominate the person, get her confirmed and have her just be pending there? Is that possible?
It seems to me, again, because of the separation of powers, the balance of powers between the branches, there’s at least an argument to me. I’m not sure how would you litigate this. How would you go to the court and say, I don’t know what, go into federal court and say the justice has been voted on by the Senate. She can’t be voted on because there’s no vacancy. I don’t know how you do that practically, which is what the swamp counts on.
The swamp counts on the fact that there’s no way for us to object and everybody’s sort of in on the deal, the Kabuki theater charges on. But A) it’s a terrible precedent, B) it’s just wrong, and C) nobody mentioned it until the Wall Street Journal. I mean, I guess that’s fair enough. The Wall Street Journal wrote it up a few days ago. There’s a column there, but nobody even brought it up.
Why didn’t somebody bring it up in the process? Like, say, hey, Justice Brown, Justice Brown Jackson, do you think it’s unorthodox that you would be nominated for a position that’s not vacant? And what if Breyer decides on June 30 that he’s really not done? What happens if Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which are the big cases that are sort of being reconsidered because there’s an abortion case, the Dobbs case, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were actually argued in one year and decided another term later. They re-argued them.
So what if Breyer says they’re going to be re-arguments on the Dobbs case, I’m going to stay on the court. Do we have a year and a half of a justice in waiting and could the new Senate the new U.S. Senate… let’s say that the Senate is flipped to Republican and so next January, November the Republicans win the Senate, and then January they swear in a new Senate could the new Senate say well, we’re not going to honor that.
Tell me why they couldn’t. I think they could. It’s just pure chaos. It’s yet again where the swamp doesn’t care about We the People, doesn’t care about the rules, doesn’t care about how things actually should be, the right way to do things, and they’re doing it their own way. It’s really inappropriate, it’s really improper. It’s just plain wrong. And I’m so sick of the swamp all the time. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not be confirmed because no vacancy exists yet and everybody knows it and nobody told us. Nobody stopped it.
We’re just all supposed to take it because why? Because the swamp knows better. The swamp knows better than We the People. The swamp knows better than the Constitution. It’s outrageous. All right. Visit proamericareport.com. Sign up for what you need to know like this segment today’s WYNK. We’ll be right back. Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
