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Attorney Vincent Bugliosi points out in "The Betrayal of America" that the Supreme Court decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush was based "solely on a purported violation
of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." He quotes from the opinion of the court in Bush v. Gore:
"The petition [of George W. Bush] presents the following questions: whether the Florida Supreme Court established new standards for resolving Presidential election contests, thereby
violating Art. II, Sec. 1, cl.2, of the United States Constitution and failing to comply with 3 U.S.C. Sec.5, and whether the use of standardless manual recounts violates the Equal Protection and Due
Process Clauses. With respect to the equal protection question, we find a violation of the Equal Protection Clause."
Bugliosi notes that, because the Supreme Court said it "found a violation" of only the equal protection clause, the obvious inference is that the court, "in its per curiam, majority ruling, did not find that the Florida Supreme Court violated Art. II, Sec. 1, cl.2 or Title 3 of the U. S. Code, Sec. 5." He also explains that appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, usually offer a number of different bases for their rulings ("e.g., 'in addition,' 'moreover,' 'there is a second, independent basis for _____'") in order to protect the courts from subsequent attack. However, in Bush v. Gore, says Bugliosi, "the court clearly knew that its Equal Protection Clause argument was a legal gimmick."
The court knew the Bush claim that the Florida Supreme Court had established new standards for resolving presidential elections was "too much of an embarrassment, even for them, to reduce to
parchment," adds Bugliosi. If that were not true, he suggests, there could be no other reason for the court, "knowing it was making perhaps the most important ruling in history, not to try to fortify and
buttress its ruling with these other arguments in its per curiam majority ruling."
The reckless, flimsily founded Supreme Court decision, as Bugliosi points out, showed that the five justices "had absolutely no regard, no respect, for fifty million Americans, whose votes for
Vice President Gore they knew they were erasing as if never cast; no appreciation for, nor sense of responsibility to, the majestic and towering office they occupied; no concern at all about a betrayal
of trust on their part that may be unparalleled in the recorded annals of American history."
USA Today reported that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has told friends she has never seen such anger over a case as over Bush v. Gore (USA Today, 1/21/01.) Thousands of Americans wrote letters,
and over 500 law professors signed a petition, strongly criticizing the court's decision. However, Bugliosi correctly laments the fact that public criticism of the five justices has been weak considering
the nature of their offense.
He says that when the Supreme Court capriciously took the decision away from voters and delivered the election to Bush, they acted as "knowing surrogates for the Republican Party instead of
being impartial arbiter(s) for the law." Instead of searching openly for the truth, the five conservative justices tried to suppress the truth, hiding behind the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
clause.
In real equal protection cases, it's the aggrieved party who brings the action, writes Bugliosi. However, Florida voters did not bring the action. Instead, Bush "leaped in and tried to profit
from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else." The core of Bush's complaint was that he himself might be harmed.
Bugliosi writes that common sense would show that Bush would not have been harmed if the vote count had continued. The reason is, he says, is because "just as with flipping a coin you end up in
rather short order with as many heads as tails, there would be a 'wash' here for both sides; i.e., there is no reason to believe that there wouldn't be just as many Bush as Gore votes that would be
counted in one county yet disqualified in the next."
The only "harm" to Bush that the court wanted to prevent by halting the vote count, was that "he would be harmed by the truth." According to Bugliosi, the court was really saying to voters:
"We're so concerned that some of you undervoters may lose your vote under the different Florida county standards that we're going to solve the problem by making sure that none of you undervoters have your votes counted."
The court majority, after throwing out some 60,000 votes, then had the audacity to write that its intention was to preserve "the fundamental right" to vote, says Bugliosi. This is Orwellian
Newspeak equivalent to "war is peace" or "up is down."
Not only was the "Bush might be harmed" argument bogus, so was the idea that the equal protection clause applied to the Bush petition. Bugliosi quotes Georgetown law professor David Cole on the
subject: "[The court] created a new right out of whole cloth and made sure it ultimately protected only one person—George Bush."
When the court "cited four of its previous cases as legal precedent," says Bugliosi, "not one of them bears even the slightest resemblance to Bush v. Gore." For example, one of the cases
(Harper v. Virginia) was about payment of a poll tax as qualification for voting. Bugliosi writes that if a first year law student cited "completely inapplicable authority like this," his professors
would suggest he not waste any more time trying to become a lawyer.
Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar agrees with Bugliosi, stating that the five justices "failed to cite a single case that, on its facts, comes close to supporting its analysis and results."
Vanderbilt professor Suzanna Sherry said, "There is really very little way to reconcile this opinion other than that they wanted Bush to win." Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy called the court's
decision "outrageous."
Bugliosi says the only reason no technical, true crime was committed by the five conservative justices, is because "no Congress ever dreamed of enacting a statute making it a crime to steal a
presidential election." However, he points out there are two kinds of crimes: malum prohibitum (wrong because they are prohibited), and malum in se (wrong in themselves) crimes.
Malum prohibitum crimes include such things as "selling liquor after a specified time of day," gambling where prohibited and so forth. Malum in se crimes include such acts as "robbery, rape,
murder and arson . . . the only true crimes," says Bugliosi. He emphasizes malum in se crimes all involve "morally reprehensible conduct." Even if no laws prohibited those crimes, he notes, they would be
wrong and often evil.
Bugliosi asks, "If what these [five conservative] justices did was not 'morally reprehensible' and 'a wrong against society,' then what would be?" He continues, "In terms then of natural law
and justice—the protoplasm of all eventual laws on the books–these five justices are criminals in every true sense of the word, and in a fair and just world belong behind bars as much as any American
white-collar criminal who ever lived."
The fact that there was no legal basis for their decision proves on its face the justices knew their ruling was fraudulent, Bugliosi concludes. He writes that those justices knew that "under
Florida case and statutory law, when the Florida Supreme Court finds that a challenge to the certified result of an election is justified, it has the power to 'provide any relief appropriate under
the circumstances.' (102.168(8) of the Florida Election Code."
The Supreme Court set forth its decision to throw the election to Bush in a "per curiam" (by the court) opinion. Bugliosi points out that per curiam opinions are usually issued only for
unanimous (9-to-0) decisions in relatively unimportant cases, or where justices want to be brief. He notes that USA Today reported that "Neither was the case here."
In the 163 pages of "The Betrayal of America," Vince Bugliosi offers vast additional evidence and consistent, crisp logic, showing beyond a doubt that the five conservative Supreme Court
Justices committed a malum in se crime, throwing the presidential election to George W. Bush based on trumped up "reasoning," and stealing the voting rights of millions of Americans.
Bugliosi says he considers himself a political moderate, with both liberal and conservative friends. He makes a distinction between the extreme political right and a true conservative, defined
by Bugliosi as "one who cares deeply about his country" and one fair-minded enough to be more concerned with facts than with party loyalty.
The five Supreme Court Justices, says Bugliosi, had "the highest station in life and the bluest of pedigree," but at the same time had "incubating inside of them, the most squalid of
characters, a lowness that may never have manifested itself if they had never been presented with this situation."
Newsweek, 12/25/00, reported: "Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her husband John, a Washington lawyer, have long been comfortable on the cocktail and charity ball circuit. So at an
election-night party on November 7, surrounded for the most part by friends and familiar acquaintances, she let her guard drop for a moment when she heard the first critical returns shortly before 8 PM.
Sitting in her hostesses den, she visibly started when CBS anchor Dan Rather called Florida for Al Gore. 'This is terrible,' she exclaimed . . . [Her husband] John O'Connor said his wife was upset
because they wanted to retire to Arizona, and a Gore win meant they'd have to wait another four years. O'Connor, the former Republican majority leader of the Arizona State Senate and a 1981 Ronald Reagan
appointee, did not want a Democrat to name her successor. Two witnesses described this extraordinary scene to Newsweek."
What these justices did was "so monumentally base, so extraordinarily wrong," writes Bugliosi, that "it would take a Tolstoy, a Shakespeare, a Hemingway, to give people an illuminating glimpse into the
interior of the soul and marrow of these five justices." Bugliosi has done a very good job of serving not only as a prosecutor of unparalleled skill, but also as a modern-day Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or
Hemingway, revealing to the betrayed American people the character, the deep ethical failing, of those so-called justices who dealt democracy its most serious injury in our nation's history.
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