Blank Check Supreme Court: Tales from the Court, Senate & DOJ

Andrew Weissmann (0:04)

Hello, and welcome back to Main Justice. It is October 5th. Wow, we're getting closer and closer.

Mary McCord (0:13)

Which is.

Andrew Weissmann (0:14)

What is it?

Mary McCord (0:15)

The first Monday in October. You know what that means.

Andrew Weissmann (0:19)

Oh, that's so interesting. Okay, so it means the Supreme Court is back in session, but I'm sure most of the people listening to this are like, when were they out of session because they've been doing so much. And frankly, the Supreme Court itself probably feels that way. To, I am Andrew Weissmann, that voice you heard or face you are seeing is Mary McCord.

So that is a really good segue. I like how we're going to just have, it's like, that's it for the chit chat.

Mary McCord (0:47)

Jumping in.

Andrew Weissmann (0:48)

It's because for those people who are fans of Main Justice and for those people who are hopefully new fans of Main Justice, we are again going to have a jam-packed segment, and so it actually a whole show that's jam-packed. So with that, Mary, and with that preview of what October 5th is, what I was thinking is it's a month away before we could have a lot of both political news and we may sadly have a lot of legal news. You and I are both thinking a lot about the legal issues that could come up.

At the time or right after the midterms, more on that later. But what are we going to be discussing today?

Mary McCord (1:33)

So we will start before we get to the Supreme Court, we will start with some reflections on Jack Smith's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on what seems now like eons ago, but was actually just last week.

Andrew Weissmann (1:45)

Although I have to say, that is true. Although the Senator Eric Schmitt, It's living on.

It is so ingrained, because it is almost like having watched in real life, and in real time, a Saturday Night Live skit. Because, I mean, it was that absurd and iconic. But we will both give sort of our top lines of what we thought.

Mary McCord (2:14)

Then we will talk about two cert grants that were made by the Supreme Court last week. They are not the case up today or tomorrow or Wednesday, but they will be argued this session. And in fact, one's very big. Both involved the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, his immigration policies. And they're really technical, statutory interpretation cases, but they have a huge impact. We'll talk a little bit about that. At the same time, we talk about the Department of Justice going on the attack against judges, particularly federal district court judges in Minnesota, about things that they have said about this mass deportation policy and the way it is impacting their courthouse and their concerns about that. Then we will talk about, really, a whole potpourri of things that have happened and I think are super interesting because the Department of Justice is intimately involved in each one of these things. The dismissal with prejudice of the criminal case against the person who was alleged to have ripped up the lining of the reflecting pool here in Washington, DC.

Andrew Weissmann (3:19)

Mr. Hearn. Yep.

Mary McCord (3:21)

David Hearn. The court reinstating a fired US attorney who had been designated by the court pursuant to statute. Huge.

Andrew Weissmann (3:31)

These are all huge.

Mary McCord (3:32)

A huge issue.

And then the court in the Broadview 6, listeners and viewers will remember this was a case brought against six protesters in Chicago after the ice surge there, which completely fell apart based on misconduct by the prosecutors and all kinds of other things that we talked about at length. And the judge said, I'm gonna look into this misconduct, possible sanctions, et cetera. She's in the midst of this now, and we've got all kinds of things that are blowing up as that is going on. And we'll give maybe some thoughts on what's been happening in Cornell. This is very much a state court type of issue, not a federal court issue, but there's a lot to say about that. Especially for me as somebody who prosecuted sex offenses back in the day.

Andrew Weissmann (4:19)

Right, I was thinking about that, right. So Mary, why don't we start? Yeah, let's start with Jack Smith. And this is one where people who are listening to this or watching it, we're going to assume that you have the main things that he talked about, the blow up with Senator Schmidt. So Mary, what were like your one or two key takeaways? What was your cocktail party takeaways? If you were thinking about it, what does it tell you?