Four of the Sitting Supreme Court Justices Helped George W. Bush Steal the Presidency Back in 2000

Will They Help Donald Trump Steal Congress in 2026?

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Four of the Sitting Supreme Court Justices Helped George W. Bush Steal the Presidency Back in 2000

Four of the justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court today helped George W. Bush steal the presidency back in 2000 by helping stop the recount of Americans’ votes in Florida. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Clarence Thomas each played different roles in the effort to use the Court to make Bush the 43rd president.

Fast forward to the summer of 2024. Those four were joined by two other Republican appointees–Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch–in inventing presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for Donald Trump’s so-called “official acts,” paving the way for his return to power.

Why would any prudent person believe we can trust these five men and one woman to fairly rule on the coming onslaught of Trump’s efforts to subvert the counting of votes in November?

I believe we cannot.

We must prepare to publicly, loudly, and relentlessly rebuke the Roberts Court if these partisans in black robes go along with Trump’s seizure of voting machines or efforts to stop the certification of our votes. He is desperate to prevent a Democratic majority in the House or Senate–one that could and would investigate the shocking corruption and destruction going on.

This rot affects us all. As James Talarico told Texans: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.” We are suffering the consequences of Trump’s team selling us out, on top of his profoundly stupid tariffs and his reckless war, which are driving up the cost of living.

But the corruption does not stop there.

The Roberts Court corrupted our political system in the Citizens United case by unleashing selfish billionaires to buy up politicians willing to slash their taxes–which were too low already–and deregulate or not regulate at all the industries that fuel their extreme wealth.

Clarence Thomas cast the tie-breaking vote in that case, which rewrote the Constitution to block Congress from enforcing laws like McCain-Feingold that regulated advocacy group spending near elections. He did so just weeks after his wife Ginni collected $500,000 from his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow to fund her new Tea Party group that was positioned to take advantage of the ruling to come. In his concurrence, Thomas even had the audacity to claim that disclosing such funding would unconstitutionally chill the freedom of speech, including, apparently, the big secret gift Crow had just given his wife.

It is true that the Roberts Court has blocked a few–precious few–of Trump’s demands over the past 20 months. It blocked two Trump edicts that defied the plain language of the Constitution: one on congressional power over trade and another on the rights of Americans born here.

But those are exceptions.

Earlier this year, John Roberts wielded the judicial power with his five accomplices to destroy vital protections in the Voting Rights Act. That ruling, in the Callais case, unleashed Republican legislatures to redraw election maps in ways that demonstrably diluted the votes of Black Americans. That resulted in white-dominated legislatures in what is technically the former Confederate States of America bleaching out Black representation in what Mother Jones recently dubbed a terrible, judicially-enabled return to the days of “Whites Only.”

Roberts and his clique insist that the Constitution hamstrings Congress when it suits them, yet it has repeatedly overturned lower court orders restraining his extraordinary claims of power for the Executive Branch. That repeated contradiction is astonishing. It is also unacceptable.

People ask me repeatedly: But why, why is the Court doing this?

It is by design.

The Republican majority on the Court was hand-picked not because they were believed to be fair but because they were thought to be loyal to the right-wing political agenda. And they are. Even though they have stopped a few of Trump’s more recent demands–for 2026, not for 2028, the next presidential election year–they have more cases coming their way involving voting, counting votes, certifying votes, and seating those we elect.

We must not forget that John Roberts auditioned for his judicial appointment by helping George W. Bush stop the recount of American votes in the winter of 2000.

Roberts aided Bush’s brother Jeb, Florida’s governor at the time, in efforts to stop–or not stop–the certification of the state’s electoral college votes. He also helped his friend Michael Carvin prepare to argue against the recount. Carvin’s arguments failed before the Florida Supreme Court but were taken up by five Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.

Just a few months later, Roberts was rewarded with a nomination to the D.C. Circuit and, a few years after that, with a nomination to the nation’s highest court. I detail this trajectory–and how Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo helped too–in my book Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Destroyed the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.

Roberts was not alone among future Supreme Court justices in rushing to Bush’s aid. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett volunteered to help, too.

Kavanaugh worked directly on Bush’s legal team, developing arguments for stopping the recount before the Florida Supreme Court. Unlike Roberts’ more secretive role, Kavanaugh was tapped to peddle those claims to the press, asserting what he called “the arbitrary, standardless nature of the recount process in Florida,” despite the standards election workers were following.

Kavanaugh was rewarded with a post in the White House Counsel’s Office, where he helped get Roberts on the D.C. Circuit. He later received his own judicial nomination.

Barrett (then Amy Coney) was on the scene early, too. She also headed to Florida at the outset of the litigation to help with research and briefs for Bush’s efforts to stop the recount.

In 2017, Leonard Leo worked with Trump’s White House Counsel to maneuver her onto the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then on to the Supreme Court in late 2020.

Then there’s Clarence Thomas, who didn’t fly to Florida to help Bush in Bush v. Gore. He cast the fifth vote in the 5-4 ruling from his comfortable chair in Washington, DC, even though his wife Ginni was actively screening appointees for the Bush team. He never recused himself.

Ginni was rewarded with a promotion at the Heritage Foundation and a raise, becoming its highest-paid employee who was not an executive on the board. Her new job was “Director of Executive Branch Relations” where she liaised with who at the White House? Kavanaugh.

Emails released in 2018 during Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination show Ginni congratulating him on Republicans winning the Senate in the 2002 midterms. That electoral victory made it possible for the Republicans to get Roberts confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May.

A few months later, in July 2003, Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the D.C Circuit.

What about Alito and Gorsuch? As a sitting judge, Alito could not join his fellow travelers, like former DOJ colleague John Roberts, in Florida to aid in Bush v. Gore.

But we all know what flag he flies.

After January 6, 2021, an upside-down American flag tied to the violent assault on the Capitol unleashed by Trump flew over Alito’s home until at least January 17. He blamed his wife, Martha, when the story broke a few years later, but the timeline shows this wasn’t a one-day fluke. A few years later, another flag tied to January 6, the Banner of Heaven flag, flew over Alito’s summer home. Again, he blamed his wife.

As for Gorsuch, there are no news reports indicating that he joined the Florida crew. But he did eagerly join Roberts in rewriting the Constitution to invent criminal immunity for Trump and has sided with Roberts in recent cases aiding Trump’s electoral agenda.

As I describe in my book, when I was a career Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department in 2001, I had to work with Ted Cruz, who had been rewarded for helping Bush with a job down the hall. In his office overlooking Constitution Avenue, I noticed a glass object that sparkled in the sun.

It was a paperweight with the words “Bush-Cheney Florida Recount Team 2000.”

The things sparkling in the sun were “chads,” the little pieces of paper that were part of the paper-punch ballots Republicans sought to block in the recount. With the recounts taking place in Democratic-majority counties and so few votes separating Bush from Al Gore, they argued that if a voter had not punched through the hole next to their preferred candidate’s name hard enough to release the chad, the vote should not count.

It was only through the partisan intervention of the Supreme Court that Bush became president; later tallies showed that Gore would have won Florida’s electoral votes.

I almost threw that paperweight out the window. Instead, I left my job at DOJ.

I wonder if Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett got that souvenir, too.

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What I’m Reading or Rereading:

• Reporting about Bush v. Gore, including Martin Kettle’s special report for The Guardian: “Florida ‘recounts’ make Gore the winner.”

• I reread the “Ambition” chapter of my book, where I describe the Bush v. Gore litigation in more detail. I also summarized it for the Unprecedented podcast.

• And, Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which established the judicial branch.

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Get the full receipts every Monday in The Cover-Up

Accountability starts with the record. COURIER’s new Contradictions Tracker compares testimony to the Epstein files, with every source linked. Follow along every Monday in The Cover-Up.