'Operation Higher Court': Inside the religious right's efforts to wine and dine Supreme Court Justic

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦
@RonFilipkowski
·
Follow
“Rob Schenck, an Assembly of God minister who headed the Faith and Action group headquartered near the Sup Ct from 1995-2018, said he arranged for years for couples to fly to Washington to visit with and entertain” Thomas, Alito & Scalia.

politico.com
‘Operation Higher Court’: Inside the religious right’s efforts to wine and dine Supreme Court...
A former evangelical leader details his group’s extensive program to influence Justices Thomas, Alito and Scalia through meals and entertainment.
1:11 PM · Jul 8, 2022

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/08/religious-right-supreme-court-00044739

The former leader of a religious right organization said he recruited and coached wealthy volunteers including a prominent Dayton, Ohio, evangelical couple to wine, dine and entertain conservative Supreme Court justices while pushing conservative positions on abortion, homosexuality, gun restrictions and other issues.

Rob Schenck, an Assembly of God minister who headed the Faith and Action group headquartered near the Supreme Court from 1995 to 2018, said he arranged over the years for about 20 couples to fly to Washington to visit with and entertain Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia.

Schenck, who was once an anti-abortion activist but broke with the religious right in the last decade over its aggressive tactics and support for gun rights, said the couples were instructed before the dinners to use certain phrases to influence the justices while steering clear of the specifics of cases pending before the court — for example, to “talk about the importance of a child having a father and a mother,” rather than engage in the particulars of a gay-rights case.

“We would rehearse lines like, ‘We believe you are here for a time like this,’” which is a reference to the Old Testament Book of Esther in which the Hebrew woman born with the name Hadassah becomes queen of Persia and succeeds in preventing a genocide of her people.

Schenck said the goal was to create an ecosystem of support for conservative justices, as a way of making them more forthright in their views.

*snick*

[calimary]

1. This pushes me back to the same complaint.

Where’s OURS?????

The bad guys have more institutes and foundations and other constructs to raise money and “awareness” and domination of the rhetoric and messaging and the salesmanship and other delivery systems for their let’s-go-back-to-the-18th-century goals and buy politicians and stack the deck every which way they can.

And WHERE’S OURS???????

[Initech]

2. Time for these fuckers to lose their tax exempt status!

[Goonch]

3. ;-{)🖖‍

[hedda_foil]

4. Am I getting this right?

So rich Dominionists donated big bucks to this guy's operation and then they got to have dinner with a justice or two plus wives? If this is what's been going on, the justices involved were gung ho with this kind of deal. Did they get kickbacks or were they just happy to do bidness with these folks?

[dalton99a]

5. Operation Dance With Who Brung Ya

Thoroughly corrupt fuckers