The Tyrants Hiding in Plain Sight: Federal District Judges

I practiced civil law at the most complex level for more than a decade and taught it for 20 years, much at the University of California Law School here in Irvine. Before that, I was chief articles editor of UCLA Law Review and then clerked as a federal appellate judicial clerk for a brilliant judge who was chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In other words, I know the system from decades on the inside.

I originally thought that the most powerful American judges were the Supreme Court justices, then the appellate circuit judges, and then the local trial judges that, in the federal jargon, are called “United States District Court Judges.” In time, however, I learned that the District judges really are the most powerful. Although “The Supremes” can overrule and reverse anything, and the appellate courts are “Mini Supreme Courts” that are the final word — theoretically — for every case determined within their geographical region (approximately 9 percent of America, each), the lowest level — the trial judges — are way-way-way most powerful. Here’s why:

A Supreme Court justice is “only” one of nine. And they get to review and decide only an itsy-bitsy percent of all court holdings each year. An appellate court judge is “only” one of 15-30, or so, judges in a circuit, so gets a shot at only a fraction of the cases on appeal in his or her circuit. (Note: I use variations on “his or her” throughout the article because there are only two genders.) For the comparatively few cases that he or she gets to decide, that judge is “only” one of three judges sitting on that appellate panel. By contrast, a District Court trial-level judge is empowered by the Constitution to be a mini-dictator. He or she gets to decide all by himself or herself, without any input, override, or oversight except in the rare case that one or two or so of his or her decisions go up on appeal or if he or she acts with blatant immorality.

Unlike the “common wisdom,” the real truth is that almost no district-level cases ever go on appeal. Here’s why: the appeal costs too much, almost as much as an egg at the supermarket. An appeal costs a fortune. Moreover, since the prospective appellant just lost on the trial level, especially if it was decided by a jury and not merely tried by a judge, the litigant has been schooled and educated that, based on how the jury decided when presented with the facts and applicable law, the loser probably has a losing case. Certainly, a three-judge panel may rule differently from the jury, especially as they consider whether there were improprieties in the opening arguments, the jury summations, and the admittance or denial of evidence, but the odds favor concurrence with the lower court result. Therefore, typically, it is not a good way to waste money. As a result — and I clerked a year and saw this stuff from the vantage point of making the sausages — the vast majority of federal appeals tend to be brought by people convicted of federal drug violations. That is because federal convicts are awarded a free appeal, so why not appeal? May as well since you, the reader, are paying for it.

Accordingly, the federal district judge is a tyrant. It’s his or her courtroom. He or she has learned from experience that his or her ruling, no matter how crazy, usually will not be appealed. If he or she is dishonest — i.e., oriented to disregard the limits of his or her Constitutional role to interpret the law, and instead determined to fabricate the law — he or she will get away with it every time unless the tyrannical decision gets appealed. Most people do not know this. I did not — until I was schooled in the reality of life. Once, while acting as an attorney for Samsung, one of my main clients at the time, I brought a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a financially disadvantaged man who had a weak claim. His attorney also was not on an equal professional footing with me. (I am being understated here.) The law was on my side. The case had to be thrown out. The judge rejected my argument and called me over to the bench after the ruling. In a soft voice, he said: “Mr. Fischer, you should not have brought this motion. Your client is a powerhouse corporation. Your law firm is a powerhouse, too. This fellow has no chance. You should have let him go forward with his case a bit before trying to crush him. Come back in a few months with a summary judgment motion. Give the guy a chance.”

That is the system.

Under our system, a district court trial judge who chooses to be a tyrant cannot be stopped unless he or she is appealed. The appeals from non-drug decisions are so few that the judges begin to see themselves as King George III. Indeed, they are. They cannot be stopped. Think of the state court guy who presided over the big Trump case, whatever it was about — y’know, the one with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and boxer shorts — that ended with 34 convictions (or was it a 134?) for Gornisht-Fuhn-Gornisht (nothing-from-nothing). One of these days, it will finally get to the Supreme Court and all be thrown out. But that judge used his tyrannical authority to do his part: He ruined Trump’s reputation just in time for the 2024 election, tagging an innocent man as a convicted 34-time felon and allowing sordid and irrelevant evidence to be related in front of world media. That stained Trump, probably hurt his marriage, and shamed him in front of his grown kids. Kamala Harris used that repeatedly in her campaigning, and if she were not so painfully vapid as a person, it could have helped her politically.

That is precisely what is happening now as the duly elected president is simply proceeding to execute the laws and his executive authority as the American people just voted for him to do. He was elected, fair and square, to throw illegal aliens out of the country, whether by planes, trains, or automobiles. The American people, in a free and mostly sort-of fair election, essentially invoked and voted for the “Marvin K. Mooney Doctrine,” to wit:

The time has come. The time is now. We don’t care how. They can go by foot. They can go by cow. They can go on skates. They can go on skis. They can go in a hat. They can go by bike. They can go in an old blue shoe. They can go by stilts. They can go by fish. They can go by lion’s tail. They can go by mail. They can go by broomstick. They can go by plane and just make sure the El Salva-dor doesn’t hit them in the derriere on the way out. But they must just go NOW.

That was the voice of democracy after 10 million illegal aliens entered while Biden slept and Kamala was Border Czar.

America spoke, and then one single radical extreme woke Obama Judge whose wife is even more leftist than he and a left-wing contributor, too, overrules the American people and unilaterally hands down his fiat and fatwa: Don’t.

For years, I have noticed that, whenever a federal trial judge hands down a conservative ruling, the Dishonest Media include in their report that the judge was appointed by Trump, Reagan, or a Bush. But whenever a crazy leftist anti-Trump ruling is handed down, they never tell you who appointed them. So here’s the secret:

1. Copy the judge’s name with your cursor.
2. Paste the name on your search engine line and add the word “Wikipedia.” For example: “D.C District Chief Judge James Boasberg Wikipedia” or “U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang Wikipedia.”
3. That takes you to the judge’s Wikipedia page.
4. Scroll down for the section called “Federal Judicial Service.” All the Wikipedia pages on federal judges have that section.
5. That paragraph will tell you who appointed that judge.

You will find that more than 95 percent of the federal district judges who have been reversing Trump were appointed either by (i) Obama, (ii) Clinton, or (iii) Biden’s Autopen. They almost all are Obama Judges and Biden Judges.

So the system is corrupted. Those judges or their spouses have worked for Obama or Biden, donated to Obama or Biden, or posted for Obama and Biden on social media. I am a Rav (Orthodox rabbi) of 44 years. In the jurisprudential laws of Judaism, they would be barred not only from adjudicating but even from serving as witnesses because they are manifestly “Noge’a ba-davar,” personally invested in the matter. But American law is not practiced as honestly as Jewish law is.

The corrupt game is played as follows:

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