Chapter Seventeen
WHEN JOHN EXITED the elevator on the fifth floor of the DOJ building, he grabbed the first DTED attorney he saw in the hallway and said, “Come with me.” As soon as they walked through the door of his private office, John spun around, his face bristling with anger. “Get me everything on how the case is developing against Rev. Pat Preston in Nashville, Tennessee. I mean everything. Where is he now? What’s he doing? And what he’s saying about me and this agency? Where’s the grand jury on his case? Is an indictment drawn up? Get it all, every word of it, and don’t leave anything out. Is that clear? I’m going to nail that self-righteous bigot one way or the other.”
“Yes, sir. Perfectly clear, sir. I’ll get right on it.” Then, hesitatingly, he asked, “Just one question, sir. Does this take priority?”
“What do you mean, priority? What did I just say? Of course it’s priority?”
“The judges, sir. The Madisonians.”
For a moment John felt lost. Then he looked at the young attorney more closely. “You’re Alden, right?” It had been a while since John had had a face-to-face with the young attorney. He left the day-to-day interaction between staff to his chief of staff Donna Lewis and his lead attorney Joel Thevis.
“Yes, sir. Mike Alden. You wanted to know the names of the federal judges that aren’t following our directives. And you also wanted me to do backgrounds on all the Madisonians at Justice.”
“Of course. I remember. Sorry, I’m a little upset about something. How’s the search going?”
“Fine, sir. It’s been slow but I’m making headway. I gave a preliminary list of all the judges to your chief of staff last week, and I’m still working on a few others. I had some trouble getting the list of all the Madisonians, so I had to get some help from OPR. But I should have the information you wanted in a few days, if that’s okay.”
“You went to the Office of Professional Responsibility?”
“Yes, sir. They have access to all the files on Justice Department employees. That’s the only place to get some of this stuff.”
“Okay, Alden,” John said. “Look, I’m sorry I forgot about that. It hasn’t been my best day. Here’s the deal: Preston comes first. Put the other stuff on hold for now, and get me everything you can find on him. Then you can go back and wrap up the other assignment but stay away from OPR. Got that?”
Before leaving, the young man reached over to shake the boss’s hand, and said, “Sir, I want to thank you for trusting me with these important projects.”
John wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he shook hands and said, “Sure, Alden. You’re welcome.”
“I know how important this is to you, Mr. Smith,” Alden pressed, “and I want you to know that I’m with you on everything. You can trust me, sir. I won’t let you down.”
John wondered what Matt Branson thought about a low-level member of the DTED legal team asking for info on the Madisonians in the DOJ. John wouldn’t have given it much thought, but Matt made it clear that he had attended their training sessions. He did so with honest pride and no embarrassment. John had enough problems without the Office of Professional Responsibility sniffing around.
“Alden.” John stopped Alden before he made it out of the office.
Alden turned. “Yes, sir?”
“When were you last at OPR?”
“Yesterday, sir. I sent an interdepartmental memo last week then showed up in person.”
“Who did you talk to?”
The young lawyer thought for a moment. “A woman named Denton. Lisa Denton. She’s Matt Branson’s aide.”
“I know who she is. Did you talk to Mr. Branson?”
“No, sir. What information I received I got from Ms. Denton.”
“Thanks. Carry on.”
A certain degree of paranoia was necessary in his work, but should he feel this unsettled at hearing Matt’s name?
MATT BRANSON HAD several case files on his desk. Nothing earth-shattering, just a few complaints against DOJ attorneys. There were always complaints to deal with. It was the nature of the work. One couldn’t prosecute criminal offenses without angering someone. Many of the complaints were from defense attorneys hoping to get cases altered or even dropped by casting aspersions on DOJ prosecutors. It seldom did any good. Rarer still was a prosecutor attempting to skirt accepted legal protocol.
Then there was John Knox Smith. The number of complaints against him and his team seemed to double every month. To date, there had been nothing actionable—yet. John was adept at changing laws rather than breaking them, but he walked on the edge. Matt wondered how long it would be before he had to have a professional talk with the most dangerous prosecutor in the country.
He pulled a thick file to the center of his desk and opened it. Inside were personal observations about John’s department, memos, and news clippings. On the top of the pile of papers was a list of DOJ attorneys, attorneys with one thing in common: They were all Madisonians. His aide had complied the list at the request of one of John’s team attorneys. Matt had reluctantly agreed, mostly because he couldn’t conjure up a defensible reason to say no.
“What are you up to, John?” Matt’s name was on the list of Madisonians. Had he fallen into John’s crosshairs?
THAT EVENING, JOHN had dinner and drinks with his colleague Rev. Lynn Barrett of the Metropolitan Urban Church. The Capitol Hill restaurant buzzed with activity, but John ignored it. Instead he focused on telling Barrett how upset and embarrassed he felt after being caught off guard on a national television broadcast.
John said, “It’s people like Pat Preston who have made my life unbearable.”
“I know.” Barrett’s tone was sympathetic. “You’ve got to stop pulling your punches, John. You have ways to shut these Jesus guys down once and for all, and this may be just the provocation you’ve needed to ramp it up a bit.”
“Lynn, are you saying that breaking down doors and hauling people off to jail isn’t ramping it up?”
“You know what I mean, John. We’ve been looking for a case—the case—to drive the new and proper values home to the American people. This could be it.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Lynn. I want to ramp it up, believe me. But some people are already having trouble with what we’re doing. If we’re too aggressive with guys like Preston, they’ll come back at us. It’s all the social work that comes out of some of these churches: AIDS relief, charities, feeding the poor, medical care, orphanages, and things like that. Right-wing Christian groups run so much of that stuff. If we’re not careful, it will look like we’re prosecuting Mother Teresa.”
“Forgive me, John, but that’s a load of crap. The more dedicated they are—pretending to be kind and compassionate and all that rot—the more deceptive they are. What people have got to realize is that those charities aim at just one thing: conversion. Even their hospitals are motivated by conversion. When your friend Preston was preaching those repugnant sermons about the world’s great religions, do you think he was thinking about philosophy or customs?”
“Of course not. I’d prefer that you not refer to Preston as my friend.”
“I understand. Here’s my point. Everything they do is about converting the lost, heaven or hell, and all that. It is part of every fiber of their existence. Preston is like all the rest. If you go soft on him, everything they said about you this morning is going to stick to you like glue.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Lynn. We’ve talked about this so many times. I agree with everything you’ve said. I’m not saying we go soft on anybody; you’ve seen how aggressive we’ve been, especially over the last few months. I’m just saying we have to think about the public reaction, and prepare for possible repercussions.”
“Maybe you’re right, but the only way to stanch a bleeding wound permanently is to cauterize it. You really care about diversity and tolerance, John, so you’re going to have to turn up the heat. I don’t see any alternative.”
John couldn??
?t argue against the point. Lynn was simply saying what he had been thinking. He pushed back from the table and placed his napkin beside his plate. “True believers are the biggest threat we face, Lynn. We’ll stop them. Believe me. We simply must.”
JOHN DETERMINED TO turn up the heat, but that meant he would need the cooperation of the courts at all levels. He knew he could count on Chief Justice Williams and at least four of the associate justices at the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the strong, new amendments to the law and the new RDTA regulations when their cases reached that level. Still, most cases would be settled in the district and appeals courts, and he wanted to make sure his attorneys could count on the judges there to cooperate.
He asked Andrea to connect him with the head of the Administrative Office of the Courts. As soon as he got the director on the line, he said, “We need to talk.” Two days later John and Joel Thevis met with the director and explained their concerns.
“We did a lot of hard work to get the new expanded DTED bill and the National Judicial Expansion and Retirement Act passed through Congress,” John said. “Now they’ve both been signed into law by the president, but we’re still not getting what we need from the district courts. The retirements and new appointments are moving too slowly.”
The director looked at John skeptically. “What does that mean, Mr. Smith?”
“We thought the offer of early retirement at full pay for judges on the bench over ten years and the doubling of judicial positions would bring in a wave of new talent—people who think like we do. We have a lot of federal judges who are still hanging onto beliefs and ideologies that are in opposition to our core values and policies. We cannot have men and women sitting on the bench who support bigotry and intolerance.”
John became animated. “Those people are throwbacks to another century, and we can’t have people like that in positions of trust. Any judge who is so out of touch that he or she can’t read the handwriting on the wall needs to be permanently recused. That puts the ball squarely in your court. We want to know what you are going to do about it.”
“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, Mr. Smith, you’re asking for trouble. We’ve been through this before. Meddling with the federal courts in any way, short of a full-fledged ethics investigation, can be a disaster. In any event, what you’re asking for would raise red flags in some places, and that could lead to a very nasty constitutional confrontation.”
John shook his head. “One more legal battle won’t faze me. I wouldn’t look forward to a situation like that, but we both know it’s time to settle some of these basic questions. Like, what is ‘free speech’? And what is ‘free exercise of religion’? What is our constitutional position on those issues going to be? What has the Supreme Court decided the meaning of the First Amendment to be? When are we going to bring our law into alignment with Europe? My agency is prepared to take on a major case that will help settle the matter, but we’re going to need a little help.”
“It comes down to this,” Joel Thevis said, pressing a little harder. “What does the First Amendment actually mean? This whole concept of unenumerated rights needs to be put to bed. If the courts have said it isn’t there, it isn’t there. The mistaken idea that some people can trample basic human rights in the name of free speech or their so-called religious freedom is an outrage to human dignity. We can bring the cases, but ultimately the courts will have to settle these questions, and that means we need properly informed judges in the district courts.”
The director sat forward with his elbows on the desk and his hands folded in front of his face as he listened to Joel’s explanation. After another long pause, he said, “Gentlemen, the common interpretation of the First Amendment is that every American is guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and redress of grievances. That’s it.” Then, sitting back in his overstuffed chair, he added, “Those are the five freedoms, the way the founders laid them out. There’s not much wiggle room in that as far as I can see.”
John recoiled at the mention of the founders. “We’d better stop and remember who the founders were. I hope you’re not trying to glorify those people. They were some of the biggest hypocrites in history. They put all that flowery language in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights when their real goal was merely to avoid paying taxes and to keep their slaves. The reactionaries who try to disguise that fact with talk of ‘originalism’ aren’t fooling anybody. That’s garbage.”
Leaning forward once again, the director said, “I think I know where you’re going with this. But you need to be very careful when you start messing around with the federal courts, not to mention the First Amendment. Like it or not, this is still a hot-button issue. As you know very well, there are at least two justices on the Supreme Court today who believe strongly that the free speech clauses in the Constitution protect just about anything anybody wants to say. Even if I happen to agree their position is based on a false premise, you’re not going to get either Collins or Grouling to go along with you.”
Joel glanced at John, then said, “We only need a simple majority to win our cases. I’m sure Justices Collins and Grouling are reasonable men. But, like anybody else, they can be persuaded, and if—”
“No. Don’t go there, Mr. Thevis.” The director scowled. “If you try to tamper with the Court—”
“Who’s tampering?” Joel protested. “I’m just saying—”
John jumped in to short-circuit the debate. “Joel, let it go. We know what you mean, Director. We’re not going to try to influence any of the courts that way.” He addressed the director. “Here’s the point we’re trying to make. There has to be a limit to what people can say without penalty. You know very well we didn’t decide this on our own: It’s the law. Unlimited free speech would be a disaster. But we have to find the right case—a case that will help us make the point once and for all—and we want to be sure this office is informed and prepared to help when the time comes.”
“I’m still not following you, Mr. Smith. What does that mean, prepared to help?” It was obvious the man was irritated and unhappy with the direction and tone of the conversation.
“I can’t say at this moment,” John answered. “I’m not sure what will happen when the time comes. I’m just saying it’s important that judges at all levels need to be educated and to rule responsibly so we can establish the precedents that will help all of us do our jobs better. Surely you see what I mean. You know what the law says. If there are no responsible limits on what religious zealots can say in a public forum, then no one is safe. It’s as simple as that. And, one way or the other, we’re going to make sure that fact is established by law, and that the federal courts allow us to make it a dynamic and lasting precedent.”
AS JOHN AND JOEL were leaving his office, the director penciled a note to himself: “Call Alton Stamper. What’s going on at DTED and our courts? This JKS is dangerous.”