Dems Float Plan To Push Ailing Justice Sotomayor Off Supreme Court So Biden Can Replace Her Before Trump Is Sworn In

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Democrats are reportedly having serious discussions about mounting a pressure campaign to force ailing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign so Joe Biden can nominate a replacement before President-Elect Donald Trump is sworn in.

After losing their Senate majority to the GOP, Democrats are concerned that Republicans will be “revving up the old conveyor belt of conservative judicial nominees” as soon President-Elect Trump takes office, Politico reported.

For Democrats, this is a hair-on-fire moment. And though the discourse in the media is presently dominated by recriminations about how this all happened, another arguably more urgent conversation is blowing up largely outside of public view: whether to push for 70-year-old Supreme Court Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR to step down while Dems still have the power to approve her replacement.

This isn’t simply some flight of fancy happening among progressive activists online. It’s a conversation members of the Senate are actively engaged in.

A Democrat senator told Politico that the topic of pushing Sotomayor off the Supreme Court “has come up repeatedly this week in talks with their colleagues.”

These “Beltway speculative conversations,” according to Politico, have inevitably hit roadblocks for two reasons:

(1) It’d be a risky play with the party already trying to figure out how to handle a crowded lame-duck session

(2) no senator seems to be offering to be the person to put his or her neck on their line publicly (or even privately) by pushing for Sotomayor to step aside.

When Democrats first floated the idea of jettisoning Sotomayor last year, they were accused of ableism and racism.

The names of possible replacements have been discussed, including the allegedly “moderate” D.C. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was reportedly on Joe Biden’s SCOTUS short list, and has already been vetted.

Another name floated on Friday was none other than Kamala Harris.

On CNN this morning, attorney Bakari Sellers,  a Democrat former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, suggested that Biden could nominate Harris, giving her a new purpose in life after being vanquished by Trump.

Just as Democrat elders forced Biden to quit his campaign after his disastrous debate with Trump, the party could pressure Sotomayor to step down. Harris, of course, quickly replaced Biden as the presidential candidate and could potentially replace Sotomayor on the Supreme Court if Democrats succeed in their pressure campaign.

Sellers suggested the operation could be pushed through before Trump takes the presidency.

“I think that’s actually a very good plan. I think it’s something that should happen,” he said. “You know, Justice Sotomayor has been a more than able justice. I know that she may be having some personal issues that she contends with while serving on the bench. But, you know, I don’t want Justice Sotomayor to be another Ruth Bader Ginsburg in terms of staying too long.”

The plan is not without certain risks for Democrats.

If Sotomayor agreed to resign, “she can sort of resign conditionally on someone being appointed to replace her,” the Democrat senator told Playbook. “But she can’t resign conditioned on a specific person. What happens if she resigns and the nominee to replace her isn’t confirmed and the next president fills the vacancy?”

Then there’s the abbreviated timeline. Democrats would have to convince her to retire immediately, Biden would have to nominate a successor, they would have to figure out how to bring enough senators on board, dodge whatever obstructions Republicans throw in their way and get a whole floor vote before the new Congress is sworn in. There would be no room for error or delay.

“We would have to have assurances from any shaky senator that they would back a nominee in the lame duck, because what do you do if she announces she’s going to step down and then independent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin doesn’t support her and then [Republican Sens.] Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski back off and say they’re not going to support a new nominee?” a senior Democrat told Politico. “Do you just rescind that letter?”

The senator told Politico that the logistics of the operation may well be “insurmountable,” and it might “be better to focus on confirming lower-court judges, filling vacancies Trump can’t later fill himself.”

Sen. Josh Hawley commented on the record Friday: “This is not happening. No way, no how,” he posted on X . “The Senate will not confirm any last-minute Dem Supreme Court nominee between now and January. The next SCOTUS justice will be nominated by Donald J. Trump.”

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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//


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Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

Authored by Eva Fu and Cara Ding via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Chinese agent who tried to bribe the IRS and manipulate the agency into advancing Beijing’s transnational repression of a U.S. nonprofit has received a 20-month prison sentence.

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in White Plains on Jov. 19, 2024. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

U.S. citizen John Chen, 72, was a principal actor in a $50,000 bribery scheme under the direction of a Chinese intelligence official to revoke the nonprofit status of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts.

Shen Yun has long been on the Chinese regime’s target list. Founded in 2006, the company tours around the world to display the ancient Chinese culture that prevailed before the communist takeover of China, while highlighting the human rights abuses under the regime’s rule. It has often drawn attention to the ongoing persecution of the meditation group Falun Gong.

Chen pleaded guilty in July after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors. He has spent the 16 months since his arrest in May 2023 in detention, and he will spend another four months in federal custody.

He will also forfeit $50,000 and face three years of supervised release after serving the full prison term.

For several months in 2023, Chen had been trying to move a fraudulent whistleblower complaint to help the Chinese Communist Party “topple” Falun Gong, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the whistleblower complaint was “facially deficient” and invoked propaganda rhetoric typical of Chinese authorities.

During those conversations, Chen emphasized that Chinese leadership was “very generous” in financial support for the plan, according to the court filing.

“After this-this-this thing is done,” the court document quoted Chen as saying, “reward for work will surely be given at that time.”

Chen and another co-conspirator, Lin Feng, who served 16 months of detention, paid $5,000 cash bribes to an undercover agent posing as an IRS agent. They promised an additional $50,000 for opening an investigation along with 60 percent of any awards from the complaint if it went through.

It was “a significant bribe,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard said at the sentencing hearing. He noted that the undercover officer didn’t specify an amount.

John Chen (L) poses for a photo at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in Beijing in 2019. Department of Justice

“The defendant chose the amount,” he said.

Both Chen and Lin had traveled to Orange County in upstate New York, where Shen Yun is based, to surveil Falun Gong practitioners there, according to a court filing.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the sentencing was a reminder that “the U.S. justice system will hold accountable those who attempt to engage in malicious transnational repression on American soil.”

“John Chen aligned himself with the PRC government and its goals to harass and intimidate the Falun Gong, a long-standing target of PRC repression. In doing so, Chen boldly attempted to bribe an individual he believed to be an IRS agent to corrupt the administration of the U.S. tax code and pervert the IRS whistleblower program,” he said in a statement on Nov. 19. “This Office will not tolerate efforts like this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States.”

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams addresses the media in New York City on Nov. 2, 2023. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Both Chen’s son and his lawyer declined to comment after walking out of the courtroom.

While Chen’s son, three China-based siblings, two ex-wives, and fiancée have all written letters asking for leniency and describing him as a man who loves the United States, the prosecutors disagreed.

In a Nov. 5 memo, they argued that a 30-month prison sentence—the longest under the sentencing guideline—would be appropriate because of the seriousness of the case and the need to deter criminal conduct, “particularly in cases of a foreign power’s repression of a disfavored group within the borders of the United States.”

“The defendant has no mitigating motives or external factors justifying his offense,” the prosecutors wrote, noting that Chen was “not motivated by poverty” and that there was no evidence of Chinese officials’ pressure.

The curtain call for Shen Yun Performing Arts at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City on Jan 11, 2015. Larry Dai/Epoch Times

Prosecutors noted that Chen had repeatedly referred to Chinese officials as his “friends” and that during the bribery scheme, he “called them ‘blood brothers,’ and described how ‘we’—Chen and his PRC Government friends—‘started this fight’ against the founder of the Falun Gong ‘twenty, thirty years ago.’”

The memo displayed photos obtained from Chen’s electronic devices and online accounts showing him at a major military parade in Beijing celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in 2019. Another photo showed Chen shaking hands with communist leader Xi Jinping.

“Chen was extraordinarily proud of his history with the PRC Government and, in particular, his meeting with Xi,” the memo states, citing a recorded call in which he bragged that he had “climbed, climbed, climbed to this position,” and that “Uncle Xi” met him “three times in 10 years.”

Chen had also featured those three meetings, along with a photo, in a 2020 digital rĂŠsumĂŠ, according to the memo.

Chen was aligned with the Chinese authorities in suppressing Falun Gong and “acted as a full-fledged and enthusiastic participant in the crimes,” the prosecutors said.

“It was his fight,” Lockard said at the sentencing hearing, adding that Chen had tried to use the freedoms he enjoyed in the United States to undermine the country.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2024 – 23:25

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