Protests at Justices’ Homes Are Illegal and Must Be Stopped

BUCK: We have been telling you about this situation of protests outside Supreme Court justices’ homes, and there’s a lot going on here. Let’s start with the protests outside of Justice Roberts’ and Kavanaugh’s homes — I believe in Montgomery County which is in Maryland — and then the protest that is now as of last night has extended to the state of Virginia where in… I actually forget what the area is in Virginia. But, anyway, Alito’s home in Northern Virginia has also been a site of protests.

People are pointing out, first of all, this is just childish, reckless, and irresponsible. Start with that. This is not the way, in a civil society, that people should be acting. And I would point out that even the Washington Post, believe it or not, the editorial board yesterday wrote a piece saying, “Leave the Justices Alone at Home.” The Washington Post editorial board, which I can tell you in general would lie down in traffic to keep abortion legal and to support a Roe v. Wade last-minute saving by a reversal of the Supreme Court justices.

The Washington Post is saying: Yeah, no, knock it off with protests outside of the judges’ homes. I think a part of that — a part of that — is the recognition that this is not legal. It is not legal at the federal level. There is a statute that very understandably, makes perfect sense, bars people from trying to intimidate judges and in any way affect the judicial process. And having an angry mob outside your home and you’re a Supreme Court judge or any judge, for that matter, is intimidation affecting the process.

Now, we don’t think the Biden DOJ will do anything. They’re not gonna send the FBI in to clear out the area, not because they shouldn’t as a function of law, but because we all know the politics here. Biden’s DOJ is a joke and they’re not… Merrick Garland — who is putting parents on notice that maybe you’re a domestic terrorist if you’ve got a problem with the school board in your neighborhood — but no issue with these threats of Supreme Court justices.

But then, Clay, the additional component of it is that under — I know under Virginia law, I believe also under Maryland law there are statutes that prohibit on protest gatherings outside of private homes, which, give an that so many public officials, by the way, live in Maryland or Virginia who work in D.C., you understand how this would be a law in both places, and there were people very critical of Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia who has done some good things since he took office.

We’ve noted it here on the show, but as we always tell you, we call balls and strikes here, folks. You know, when it’s good, it’s good. When it’s not, we tell you. Right? When there’s a problem we address it, even on our own team, so to speak, even on the right even with conservatives. Clay, what do you make of this with Youngkin saying they’ll keep the judges safe, but they’re not gonna go in there and say, “You’re not allowed to protest outside their home”?

CLAY: I don’t believe that anybody of any political bent should be able to protest outside of anyone’s home. That includes me, that includes you, Buck, that certainly includes anybody who is involved in judiciary. I think this should apply if you are a Republican, if you are a Democrat. There are plenty of places to seek redress for political opinions. I don’t believe that our neighborhoods outside of people’s homes should be one of them, period. Okay?

And that is a content neutral policy that I would apply, that I believe Merrick Garland needs to apply, regardless of what the politics involved are. Having said that, if you are Glenn Youngkin or if you are Jason Miyares — people who have been on this show before; he’s the attorney general of general, Republicans — the challenge that I think they face, Buck, is if you arrest people for this, are you creating a much larger protest going forward and making the people that you arrest martyrs?

I think you might very well be doing that, and so I’m sure in the back of their minds they’re trying to analyze this and say, “What is the best way to make this disappear sooner rather than later? If we arrest people, are we going to make it worse?” And I don’t know for sure what the answer is. My concern is that you are creating an environment that allows violence to fester, and at some point in time if that violence explodes — as we’ve already seen it happening in Madison, Wisconsin, in terms of a Molotov cocktail being thrown into a —

BUCK: Anti-abortion —

CLAY: — anti-abortion location, I think the challenge becomes, how do you reconcile this? And this is why, Buck, to me the solution is the opinion has to come out now. Chief Justice Roberts has to release this opinion. And I understand the argument of, “Well, we can’t allow whoever the leaker was to change the time frame of what we want to do when it comes to releasing this opinion,” and it wasn’t scheduled to come out until late June, and right now we’re only talking about mid-May.

The leak threw that into the dust pin of history, in my opinion, Buck. And what needs to happen — and I’m gonna keep hammering this is — Chief Justice Roberts needs to sign on to it make it a 6-3 decision so that we’re not talking about one Justice-of-justice switching and make this law change. And on top of that, it needs to come out immediately because I think that would dilute the value of protesting at the Supreme Court justices’ homes. That’s the solution.

BUCK: You think Roberts will, by the way? ‘Cause we might have to have a side bet here. I think so there’s no chance Roberts is gonna go over and join them.

CLAY: You think he’s gonna side with the other three?

BUCK: Yep. I think he’s gonna write a dissent, and he’s gonna side with the other three. He’s gonna say this goes too far.

CLAY: You may be right. But if he truly cares about the legitimacy of the court and he’s willing to sign on to — which has been reported — the 15-week ban in Mississippi, then he needs to go all in and say this should go back to states. Because if this is a 5-4 decision, Buck, then as long as this sticks at a 5-4 decision, every conservative justice is potentially under siege from a violent protester because in their mind they’re going to think, “If I take out one of these justices…” I’m telling you: I hate to even have to say it, but —

BUCK: I think this is a lot of it this is pro-abortion propaganda we keep hearing about how, oh, it’ll never normalize and the fights will continue forever. It’ll go to the states. A lot of things go to the states. States have different rules about a whole range of issues. You take a lot of the heat out of this once people what’s really going on.

CLAY: I think 5-4 won’t. That’s why it needs to be 6-3. Because if you have to replace two conservative justices to overturn this ruling, that becomes much more difficult in order to pull that off, which is why I think if Chief Justice Roberts truly carries about the legitimacy of the court, he needs to make this a 6-3 decision so that for the rest of the next several years, as this becomes more mainstream and it goes back to the states — which I think is the right decision — there isn’t the constant drumbeat of only one justice needs to be changed and Roe v. Wade becomes the law of the land again.

BUCK: Look at Obamacare, right? There have been huge, momentous decisions that have gone down 5-4, and we learned… People complain, of course, but, Clay, they’ll complain at 6-3 as well. I guess —

CLAY: It’s harder to think that there are gonna be two justices that you can replace, hopefully, in the next decade than it is to think, “If we replace one person this ruling disappears.”

BUCK: How many did Trump get, right? Think about it.

CLAY: Yeah, but all being on the conservative side. Trump got three, which was a huge deal, but the odds — and, honestly, the odds partly that was ’cause one was already held up, right, so he got two. But that’s just my fear. My fear is that if it’s 5-4, it doesn’t have the legitimacy. I do think the big swing from 5-4 to 6-3 is significant.

BUCK: And here we have, speaking of fear, they’re trying to tell everybody that the real concern is actually from pro-life people becoming violent.

CLAY: Yeah, which is a lie, total lie.

BUCK: This is from CBS Evening News. Play it.

BUCK: So let me tell folks about how this goes for a second.

CLAY: You’ve done these.

BUCK: ‘Cause I’ve done these, okay? I’ve done these for… I’ve written for the PDB many, many times, the President’s Daily Briefing. I’ve run the PDB briefing for the president before. So I know how the system works. What happens here is you have a policy official, Clay — could be anybody — DOJ, White House official, who knows, right? You have somebody high up in the chain who says, “I need an assessment of,” right?

Let’s say Merrick Garland wants the FBI analyst or DHS analyst to do an assessment on what the threats are. You’re an analysist. You’re writing an assessment. You get to set what the parameters are, and you also know who the customer is. So when they send down to you as let’s say Merrick Garland would, in this example, say, “Hey, give us a sense of what the risk is from pro-life and pro-choice factions for violence right now.”

You know exactly what the tasking is and if you want to get that award, if you want to get the pat on the head, if you want to get the pay increase in six months or whatever — the step increase — you give what you’re supposed to give, which could be on both sides assessment. Because let me tell you, if you do the other thing of saying, “Hey, I’m an analyst who’s actually looking at the data and information.

“And I’m gonna send this memo to Merrick Garland that says, ‘The threat of violence is overwhelmingly from pro-choice lunatics or pro-abortion lunatics right now,’” guess what? You’re never getting asked to write that memo again, and your superiors are gonna say, “You’re not a very good analyst.” So I’m just telling everybody, when CBS says, “We saw a draft intelligence memo,” you can get them to write an intelligence memo saying that Mars is going to invade tomorrow. It’s not hard to do.

CLAY: Here’s the other thing that you were hinting at, and I think we need to emphasize. I went and talked at my school board, Buck. Remember that, back in August, to talk about forcing masks?

BUCK: They’re gonna send you to Gitmo, man. You’re on the list now, Travis.

CLAY: Yes, and I got called a domestic terrorist. Where the hell is Merrick Garland with actual domestic terrorism going on? How is it that he can’t say we need to condemn what is going on right now in terms of domestic extremism and violence that’s being brought to bear by the left wing in the United States right now? A truly good… I’m not even gonna try saying partial, ’cause I don’t think it exists.

But a truly decent Department of Justice head would at least treat actual violence associated with the left wing in this country and the potential Alito opinion as aggressively as he treated moms and dads who decided to go and speak out at their school boards. Yet they were labeled domestic terrorists, Buck. And we haven’t seen, at least I haven’t so far, Merrick Garland calling out any of the left-wing violence and pointing out that that is actual domestic terrorism and deserves to be investigated fully by our Department of Justice. I haven’t seen it.

BUCK: The terrifying realization that everybody should have — ‘cause this is reality, folks — is the same way that corporations have been leveraged, have been utilized as part of the left-tactic to be weapons against their political enemies, the federal apparatus is the same thing. The federal government, you don’t need to have everybody, a lot of Republicans work the federal government, a lot of good people, a lot of patriots.

All you need is to be the Bolsheviks within the system who control the levers of power and use it when you have to. And that’s what they do. That’s certainly what’s happening in Merrick Garland’s DOJ just like it was happening Andrew Eric Holder’s DOJ under Obama. Same thing.

CLAY: We need Bill Barr back in office.

BUCK: We do. He was good.

CLAY: He was very good.