Chief Justice Roberts, Norm Eisen, and the appearance of impropriety

Image by Andrea Widburg using AI.

News broke over the last couple of days that one of Chief Justice John Roberts’s good buddies is Norm Eisen, one of the chief instigators of the plot to destroy Donald Trump through Deep State manipulation and lawfare. Under a long-standing federal rule of judicial conduct banning even the “appearance of impropriety,” Justice Roberts’s close relationship with Eisen means he should step down.

We all know who John Roberts is. He’s the squish who leapfrogged from having been an appellate court judge for only two years to suddenly being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Since then, he embedded Obamacare in America and has rather consistently sided with the Court’s activist justices on issues that, as a matter of constitutional law and Supreme Court precedent, deserved originalist outcomes.

Most egregiously, when Roberts presided over the first impeachment against Trump—which conservatives believe was to keep people from learning about Joe Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine through his son Hunter—he ensured that Trump was denied basic due process. To that end, he denied Trump access to any of the proceedings in the House and to Democrat witnesses, and Trump was not allowed to bring his own witnesses. This was the first time in history that impeachment, a proceeding with roots in medieval England, was carried out without due process for the accused. Heck, even a drug dealer would have had more rights.

Not everyone, though, knows much about Norm Eisen, although they should. Eisen rose to prominence in 2007, when he campaigned for his fellow Harvard law classmate, Barack Obama. Obama rewarded Eisen (ironically) with a role in “ethics” and “government reform.” Also ironically, Eisen aggressively pushed for greater government transparency, the very thing that Elon Musk is now making happen and that Democrats are burning Teslas to stop.

Where Eisen really started flexing his muscles, though, was when Trump was elected. It was Eisen who was the architect of the Ukraine impeachment against Trump—again, something conservatives believe was a fraudulent effort intended to stop (and that did stop) Trump from exposing how Biden was manipulating foreign policy to enrich his family. According to the WaPo, Eisen was a “critical force in building the case for impeachment.”

Also, during the Trump years, Eisen was one of the people who sought to destroy professionally and personally John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, Trump’s attorneys during the fraught post-2020 election. This was the first time ever that the government has persecuted lawyers in this way. Eisen is a pure Democrat party hack who has the contacts and intelligence to advance a variety of initiatives that conservatives continue to believe do not align with facts or law.

That’s why it was shocking to learn that Eisen and John Roberts (the same man who denied Trump his due process rights during the impeachment that Eisen orchestrated) are good friends:

According to Norm Eisen—the man who practically wrote the Deep State’s playbook on color revolutions, all things anti-Trump, and lawfare in the US—he and Chief Justice John Roberts are not only good pals, but they even spent a week together in the Czech Republic. According to Norm, the two BFFs were there working on “American rule of law” issues.

Hmm…

Norm was so proud of this that he actually bragged about the trip and made it very clear that Roberts isn’t corrupt—he’s just a “close friend” who happened to fly overseas and stay at Eisen’s posh 150-room palace to collaborate on transatlantic political projects.

Moreover, Eisen has spoken publicly about the fact that Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett (a highly intelligent woman with a small mind and a stunning lack of wisdom who owes her place on the Supreme Court to Trump) dislike Trump and want to block his administration. In other words, it seems Eisen is saying the two justices are pre-deciding cases out of personal animus toward Trump and the agenda that the American people elected Trump to implement:

Some might say, well, just because he’s a Supreme Court justice doesn’t mean Roberts can’t have friends. We want a government that has functional people who can understand each other’s values and speak across the aisle. But that’s really not the case for Supreme Court justices. If their relationships reasonably cast doubt on people’s belief that they can be impartial, they’re done as judges. (And please note, this is different from Clarence Thomas having rich friends who are Republicans but who do not have cases pending in court and are not amongst the most powerful figures in the Republican party.)

It’s not just me saying that. It’s right there, in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges: “Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities.” (Emphasis mine.) In the commentary to that Canon, we learn that,

An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge’s honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired. Public confidence in the judiciary is eroded by irresponsible or improper conduct by judges… A judge must avoid all impropriety and appearance of impropriety. This prohibition applies to both professional and personal conduct.

It’s a sure thing after the Eisen revelations that both Democrats and Republicans believe that Roberts is irredeemably hostile to Trump in a way that impairs his ability to rule impartially on anything involving the administration and, moreover, that he is getting marching orders or, at the very least, gentle guidance from Norm Eisen. Whether one likes this (Democrats) or is horrified (Republicans), it is an unsustainable position for a Supreme Court justice, especially the most powerful member of the Supreme Court.

Roberts should resign immediately, and Coney Barrett should probably follow close behind. Neither can serve anymore in a way consistent with the Code of Conduct, and both will best preserve their reputations and that of the Supreme Court by retiring gracefully.