Did the Supreme Court Just Save the Election? With Skye Perryman

The Oath and The Office

The podcast discusses the Supreme Court's decision to block Trump's attempt to use the Postal Service to restrict mail-in voting ahead of th

Key takeaways

• The Supreme Court blocked Trump's Postal Service restrictions to prevent voter suppression ahead of the midterms.
• Trump's promise of $5,000 payments if Republicans retain Congress is framed as a potential bribe, not a legitimate policy.

Main topics

• Supreme Court ruling on postal voting restrictions
• Trump's $5,000 voter bribe promise

Notable quotes

The Supreme Court stamped it return to sender.

Conclusion

While the Supreme Court's intervention offers a temporary victory for democracy

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Quick civics question. When public officials swear an oath to the Constitution, does that mean protecting everybody's rights or promoting their own religion? Because as students head back to school, that question matters. Public schools serve families of every faith and no faith at all. They should not be used to pressure students, promote religious messages. or make any child feel like an outsider. FFRF says the oath is to the Constitution, not a creed. The Freedom From Religion Foundation works to keep state and church separate and speaks up for free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, and non-religious Americans. Learn more at ffrf.us slash office. That's ffrf.us slash office. dot U.S. slash O-F-F-I-C-E. Speaker 3 (1:11) Welcome to the Oath in the Office podcast. I'm John Fugelsang. It's so good to have you with us. And it's so good to welcome the star of our show, the Mac of the Oath in the Office, the author of the Oath in the Office, as well as the author of The Presidents and the People, a man thrown out of Wu-Tang Clan for being too hardcore. I give you Professor Corey Brettschneider. Hey, Corey. Speaker 2 (1:30) Hey, John. We have quite a show. We have Sky Perryman is going to join us. We're going to talk about the latest in the post office case, the Supreme Court. thankfully not allowing Donald Trump to move forward with his plan to essentially use the post office to steal our election. We'll talk about why that happened. We'll talk about her ongoing litigation to stop the slush fund, which it turns out is not totally dead, although it should be. And of course, we're going to talk about the theme of this presidency, corruption and the real theft that's gone on using the office to sell pardons, to abuse power. And, you know, this is a show about the abuse of power, but also about a hope and the promise of the pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, defend the office, the oath in the office. So we'll do both. We'll be honest this week and also offer some hope. Speaker 3 (2:25) Well, I mean, it's it's amazing. We've been talking about the post office and this battle that's been going on for months. United States Postal Service delivers Christmas cards and tax returns and wedding invitations and jury summonses and sex toys and your aunt's 47 page Facebook printout. But suddenly, whoa, hold on. This envelope looks suspicious, right, Corey? Like, it's just amazing to me that it's went this far. Nothing says limited government like giving the federal government a new job checking whether you're allowed to receive your ballot in your mail to exercise your. constitutional right. I mean, I'm excited to talk about it with Sky, but is this finally over, at least for 2026? Speaker 2 (3:04) It's over for this election, I think. But, you know, the threat to democracy continues because the idea of the unitary executive, which we've talked often about, but we can't talk enough about, that essentially the president has total control over the executive branch. What this maneuver was an attempt to do was to use that control in order to usurp the law, to usurp our elections. And, you know, what's hopeful is that the Supreme Court majority did stop it. But, you know, the case, this isn't a final decision on the substance of the law. It is a case that says that it was likely to be an illegal series of maneuvers that they used. Now, could they come up with ways? of making this attempt to pretend to combat fraud, but really steal the election in the future and future elections. Could they get it past this court? I hope not. You know, but let's be honest, too. There were two justices, Thomas and Alito, who essentially, to my mind, I mean, we can't call it's no legal reason for this. They were essentially saying, yeah, let this guy steal the election. And really partisan hacks, two of them now. Trump also attacked the justices that he appointed that turned on him, as he sees it, as he did in the tariffs case. And, you know, that shows this tension. My hope is that those justices are starting to get the message that this isn't an ordinary time. Starting to get the message? Speaker 3 (4:33) Corey, they all know exactly what they signed up for, and they all thought they could be the ones to ride the wave. Speaker 2 (4:39) Yeah, well. you know we'll give credit where credit is due they didn't go along with his attempt to steal the election i as you know last week a lot of listeners said to me And I heard from them that, you know, we hear the fear in your voice. And I was scared because when you have this Supreme Court essentially enabling, I mean, let's just remind people, you know, about a third of Americans vote by mail. And Speaker 3 (5:02) he Speaker 2 (5:03) was able to demand that states certify their voters lists against his list of blocking off supposed fraudulent ballots, which were really just an attempt to shave votes off and to win the election by cheating. That was a threat to the midterm elections. And that's why I was so worried. So you hear me more relieved. There is hope. We'll talk with Sky later about fighting back and citizens' role in fighting back. And, you know, here we did have a victory and those lower court decisions were upheld. And you know that this was good for democracy Speaker 3 (5:39) because Fox News didn't cover it. I mean. I mean, the news broke at 7 p.m. Eastern, right? Laura Ingraham, who I'm told went to law school and graduated. She didn't think it was worth telling her viewers that the Supreme Court had knocked down Trump's scheme. And then Jesse Waters came on and I never missed that show. That's a summit. You know, Corey, that guy. And then he never mentioned it. Hannity shows up. Hannity at one point said the single most important midterm election in our Hannity. Never mentioned it, Corey. This was so bad, they had to work overtime their entire primetime lineup to keep Fox News viewers from knowing the news. Speaker 2 (6:19) Well, we live in two realities. You know, there's the people who listen to the Oath in the Office podcast and other shows like it. And there's those Philistines. And then there are people who are watching, you know, Fox. which is telling them that, you know, Trump is just trying to fight fraud. And what is Trump telling his supporters? I'm just fighting fraud. I'm not doing anything. He's trying to fight fraud. Yeah, yeah. By the way, Trump Speaker 3 (6:41) University and fight fraud with Speaker 2 (6:43) him. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, they might have overturned an election. And, you know, the theme of his own corruption and his fight against democracy, it's one idea, which is it's all about himself and his own power and self-aggrandizement. Speaker 3 (6:55) So the short version is this. Supreme Court just stopped the 2026 election from becoming essentially a nationwide software beta test. I think the funniest part of it all, Corey, I guess you could say in this post office ruling, the Supreme Court stamped it return to sender. And there we go. So let's get to the fun stuff, Corey. I'm here for the jokes. So I love that. And let's talk about the five thousand dollar dividend. You know, the president went to the midterm convention. And I know. You weren't watching because nobody was. And he promised $5,000 to every American of voting age if, if the Republican Party keeps the House and the Senate, if then you'll all get $5,000. Now, this is funny for many reasons. I don't see how it's not a bribe, Corey, because of the if part of it. But essentially. A man baby who's already owes us money for the tariffs in a check. And I'm still waiting for my doge check from last year. That's coming soon, right, Corey? I'm waiting on the doge check. Now, essentially, he rolled out of bed and said, hey, Alexa, give every adult five thousand dollars and didn't do the math, which comes out to one point two trillion. Now, I don't think we have one point two trillion dollars lying around, professor. So best case scenario. What, he's trying to borrow from our grandkids to pay us now? I mean, they control the White House House and the Senate. He could give the damn money out right now. But he suggests that he might not need Congress to authorize such payments. Corey, does he have any plausible constitutional pathway to do this unilaterally? Speaker 2 (8:36) Well, you know, John, I wish I could say, first of all, let me start off by saying, let's talk about the oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Trying to bribe people in order to vote for you is not consistent with that, to say the least. But so often we're talking about how the system should function. And this show is also about the reality of how it does function. And unfortunately, the First Amendment, in particular, the right of free speech has been so expanded that the court has limited the kind of corruption, even bribery claims that you can bring. And I think that if a prosecutor were to look at this, I mean, there are so many hurdles to ever prosecuting it that it's unlikely that it would ever happen. He would say certainly there is a right to free speech. He would say that under the immunity case, Trump versus the United States, that this is an official act that he's engaging in. It's a partisan one. And this court has often rejected challenges, for instance, to partisan gerrymandering. on the grounds that, look, you know, this is part of partisanship, it's part of politics. So I don't see a successful prosecution. I think the First Amendment would block it off. I think the immunity case would block it off. And that's a real problem. It's part of why after this presidency, when we have a Congress that wants to preserve the office, we have to start to talk about how to rein in executive power with more specific criminal laws that outlaw exactly something like this. We shouldn't think about politics. in terms of what could we prosecute with the laws on the books. We should start with the ethical realization that this is obviously bribery, obviously wrong to try to use the United States Treasury in order to steal an election. And then we've got to think back to the kind of laws that we need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. But the reality is that we have, you know, we don't have sufficient either laws on the books to prosecute it or an infrastructure to prosecute it. And we have this court, despite what it did in the post office case, you know, it didn't totally sell us out. But they blocked off so many of the ways of trying to produce accountability for presidents like this who engage in essentially bribery. Speaker 3 (10:46) So, I mean, it's $1.2 trillion, Professor. Congress hasn't appropriated. any of that money. I guess the question I really want to unpack constitutionally is, when does a presidential promise become an exercise of presidential power? Because he's always BSing people. I mean, he lies constantly, but this was a quid pro quo. Well, Speaker 2 (11:09) what he does, and we saw this in the post office case, the court thankfully stopped him, and I would hope that he would be stopped here too. is that he looks for either inherent powers, he says, of the executive branch. So just to explain it again, in the post office case, he's saying, look, the post office is part of the executive branch. And in the same way that, you know, the printing office in the White House that, you know, makes brochures when people come to visit, I could say what I want in that or not. I can also tell the post office that I want to combat what I think fraud is. That's what the Solicitor General does. So that's one thing that he does, is he looks for inherent powers. He also looks for legislation that he says grants him powers, generalized delegations of power. So by analogy, Sky Perryman's group, Democracy Forward and I, worked on an amicus brief in the tariffs case. And what he did there, there is no power of a president, and this is what we said in our amicus brief, to unilaterally impose tariffs willy-nilly as he wants in an arbitrary way. But he looked for Speaker 1 (12:14) a Speaker 2 (12:14) law, and he found the International Economic Emergencies Act, and he says that delegates me the power to institute these tariffs. Now, we said in our brief, and the Supreme Court said, I don't think so. We read the law. It says the opposite, actually. It reigns in presidents. So he'll do that, too. He'll look for legislation that he claims enables him to pay this bribe, essentially, assuming that his party wins both houses. Speaker 3 (12:40) Yeah. And again, like, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Corey. Speaker 2 (12:42) Yeah. And I was going to say, you know, one close cousin of the International Economic Emergencies Act that he used in the tariffs case. is the National Emergencies Act. So you could imagine him, for instance, saying, well, we're in a national emergency that requires the payment of this money. And, you know... More likely than that, I think the House is going to go to Democrats and they'll have an easy way out. He won't have to pay up and he'll be relieved about that. But, you know, there are ways to usurp congressional power. And the theme of this presidency has all been about that. Remember, Doge just ignored the power of the purse. And so why would he not try it again? Speaker 3 (13:22) Well, because Doge saved us so much money and made the deficit go down. Oh, wait, no. But I mean, look, last question on this. I mean. It's bribery out in the open, right? I mean, linking a government benefit to an election as a quid pro quo. I mean, that like I would think if a Democrat did that, we hear all about the Democratic and constitutional concerns of such an action. But I mean, it's open bribery, is it not? Speaker 2 (13:47) You know, I wish I could say, John, it's open and shut because should it be? Yes. Ethically, should we have laws on the books that would make this obviously illegal and would deter any president from doing it? Absolutely. But I also have to face the reality that the president's lawyers will come up with all sorts of arguments for why this is perfectly legal. It's a normal thing for a president to do. And their arguments include free speech, the unitary executive, and possibly even here are the statutory powers that give me the right to do it. And, you know, the court has been willing to use the free speech clause to limit all sorts of protections of democracy, most famously. Campaign finance reform, it's limited. And it also has limited the kind of corruption cases that can be brought. Wow. So, OK, let's not talk about bribery. Let's Speaker 3 (14:35) talk about selling pardons. We've seen a lot of reporting on this growing network of lobbyists and lawyers and presidential henchmen who are seeking to help all manner of wealthy douchebag. get presidential clemency. And CBS on the remains of 60 Minutes actually reported this Trump-linked lobbying firm got half a million dollars for work involving immigration and parted-related discussions. I mean, they actually showed footage of these guys just selling pardons. We already know that Trump is doing this. What does it mean for the rule of law, Corey, when access to presidential clemency becomes something you can just hire a political insider to do for you? Speaker 2 (15:15) Well, you know, this 60 Minutes report really started to bring home just how in the open the selling of pardons has been. It's something like, according to the statistics, 90 % of pardons have bypassed the Department of Justice. And that's if you include the January 6th pardons. But even if you take them out, it's something like 70%. In other words, there has always been a process of... It's supposed to be consistent with equity in the rule of law, that you submit a pardon application to the Department of Justice. There's a pardon attorney, essentially, who looks at all this information and weighs the recommendation. And then it goes to the president. It's a way of imposing some sort of standard and order on this massive power of a president. But that's not what's going on here. The president is basically, it looks like, allowing people who are... being paid, talk about bribes, in order to get pardons in front of him. They're bragging, these pardon brokers, about their relationship with staff members close to the president. And the reality of what's happening, which is that these pardon applications aren't being granted through the normal process, but are being granted through people who had direct access to justice. what's happening is obviously that the president of the United States is selling pardons. Now, one thing I'll just say about 60 Minutes, on the one hand, it's such a damning story that it got through the pro-Trump forces there. No, Speaker 3 (16:45) it's very Speaker 2 (16:45) Supreme Speaker 3 (16:46) Court, isn't it? It's very John Roberts. Yeah, I mean, it was just so bad. Here's something to make the family happy, and now here's our token bit of integrity. Go on. Speaker 2 (16:53) Very Supreme Court. But, you know, the way they did the story is not the way I just told it. It really is. focusing on these people who are abusing the vulnerable to sell these pardons. And I think you could come away from watching that story thinking it's not the president that's selling pardons. It's these hucksters who are really trying to profit off naive people. And they're the ones Speaker 3 (17:15) who would take the fall for it as well. But I mean, clearly they're not doing it for themselves. I mean, okay, can a president constitutionally pardon someone for essentially... Any federal crime, Professor, are there things a president can't pardon? Speaker 2 (17:30) Well, as you alluded to, we're talking about federal crimes. There is no pardon power for state crimes. Speaker 3 (17:37) That's right, Derek Chauvin. Speaker 2 (17:38) And the way that the clause, the way that it's put into the Constitution is there is one exception. The president has the power to pardon, and now here's the clause, except in cases of impeachment. Now, scholars through the years have essentially argued that that clause, except in cases of impeachment, is essentially meaningless, that the power is plenary or absolute, that it's an absolute power. He