Thread by @SenWhitehouse

Trump seems to be counting on the three justices he “chose” for appointment to the Supreme Court to get him out of trouble. But did Trump really choose them? Or was Trump the chump, in someone else’s game? Let’s have a look.

The justices were supposedly appointed from a “Federalist Society list” that Trump announced, saying that was the “gold standard.” But the Federalist Society has never shown the public, or admitted the existence of, any record of any report, or agenda item, or vote, on any list.

It actually wasn’t the Federalist Society’s list. So whose list was it?

Leonard Leo worked at the Federalist Society at the time, and also ran an array of front groups tasked with scheming to capture and control the Supreme Court, funded by a little crew of right-wing billionaires.

Getting the justices on the Court took money -- lots of it. And billionaires are accustomed to getting something for their money.

The Court capture operation cost over half a billion dollars. Anonymous donors wrote individual checks as big as fifteen and seventeen million dollars to pay for the ad campaigns. Maybe the same billionaire wrote all those checks.

One billionaire just set Leo up with a $1.6 billion slush fund, through a new front group. The billionaires had money and motive.

The role of Leo and the billionaires (sounds like a bad garage band) would help explain why they got away with calling it a “Federalist Society list” when it wasn’t.

A Federalist Society operative and big Federalist Society donors were involved, so the Federalist Society let it slide. And got some good publicity.

But that raises the question, who were the billionaire donors behind Leo who actually chose the justices for the list?

Start with the obvious: the Koch political operation was then the biggest political dark-money operation on the planet, and one keenly interested in packing the Court. The Kochs even brought Justice Thomas out to star at their fundraisers. So consider the Koch operation.

Look at the history. Remember how the Koch operation greeted candidate Trump? They despised him, and spent millions against him, and threatened to spend much more.

Remember how candidate Trump responded to the Koch political operation? He mocked it, and he mocked the Kochs, and he mocked the other Republican candidates who went out to Koch events to kiss the ring.

Like rival medieval principalities, House of Koch and House of Trump were at war. Until they weren’t. Suddenly, hostilities between them ceased.

By election night, David Koch was in the Trumps’ victory suite. What could explain peace breaking out between House of Trump and House of Koch? The Federalist Society list could, if it was actually a Koch list.

Imagine this truce agreement between Trump and the Koch fossil fuel barons. “You give us all your Supreme Court appointments (and while you’re at it throw in your energy and pollution regulators), and we will back off our attacks, and even support GOP field and GOTV work.”

But if you’re the Kochs, do you trust Trump with a secret deal? Of course not. So when Trump starts asking about ways to broker peace, your operatives Leonard Leo and Don McGahn cook up the “Federalist Society list” as a solution.

When Trump promised publicly to appoint from the list, that sealed the deal — and McGahn went into the White House as White House Counsel and the Kochs’ ‘inside man.’

As Court vacancies opened for Trump, he went to the “Federalist Society list,” but who chose which judges to nominate? I don’t know, but McGahn and Leo were at the center of it.

I suspect the Koch operation helped McGahn and Leo with the names, and Trump went along with their recommendations. Whether Trump knew they chose, or whether the Kochs, McGahn and Leo all played Trump like a chump, is anybody’s guess.

They even fiddled with the “Federalist Society list” along the way, to get Brett Kavanaugh on it, perhaps to help encourage Justice Kennedy’s retirement.

Kennedy liked Brett, who’d been his law clerk. If there’d been a real Federalist Society list, and someone was chosen who wasn’t on the original list, there’d have been outrage from the billionaires.

But if the deal all along was that the Kochs got to use Leo and McGahn to pick Trump’s justices for him, who would care?

All the parties to the original deal were in on the switch — a voluntary contractual amendment, if you will — so there was no complaint about it. (Nor, presumably, any corporate action by the Federalist Society about a change to its supposed list.)

With the deal now done, with the three supposed “Trump justices” perched safely on the Court, House of Koch has again declared political war against House of Trump, spending millions against him and threatening to spend more. So much for Trump and the Art of the Deal.

And so much for loyalty of the “Trump justices” being to Trump. In this scenario, Trump was the chump, not the decider.

For a final tell, look at whether Koch-funded front groups file amicus briefs when the Trump cases come up, and what the briefs say.

The best predictor of this Captured Court’s rulings is what the flotillas of billionaire-funded front groups tell the justices to do in their amicus briefs. Silence from them (or even attacks on Trump by them) will be deafening.