The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together. Fascinating week, a lot happening. But let me do some explaining. Let me do some explaining today ’cause this is very important, and I haven’t been laying this out well enough, so, welcome to the Pro America Report, by the way. ProAmericaReport.com, proamericareport.com. Go over there and sign up for the emails that come from that, it’s a substack. But also go to PhyllisSchlafly.com and sign up there for the daily WYNK.
Now here’s what’s so interesting. As we talked about and I previewed last week, late last week, on December 8th, the U.S. Supreme Court had its luncheon, the, lunch, where the Supreme Court justices meet for lunch, and they conference and they vote on what cases to take for review. So that’s called, you petition the court for certiorari. A review, you petition the Court for review. It’s a called a cert petition, so certiorari is the phrase and it’s a shortened to cert, CERT. You’ll sometimes see that.
So you file a a a cert petition and you say to the Supreme Court, hey, this is an issue that’s really important. We need you to take it up. There’s this conflict in law. There’s this incomplete understanding. There’s this miscarriage of justice. And you file that with the court. And at one of these conferences on Fridays. At lunch, they vote on this. Now, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases are denied Cert, CERT, certiorari. The petition for certiorari is denied. Most of them 98% are denied, even though people that are petitioning this US Supreme Court have, you know, real serious claims, and that for them it’s the, you know, be all and end all, but they just don’t have enough for the court to take it up. So. It is. It is shrouded in some secrecy, meaning there’s no minutes taken. They don’t publish the notes later. There may be notes that people do take. There may be tallies kept by the justices and by the individuals, or even, but it’s not official. It’s an informal setting where they hash this out. And I think to some extent. They’re comfortable enough with each other. They actually discuss it and talk about it and all that so now.
What what we have been waiting for. For for a a period of a few months was the petition for review. The cert petition. In the cases of January 6th, there are three of them that have to do with section 1512, the the 18 USC, the the Code, the Criminal Code Section 1512, a particular felony charge, obstruction of official proceeding. We’ve talked about it a bunch of times.
The obstruction of official proceeding law is in the Criminal Code. It’s in the witness tampering section, and it was passed in the period of years. Couple years after Enron, almost 20 years ago. And it was designed for witness tampering and designed for proceedings that had to do with evidence and have to do with destroying evidence and and blocking What’s going on. It was not designed and I think it’s improperly being applied to the situation where Mike Pence gaveled out an official proceeding, and therefore they said, aha, you protesters of January 6 or you, Donald Trump, who talked about the need to pause the the electoral process count to get some more clarity on what might have gone wrong. That that somehow that gaveling out was an official proceeding that was obstructed by your gathering at the Capitol. And so up on appeal this is gone. And it’s been, you know, up on appeal from the DC District Court. Then that goes to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. And there was a kind of mixed ruling. It’s not. It’s not exactly clear, and therefore the Supreme Court seems like a good place to go. But you still have to get it taken up. So on December 8th last week or so, the Meeting took place. The luncheon meeting on the Friday afternoon, this review process and After the meeting on Friday afternoon, there was one case where the court announced, Yep, we’re taken Cert. We’re taking this case. We want to hear the arguments, get ready and they said nothing else. And then on Monday morning, they published a document that denied Cert to 100 plus cases and didn’t comment on the three that have to do with 1512, obstruction official proceeding. Which means it’s being relisted for the next time the justices get together for lunch in one of these conferences to vote on it. Now what I didn’t know and I learned in this process was that it is common but not required. Remember, it’s an informal process, but it’s common for a matter that is going to be taken up by the Court to be relisted. At least once. And I think that’s done because they want to give each other a chance to discuss it, to fight about it to whatever. Again, it’s informal, it’s not. And nobody know. Nobody knows exactly why this happens, but it’s what they say happens, and probably because if it’s controversial, it lets one of the judges write an opinion. Write, you know a dissenting opinion. In fact, there was a dissenting opinion. RFK Jr. tried to intervene in the Missouri V Biden case. That has to do with censorship. And it was denied. And and Justice Alito wrote a two page dissent saying I would have allowed him in on this. Because there’s too much at stake, so it may be that this relisting occurs to allow some time to happen. But either way.
What we now know. Is that the 1512 charge, the question of whether this this obstruction of official proceeding and you know what it what it’s? How it’s being used in this matter is going to be taken up, Is delayed now until the first days of the. New Year, the first days of the New Year. In fact, it will be likely be the Monday. They’ll they’ll have their Friday conference, they’ll decide it. It may or it probably won’t be public and Monday on the 8th of of January, just three years, almost three years to the day since January 6th, there will be a a. A A statement of whether they it took cert.
And then if they took cert, what you can guarantee is there’s going to be a briefing schedule and oral arguments and a decision by June, late June of that year. But it won’t be faster and therefore you you I don’t know how the judge in the in the in the court in DC. Holds Donald Trump to the to the the schedule that they have, which is I think March 5th. So this is a big Deal. This is a very big deal.
And it means that there’s something going on here that means there’s something going on here. And I think it is likely to mean that they’re going to take it up and it could be a very big deal. And I think the, I think that the reality is, again, if any of these cases get taken up on appeal to the US Supreme Court. They get accepted, then it’s it’s going to be it’s going to be A monstrously big deal, and I think my bet right now is if they do this, it’s just going to delay everything till after the election. And I kind of feel like that’s the way it’s headed because even though you say, well, these judges and these prosecutors are hard core and they’re anti Trumper and they don’t want to Be delayed. They’re Still swayed by the environment that they’re in. And and the public and the political ramifications.
And that and that the reality is the the reality is. The the that they will be swayed to not be seen as over the top. I think.
I think maybe I’m wrong. I may be being too optimistic. I I just know that at a certain point when the winds have blown a certain way that they it will change how they react. And I think if the Supreme Court takes this basically the Supreme Court Will be saying to The lower courts wait until after the election. You, you just wait until after the election, you can try all these cases starting in November or December of next year, January of next year. But you can’t do this now. Justice Alito’s opinion in that RFK, the dissent, and he had filed in the RFK opinion, he basically said, you know, a presidential election is too big a deal. There’s too much at stake. You know, you can’t have the someone who was opposed in this case, it was RFK, Jr. and Biden, who is being silenced or being limited in his rights. And I think that’s how they feel. I think that’s a a big way To understand what’s going on, so big deal could be a big deal.
And again what you need to know and which I’m trying to walk you through is what the process is and what the process is that if you have a complaint, 1512 is wrong, you take it up to the Supreme Court, you have to wait till they take cert, CERT certiorari, A petition for certiorari petition for review is what it’s called. And then that cert petition. Is either denied or it’s accepted, and if it’s accepted then you have your case. You brief it and you argue it, and that’s where it looks like this is headed, so we’ll see, though we’ll see as I I, I one of the lawyers who I really trust, who’s really smart about this, said one, you know, used to be that you’d say, well, if you’re going to be relisted, it almost certainly going to be taken up and he said. Turns out in that case it was, they waited to relist it so that there could be a dissent written because it wasn’t being taken up. So there’s no guarantees. And again, this isn’t a transparent process, it’s the private workings of the court. It’s the private way the court is deciding what to do, and that’s what’s happening. So there you have. That’s what you need to know.
Alright, we’re gonna take a break. We’ll come back. We’ve got a lot more John Schlafly will be on check out his work. John Schlafly and Andy Schlafly’s columns are archived over at Phyllisschlafly.com. Well worth a close look and listen to his interviews there. And read the archives and we will take a break. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Don’t forget visit phyllisschlafly.com. Sign up for the daily WYNK and proamericareport.com. Sign up for the sub stack updates. Be right back.
