Mark Martin's Involvement in Election Denialism Targeted by Carolina Forward

 

It was very recently announced that former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin was returning to North Carolina to become the founding dean of the brand new High Point School of Law. When Martin resigned his seat on the NC Supremes, he went to become dean of the law school at Regent University, the school founded by evangelist and Jehovah whisperer Pat Robertson.

Then came this bombshell news: The New York Times reported that Martin served as an informal advisor to Trump in the days following the election and supported an unsuccessful lawsuit that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

The Times also reported that Martin told Trump that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject state election returns — a move Pence rejected.

The Washington Post reported that Trump spoke with Martin on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Trump supporters overran the U.S. Capitol. Martin has repeatedly declined to comment publicly about his involvement.

Martin’s appointment as dean has raised eyebrows since it was announced in June. Last month, the editorial board of the nearby Greensboro News & Record chided Martin and the university for failing to "address the brontosaurus in the room."

Carolina Forward intensified the debate this week when it purchased an interstate billboard near High Point University saying, “Mark Martin betrayed our constitution.” Carolina Forward is pressuring High Point University (which is affiliated with the United Methodists) to rescind Martin's appointment as dean of its law school.

“Mark Martin’s repeated attempts to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election were a blatant violation of basic Constitutional principles,” said Blair Reeves, Carolina Forward’s Executive Director. “Martin was an eager and willing participant in an effort to overthrow a duly-elected American government, and helped inspire the horror of January 6th’s right-wing terrorist assault against the U.S. Capitol. He is no longer fit to practice law, let alone guide the course of legal education based on a Constitution for which he shows pure contempt.”

Former NC Chief Justice Implicated in Trump Plot To Overturn Election

 

Mark Martin

 

"Among those whom Mr. Olson mentioned as speaking to Mr. Trump about the Justice Department getting involved was Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. White House officials believed at the time that Mr. Martin was brought in through Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff."

--Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater, "Little-Known Lawyer Pitched Trump on Extreme Plans to Subvert Election," New York Times, 17 July 2022

Mark Martin was "brought in through Mark Meadows," presumably to bolster the recommendation that Trump might (1) seize state voting machines and/or (2) replace the acting Attorney General and/or (3) Gawd knows what.

It was very recently announced that Martin was returning to North Carolina to become the founding dean of the brand new High Point School of Law. When Martin resigned his seat on the NC Supremes, he went to become dean of the law school at Regent University, the school founded by evangelist and Jehovah whisperer Pat Robertson.

High Point University is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

Barringer to Berger Jr.: "Not So Fast There, Scooter!"

Sen. Tamara Barringer, 2016, calling for
repeal of HB2 ("bathroom bill")
WRAL photo

Musical Chairs on NC's Highest Court
Republican Chief Justice Mark Martin announced he was stepping down this month, and Governor Cooper gets to appoint his replacement (who'll have to run for the seat in 2020). Republican Associate Justice Paul Newby immediately announced he would be giving up the Newby seat to run for Chief Justice next year. Soon after, Republican Phil Berger Jr. announced he would run for the Newby seat (as did Democratic Court of Appeals Judge Lucy Inman).

Yesterday former NC Senator Tamara Barringer announced she will also be running in 2020 for the Newby seat.

My first thought: "D'oh! Tamara Barringer saying (in effect) to Phil Berger Jr., 'I don't care who your daddy is! I'm running for the same thing you think you're entitled to!' "

Interesting, since, as a state senator, Barringer was always under Father Berger's thumb, though she's been capable of a streak of independence (see the photo).

Contrary to what I initially thought (and hattip to Gerry Cohen), there will be judicial primaries in North Carolina in 2020. The elimination of primaries for partisan judge races applied only to 2018, which was one of those Berger/Moore schemes supposed to sow chaos among Democrats. Didn't work that way, and we now have a 5-2 Democratic majority on the Supreme Court likely to move to 6-1 when Cooper appoints Martin's replacement.

If there's a Berger Jr. - Barringer primary, that'll be interesting to watch. If. Many other factors could change that: If Cooper appoints one of the sitting Democratic justices as Chief, that'll open another named seat, and Barringer could elect to run for that rather than going head to head with Berger.

Barringer had been a four-term state senator, representing the Wake County District 17, until last fall when Democrat Sam Searcy flipped the seat. Wake County has been trending away from hardline conservatism, but in announcing yesterday, Barringer sounded pretty hardcore conservative:

“In the last week, I received many calls encouraging me to run for the Supreme Court,” Barringer said in a press release Tuesday. “All of you know my love for the law and the importance of maintaining a strict Constitutional interpretation of the laws passed by the General Assembly. It is imperative that we have justices who refrain from legislating from the bench” (emphasis added).

But in 2016, she was the first Republican lawmaker to call for the "substantial and immediate" repeal of House Bill 2 due to the measure's "unintended consequences" (WRAL).

Bon Appetit! NC GOP Serves Itself Two New Turd Sandwiches

While You Were Ogling DeeCee...
Something else happened yesterday while you were possibly transfixed by the pre-dawn arrest of Roger Stone followed by the complete capitulation of DJT ("wall" has shrunk to "wah"). And didn't Nancy Pelosi show every man in Washington how to wear your balls out? Why did I ever doubt her?

Meanwhile, in North Carolina...

Dallas Woodhouse

1. Load, Aim, Shoot Your Eye Out

We had not even noticed that in their newest Board of Elections law, the Republicans in the General Assembly explicitly prohibited anyone serving on the board who had worked at "electioneering" in the past 48 months. Seriously. Dictionary definition of "electioneering": "the activity of trying to persuade people to vote for a particular political party."

Beyond the restoration of the 3-2 governor's-party architecture of the old old SBOE, I had no idea what else was buried in that law. Evidently, Dallas Woodhouse didn't know either. He's NC GOP Executive Director, and in contravention of his party's law, he presented two (of four) nominees for the SBOE who violate the explicit language of the statute, Francis Deluca and Buck Newton. Governor Roy Cooper actually knows what's in the law, and he demanded two more names, eligible people rather than partisan knights.

Though Cooper gave Woodhouse until Monday to produce two new nominees, Woodhouse coughed them up immediately and under the signature of Republican Party Figurehead Chair Robin Hayes. We'll follow up presently on those two new names in a separate post.

Woodhouse is ruthless but sloppy. Like Twitterman. I like that in an adversary.

Footnote
Four Eggers remains as a nominee, along with Dallas Woodhouse's cousin Eddie, who has served on the Wake County BOE.


2. "Is it me, or has it gotten hot in here?"

NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin announced he would be leaving the bench in February to become dean of the law school at Regent University, Pat Robertson's Christian mill in Virginia. Governor Cooper gets to replace him on the court (and that someone will have to run in his/her own right in 2020).

After the November election of Justice Anita Earls, the Court was 5-2 Democratic majority. With Cooper's ability to appoint Martin's replacement, it may now go to 6-1.

Relatively speaking, that's pretty huge. The NC GOP goes from trying hard the last two years to jury-rig the judicial system in North Carolina, to this:

The Wild, Wonderful Way That Judges Use the Language

Good Lord Almighty! Hell for me would be forever reading court documents in constitutionality cases in North Carolina.

I've got the blind staggers after spending much of the day on the text of Judge Ervin's decision in Roy A. Cooper v. Philip E. Berger and Timothy K. Moore, a landmark case, but gawd! the language, the terminology, the "magic words"! A tar-pit, if you'll forgive the all-too-obvious reference. Nevertheless, I've often been engrossed in it, and sometimes nonplussed. 

Phil Berger and Tim Moore.
It appears that "on its face,"
they fell flat on theirs

To boil it down: A three-judge panel appointed by Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court Mark Martin especially to hear the governor's suit against the legislature last October -- in which the governor claimed that Berger/Moore violated the separation of powers provision of the state constitution in restructuring the boards of election and ethics and taking away the governor's ability to appoint the members of those boards as he pleases -- those three judges entered an order on Halloween Night, 2017, determining that it "lacked jurisdiction to reach the merits of the Governor's claims" ... leaving the General Assembly's power-grab in place and punting the issue to a higher court.

The Supreme Court caught the ball: "We'll take it from here."

I've learned a lot today about "the political question doctrine" and "justiciability," which was the foundation on which the 3-judge panel refused to act. LawBrain defines a "political question" as "an issue that the courts refuse to decide because it properly belongs to the decision-making authority of elected officials" and is therefore not a matter appropriate for court review -- "non-justiciable."

The NC Supreme Court did not agree with that reasoning and asserted its constitutional right to review the General Assembly's restructuring of the Board of Elections and Ethics and its cutting the governor out of the ability to appoint and control that combined board. It is not a political question, Ervin's decision asserts, because what the General Assembly did is also a fundamental violation of the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches of government, and on the face of it is an unconstitutional usurpation of power.

That's another word I've learned: facially. On its face. So obvious it hurts.

Much of the Cooper v. Berger and Moore decision focuses on the separation of powers and on the Supreme Court's ability -- nay, responsibility -- to test and check the General Assembly's power-grabbing ambitions -- the power of "judicial review."

Under that power, the Supreme Court yesterday reviewed what Berger and Moore did to the Board of Elections just hours after they watched a Democrat win the governship in the late fall of 2016 -- they combined elections and ethics enforcement boards and recomposed it with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, so that stalemate is all but guaranteed in matters like Early Voting plans in all the counties -- something we know about in Watauga -- and the Democratic majority on the Court found it just on its face an unallowable infringement on the executive:

The General Assembly cannot ... structure an executive branch commission in such a manner that the Governor is unable, within a reasonable period of time, to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” because he or she is required to appoint half of the commission members from a list of nominees consisting of individuals who are, in all likelihood, not supportive of, if not openly opposed to, his or her policy preferences while having limited supervisory control over the agency and circumscribed removal authority over commission members. 

I can read that, and understand it very clearly, and so can Berger and Moore.

NC Supremes Bob Edmunds Must Face Challenger

BREAKING NEWS
Ruling  Stands: "Retention Elections," unconstitutional

The "retention election" law passed in 2015 -- overturned by a 3-judge panel as unconstitutional in Feb. 2016 -- will stay overturned because of a 3-3 tie today on the NC Supreme Court

Sabra Faires

Background
Last February, a special three-judge panel ruled in Sabra Faires et al. v. State Board of Elections et al. that the Berger-Moore innovation called "retention elections" was and is unconstitutional. The "retention election" law (passed quietly in 2015 to go into effect in 2016) effectively applied to only one human being, sitting Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds (R), up for reelection in 2016, because the retention election law mandated that any Supreme Court justice (and only a Supreme Court justice, on which, see below) up for reelection in 2016 (which would be Edmunds alone) did not have to run competitively against a known opponent but was subject to a voter plebiscite instead -- voters would vote only on whether Edmunds should be retained -- "yes" or "no" -- not on him or his known opponent. Under the Berger-Moore law, if by some fluke voters in the majority said "no," then the governor would get to appoint Edmunds' successor. Nice touch, that!

Sabra Faires, a lawyer in Raleigh who also wanted to run for Edmunds' seat, cried foul and sued on constitutional grounds: "retention elections" fundamentally violated the meaning of "election" as a choice. A special three-judge panel in Wake County agreed with her.

The State Board of Elections naturally appealed ... to the NC Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took the case. Interesting, since the retention election law, if it stood legal challenge, would eventually apply to the longevity of every last one of those justices, a clear conflict of interest. Edmunds, of course, recused himself. The remaining six justices split along partisan lines, creating an unbreakable tie of 3-3, Republicans Mark Martin, Paul Newby, and Barbara Jackson on one side, Democrats Sam Ervin IV, Cheri Beasley, and Robin Hudson on the other.

Bob Edmunds

When she spoke in Watauga on April 16, Sabra Faires said that she and the other plaintiffs did not make an issue of the conflict of interest (which plaintiffs could have, calling for a special and impartial panel). With Edmunds recused, it seemed pretty predictable that the court would tie 3-3, which would mean the lower court ruling would stand.

Bottomline
There will be an election in November between Bob Edmunds and whoever comes out on top in the primary June 7th: Sabra Faires, Daniel Robertson, or Mike Morgan. Take a guess who I'm voting for.

Footnote: Why the Retention Law Applied to Supreme Court Justices Alone
Berger Family Values
The original draft of the retention election law included all appellate level judges, meaning both NC Court of Appeals judges and Supreme Court judges. Written to include the appeals court, the law would have ruled out Phil Berger Junior's ability to challenge Linda Stephens. If she were "retained" under a new law, Junior Berger would be shit out of luck.

Phil Berger Senior, who runs Republican government in Raleigh, changed the law to apply only to the Supreme Court, and paved the way for his son.

NC Voter Suppression Law Prevents Privileged White Girl From Voting in 2014

Mark Martin (center), when he was appointed Chief Justice
by Gov. McCrory last year. A different daughter is
on the right

Well now. In testimony Thursday in the Winston-Salem federal trial challenging the omnibus voter suppression law passed by the General Assembly in 2013, it suddenly came out that NC Chief Justice Mark Martin's daughter was flummoxed by the new law while trying to vote in 2014.

She had registered at the DMV. The DMV, as is often the case apparently, lost her registration or simply threw it away, so she was never entered into the state Board of Elections database. She went to vote early with her father in 2014, and when the poll workers could not find her in the system, she was prevented from registering again right then and there and voting, which had been the law before the Republicans changed it (same-day registration).

Also contained in this article (read all the way to the end): Did you know that Republican members of the General Assembly refused subpoenas to testify in this trial? They didn't want to say out loud and in court what their motivations were in passing the law. And the judge would not admit numerous newspaper articles quoting those same General Assembly members in 2013 about their motivations.