Lawyers are highlighting the High Court’s role in previously deciding on Jim-Crow era practices that excluded African-Americans from participating in Democratic primaries in the South, reports Elizabeth Vos.
U.S. Supreme Court building. (Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit filed a petition last week with the Supreme Court to review the suit’s earlier dismissal in the 11th Circuit. The move is the latest development in the suit, which was initially filed in 2016 against the Democratic National Committee and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz by members of the Democratic Party and supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders.
The suit was launched on June 28, 2016 in the wake of Guccifer 2.0 revelations of the DNC’s bias in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton against Senator Bernie Sanders, and was initially dismissed in August 2017 on jurisdictional grounds with a subsequent appeal to the 11th Circuit, dismissed in October last year. The Guccifer 2.0 revelation, which came before WikiLeaks‘ July 22, 2016 exposure of the DNC’s treatment of Sanders, reads:
“An internal DNC memorandum dated May 26, 2015 showing that during the nominating process, the DNC consciously pursued a strategy of advancing and defending Clinton’s campaign in the mainstream and social medias; and (d) other internal materials including research memoranda demonstrating the DNC’s commitment of considerable resources to furthering the Clinton campaign.”
The petition filed by Elizabeth and Jared Beck says that though the Eleventh Circuit upheld the district court’s dismissal, they “found the DNC donor plaintiffs (although not the Sanders donors) did satisfy the elements … for the fraud-type claims.”
That has allowed the Becks to appeal to the Supreme Court. Elizabeth Beck told Consortium News:
“Appeals to the Supreme Court are not automatic. You do not get to appeal just because you lost in the Court of Federal Appeals. The Supreme Court has to accept your appeal. That’s what a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari is—a request to be allowed to appeal to the highest court. And that is what we have filed. The odds are definitely not in our favor: according to this blog, of the 7,000 to 8,000 cert petitions filed each term, the court grants certiorari and hears oral argument in only about 80.”
Asked when a response to their petition could be expected, Beck replied that “the Supreme Court has canceled oral argument due to Covid-19, so I cannot say at this time when we can expect a ruling.”
Elizabeth Beck’s husband and law partner, Jared Beck, also representing the plaintiffs in the case, added: “In ordinary times, the Supreme Court justices have weekly meetings with their clerks to discuss whether or not to accept the various certiorari petitions that are filed. I don’t know whether the Court is continuing to have these meetings at the moment, but it ordinarily takes about a month to two months before a petition is circulated for consideration by the Court.”
Addressing election interference, the petition filed by the Becks cites the 2-year investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation into alleged Russian interference, which became the singular focus of Establishment media from November 2016 onwards. In contrast, as the Becks note, the documented election interference forming the basis of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit has seen no investigation or prosecution, with their suit standing as the single exception. The Becks said:
“No official investigations or criminal proceedings have been undertaken as a result of the DNC’s failure to maintain neutrality during the 2016 Democratic primaries; no one has gone to prison or been held accountable in a court of law or any other forum. Indeed, the instant civil action embodies the lone significant attempt to hold the DNC accountable for its biased conduct, and it was brought in the name of Sanders supporters who, as a class, contributed over $228 million to a campaign that the DNC was secretly working to undermine all along.”
In order to better understand the content of the Beck’s petition, it is important to revisit key aspects of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit litigation, including arguments launched by DNC and Wasserman Schultz’s defense counsel.
Primary Rigging and First Amendment
During the DNC Fraud Lawsuit’s proceedings, defense counsel filed a response brief claiming that primary rigging is protected by the First Amendment, arguing that, “To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party’s nominee for public office.”
Bernie Sanders supporters at a town meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, July 2015. (Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
The Becks’ recently filed petition hits back against this argument on a number of fronts, contending that:
“To this day, the Court’s jurisprudence structures a political system in which the preferences of voters – rather than gaining expression in a free market of parties, candidates, and ideas – are mediated through the twin apparatuses of the Democratic and Republican parties, which conduct primaries and caucuses to determine the nominees who will ultimately square off in the general election for federal office. As such, the two parties are now custodians of what the Court has identified as the most “precious” of rights: “that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.”
The Court has readily characterized the parties as private associations protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments in the exercise of freedom of speech and freedom of association…The Court has also recognized the governmental function of parties, holding that the Fifteenth Amendment prevents them from excluding citizens from participating in primary elections on account of race.”
The suit showed that not only did the Democratic Party view its own bias as protected by the First Amendment, but that it also considers its chartered promise of impartiality the equivalent of the kind of political campaign promise that political figures make and break on a routine basis. In a response brief, DNC representatives claimed that the DNC had no established fiduciary duty “to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent.”
Defense counsel also claimed that Sanders supporters knew the process was rigged. As the Becks argue:
“This case now presents a much-needed, golden opportunity for the Court to clarify the role of parties in the U.S. political system while addressing the question of whether the DNC has a legally enforceable duty to run the nominating process in a fair and even handed manner – as its charter says it does.”
Only this Court can conclusively pass on the legality of the DNC’s conduct, situate it within the larger framework of the nation’s political institutions, and thereby provide a judicious response to the widespread and growing perception that the DNC and its leadership have robbed – and will continue to rob – citizens of their voice in government with impunity.”
High Court Role on Jim-Crow Era Practices
The petition highlights the role of the Supreme Court in previously deciding on Jim-Crow era practices that excluded African-Americans from participating in Democratic primaries in the South. The petition states:
“In overruling Grovey, the Smith case recognized that for the right to vote to have meaning, it could not be nulified [sic] by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election. Constitutional rights would be of little value if they could be thus indirectly denied.”
Elizabeth Beck told Consortium News: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and the legal team here is continuing to methodically work on our cases and tidy matters up for our clients. It’s what we have always done, and what we will continue to do, until we cannot. Good luck to everyone.”
As Jared Beck recognized in his book “What Happened to Bernie Sanders,” the outcome of the legal proceedings in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit should not overshadow the value of what has already transpired in the suit’s litigation process. Beck writes: “Because the case was dismissed on preliminary grounds and well before proceeding to the merits – and because appellate courts rarely reverse cases – it is unlikely that my client’s claims will ever be tried before a jury.”
The sentiments expressed by the party’s own defense counsel indicate that the DNC sees the democratic process in its nomination procedure as meaningless, with the real decisions determined by party insiders. Establishment media has hardly held them to account. DNC cheerleaders in the corporate press have not only ignored the fraud perpetrated by the DNC in 2016, but some have argued that “Too Much Democracy is Bad for Democracy.”
Drowned in the white noise of constant Covid-19 coverage, the latest development in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit is critical not only in terms of understanding a snapshot of election history, but in providing clarity regarding current and future presidential elections.
From Senator Joe Biden’s primary victories in states where he failed to so much as open a campaign office, to consistent disparities in exit poll data compared with official vote-counts that repeatedly favored Biden in the official result, the DNC Fraud Lawsuit stands as pivotal evidence of the DNC’s real attitude towards its donors and primary voters.
Regardless of the legal outcome in this case, the proceedings have already served as invaluable evidence of the rot in the democratic system in the United States.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and co-host of CN Live.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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“primary rigging is protected by the First Amendment”
I can’t wait until this statement becomes common knowledge! If SCOTUS takes up this appeal it will be better than HBO.
Maybe a spinoff ? Like comedy hour brought to yo by the DNC!
I had understood it was on the docket and accepted. but the docket had to be postponed..
Evelync I hear you. The reasons I wrote this is I believe on needs to fully understand ones enemy and the CIA’s history is in want of revelation. We need to understand why they continue to lie about every thing and classify everything else.
Based on the value system I have witnessed being used by CIA we have plenty to fear from a group that has been out of control since Eisenhower!
David Talbot wrote “The Devils Chess Board”2016. You might be interested in reading it . I recommend everyone read it.
I definitely believe every high school senior needs to read it.
ON May first 1960 Russian shot down Gary Francis Powers while he flew Over Russia.
Quoting ” The Devils Chess Board”, from p366: 2nd paragraph; “The flight on the eve of the Paris Summit seemed so badly timed and planned that at least one close observer, Air Force colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, suspected that the CIA had intentionally provoked the incident in order to ruin the peace conference. and ensure the continued reign of Dulles dogmatism. Prouty, a liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA who was summoned by Dulles whenever CIA spy flights ran into trouble, later wrote that the U-2 shoot down was “a most unusual event” that grew out of a “tremendous underground struggle [between] the peacemakers led by the President Eisenhower” and the Dulles “inner elite.”
3rd paragraph: last on p366 ” The president told Andrew Goodpasture White House aides and Gordon Grey that he never wanted to set eyes on Dulles again.
P 367 1rst paragraph: I’ve tried,” Ike told Grey.” “I cannot change Allen Dulles.” Unknown to Ike , Gordon Grey was in the Dulles “inner elite” Prouty spoke of.
3rd paragraph: “At s meeting of nationals security advisers convened in the White House to consider the panel’s [CIA] reform proposals. Dulles brushed aside and suggestion that his management of the CIA was flawed. It would be folly for him to delegate any responsibility for running the agency, he insisted. Without his leadership, the country’s intelligence apparatus would be “a body floating in thin air.
Ike had delegated far too much to Alan and John Foster Dulles. He lamented that he would leave the next President a legacy of ashes.
I know I’m likely bugging some folks with the lengthy quotes but I firmly believe if most people read some of what I have read, for instance Arthur B Darling’s CIA History, Jefferson Morely’s “GHOST”, Body of Secrets by James Bamford, Chasing Shadows by Ken Hughes, Dark Money by Jane Mayer, and Lock K. Johnson’s A Season of Inquiry Revisited you would end up with a pretty good knowledge of the specific history here. Mayer does a great job of tying together major players following the money.
Take heed to these words, the Dulles inner elite, used two presidents, fooling them completely, although Ike caught on towards the end of his term. Truman didn’t until much later., after JFK’s murder. I believe when that happened Truman may have had an epiphany.
When JFK started the heavy pressure on Israel over their nuclear weapons work he had to go, never believe that Israel was not livid with JFK the history confirms it. So the third president was a charm for Allen & Co. and the CIA stood by and facilitated his death.
I believe that CIA was committed to the Apollo Project, a belief founded on Spy Chief James Jesus Angelton’s lengthy very close relationship to Israel spanning over 25 years. That and the totally mysterious case of Gorden Grey serving on the thee man “Grey Board” where he and one other stripped Robert Oppenheimer of his security clearance for no reason other than to get him out of the loop!
I believe The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation that is accused of diverting hundreds of pounds of Special Nuclear Material, in the form of Highly Enriched Uranium 235, to Israel. The project had run from 1958 and by 1963 was nearing completion. I do also believe by 1966 that the majority of diverted material was already in Israel.
The company had come under sizable scrutiny only to have FBI investigations thwarted by lack of cooperation form CIA. Why? The fix was in then.
As Bob Dylan so poignantly puts it “A MURDER SO FOWL”.
Thanks Jane Christ; you said all that needed to be said to sum up these well written comments and the preceding article.
I can’t thank the Becks enough for leading this fight for justice.
thanks for updating this important suit by the Beck’s on behalf of the class – those of us who were cheated out of the Visionary candidate who warned us 15 years ago on the HOUSE floor that we must prepare for a pandemic –
Ironic if the politicized 5-4 HC actually finds it expedient at the moment to take the suit.
Although the less extreme justices will probably just join the (neo)liberal leaning 4
doesn’t look good
Jill Stein pointed out in her March 12 interview (youtube – AcTVism ) that when Wallace’s introduction at the Convention was underway before the speaker could get to the podium a FIRE ALARM went off and when they all returned Truman had replaced progressive Wallace…
Stein also covered Julian Assange et al and the multi State political attack ganging up on whistleblowers
Bob Dylan’s ‘murder most foul’ most worthwhile
It was clear to me, and to anyone with any sort of objective outlook, that the nomination was stolen, blatantly, from Sanders back in 2016. The DNC’s outright pandering to Hillary’s need for power and revenge was shocking: the lack of pushback by the media and upright members of the Dem party was even more disappoitning. We have to make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. Both parties are so filled with men and women who have been successful at using honest citizens as pawns that it will take energy and aggression on all of our parts if we are going to stop the DNC in its tracks and assure that Sanders is not railroaded again.
It is so obvious that the USA bears no resemblance to a democracy and that the voting procedure does not allow voters to select the candidates who are to represent them, but just allows money to decide who will be presented . No other nation uses this kind of process, as it does not “throw up” any candidates who will be able to do the job. This is surely obvious, and the Senate and “House” with their worn-out senior members promoted just by not actually dying in place, continue to follow Cold War, conflict-based policies pretending somehow this is “defense” against enemies they have invented.
The SCOTUS has been degraded over decades and now cannot possibly produce any decisions that do not help the already rich and powerful. Other courts show such extreme bias that one wonders what sort of legal knowledge resides in the judges.
Kudos to the plaintiff/petitioners.
In this day and age it is impossible for the democratic party to be democratic unless registered democrats (or voters in a jungle primary) choose the presidential candidate from an instant-runoff mail-in ballot in a national primary.
Good link to the Atlantic Magazine. (Glad i no longer subscribe) It shows just how out of touch the political class is. The Atlantic may think the 22 candidates on the democratic primary ballot is an excess of democracy, people on CN know all those candidates were financed & put on the ballot to reduce Bernie’s vote totals. When it didn’t work they cheated.
The Atlantic is fawningly solicitous of professionals, incumbents, the monied interests, and the candidates of those who control the party machinery. The purpose of elections is to throw the party regulars out if they have been undemocratic or otherwise offended the voters.
Many thanks Elizabeth Vos and Consortiumnews, without your help it would be nearly impossible to keep up with all the ongoing subtrafuge!
Many don’t realize that it was this brilliant and brave legal couple who are responsible for filing a lawsuit against the corrupt DNC who was using money donated to the Sanders campaign in a pool with Clinton supporters, and when Bernie supporters realized this, they revolted (this is the class in the class action).
Also, the server, Sean Lucas, died shortly after serving the lawsuit. Tulsi Gabbard left the campaign and Seth Rich died shortly after that. How many innocent voters could have known the corporate structure of the DNC precluded The People?
So thank you Elizabeth for reminding us that this is the thin thread that could unwind this mess…
I wasn’t going to respond to any of these ongoing, “Bernie was robbed,” whinefest posts. I know it won’t make a difference, despite the fact the no one has yet to explain exactly how the DNC ACTUALLY harmed his campaign, or that hard core Bernie supporters like you all seem all too happy to discount the MILLIONS more votes that Hillary got, especially among minority voters. It’s not the DNC’s fault that Bernie does not connect with African-American voters.
Version with 285 words:
The Supreme Court is a political fraud operation itself. It refuses to review 99 percent of cases brought to it, the most important cases in the US, and allows clerks to decide what is reviewed, who simply invent objections to cases against their politics.
If that sounds extreme, consider this: our petitions were repeatedly given to a clerk who didn’t like their political meaning and sent them back (damaged and costly to reprint) claiming incorrect type size and style. He was given proof of the required type style and the definition of type size which they clearly met, so he sent them back again claiming that a “magnifier” proved him correct. Told that his magnifier was wrong and how to measure the size, he refused.
Copies of pages were sent to every SC judge, with a complaint against the clerk, showing that ten lines of type were in fact 1.94” in height (ten lines times 12 points plus 2 points spacing times 1/72 inches per point). The clerk had to accept the document but denigrated the case to get it rejected in committee. The same clerk did this on three different cases and had to be sued himself. The judges who hire such clerks to advance their unconstitutional politics are the problem.
That is only a glimpse of extreme corruption of the judiciary. They work for the corrupt politicians who appoint them, and actively and deliberately subvert the Constitution and laws of the United States for the gain of themselves, their political gangsters, and their rich sponsors. Those facts are the fruit of long experience, ignored by the People at their peril. You don’t hear about that in the mass media? Guess who owns that.
Good job
“Regardless of the legal outcome in this case, the proceedings have already served as invaluable evidence of the rot in the democratic system in the United States.”
I wish more people were paying attention. The “evidence” has been around for decades. This case is also evidence that the judiciary is totally corrupted, and mere servants of Empire. Keep your pitchfork handy.
its beyond sad ? and the people are scared. Things will change. Remember god is watching too
I think that there’s a reason why Bob Dylan recently released (for the 1st time) his Murder Most Foul (youtube) about the assassination of our president
if I post the link this comment won’t post
one commenter posted this under the video on youtube:
“There’s a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.”
(Spoken by President John F. Kennedy Seven Days Prior to his Assassination)
Thank you for the overdue update, Ms. Vos. I have wondered what was up with any further actions on this. This shouldn’t have to go to the supreme court. It is so clearly fraud and a lower court could have handled it if there was still justice in this country.
Well Russian interference has been thoroughly debunked on this site( thanks Ray and Bill), apparently the DNC was not above adopting old fashioned Soviet style political machinations on their own. Then they hypocritically complained about the Russians, who didn’t do anything other than a few facebook ads.
I always felt the Soviet Union was the ultimate example of monopoly capitalism, one big company and no pesky unions. The DNC neo-liberals love monopoly , concentration of power and wealth and aren’t to friendly to unions. It all fits.
I support the article by John Drake. Jane Christ