The Roberts One-Step (TEASER)
This is a subscriber-only episode about the Real John Roberts, as rendered in a New York Times exposé about the Chief Justice's role in shaping Trump-related jurisprudence and turning the Court into a tool of the ex-President.
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5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Lena Richards. Leon Neyfakh and Andrew Parsons provide editorial support. Our researcher is Jonathan DeBruin, and our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations.
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Transcript
It's leaking!
Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.
On this premium episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about revelations contained in a recent New York Times investigation into the role played by Chief Justice John Roberts in a series of cases concerning former President Trump in the 2020 election.
The Times story, based on internal court communications, made plain that Roberts is not actually a moderate and not at all impartial when it comes to his fellow Republicans.
Here we have the Supreme Court leaking, again leaking, this time, internal memos about the decision-making process, which doesn't seem quite as patient and deliberative as they want to present it publicly.
Of course, the takeaway from the Times report will come as no surprise to anyone who's been listening to 5-4.
The difference is there's now written proof beyond Roberts' own published opinions.
This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.
Welcome to 5-4,
where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have robbed our nation, like the NYPD robbing a small business owner.
I'm Peter.
I'm here with Rhiannon.
Hey.
And Michael.
Hey.
So the police chief resigned due for that, right?
Yeah, because he was doing old-school mafioso shakedown.
Protection racket shit.
Yeah.
Fucking full-on full-on protection racket
shit with uh with small businesses normal though normal cop behavior yeah normal cop behavior usually it's not the commissioner of the nyp i will say is it usually not
you
i
i don't want to say this is unexpected but i am disappointed that the 11 billion dollars a year they get isn't quite enough they got to shake down some poor bar owner for two grand on top of that.
Your fake overtime bullshit is not enough.
Right.
Time and a half for candy crush while you huddle up talking about how much you hate your spouses in the subway.
That's not enough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Today we are talking about a bombshell bit of reporting from the New York Times.
Jody Cantor and Adam Liptak at the Times last week wrote about the recent reign of Chief Justice John Roberts.
They gained access to private memos between the justices and spoke with anonymous sources within the court to get some color on several of the highest profile cases from this past term, all of them indirectly or directly concerning Donald Trump.
So we wanted to talk about it because every time someone shines a little light inside of the court, we briefly witness its grotesque machinations for one terrible moment.
It's like, I'm sure there's a name for this shot in horror movies.
There's sometimes a very brief shot of something awful that quickly cuts away, and you couldn't quite see it.
You didn't have enough time to process it.
You only have this vague impression of what you've seen.
Yeah, that's what reading a New York Times article about the Supreme Court is like to me.
It's never quite enough to understand the scope of the rot within the court, only enough to let you know that it's there and it is upsetting.
So the piece goes through what John Roberts was up to behind the curtain in several big cases.
Trump v.
Anderson, the case about whether Colorado could disqualify Trump from the ballot, Fisher v.
United States, the case about the charges against January 6th rioters, and Trump v.
United States, the case about Trump's immunity from prosecution.
So I guess we just go through these one by one and talk about what we've learned, and then we can talk about maybe a diagnosis for the media or something.
I do just want to say that, like, every time we get some of these stupid things.
Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe.
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