Texas Tribune / Bob Daemmrich
Texas Supreme Courtroom Justice John Devine, far left, with fellow jurists on the state Home flooring in Austin in 2013.
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Texas Supreme Courtroom Justice John Devine is dealing with new questions on his impartiality after a clip went viral this week during which he implied that Democrats plan to cheat in opposition to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump within the 2024 election.
“Do you actually suppose the Democrats are going to roll over and let Trump be president once more?” Devine requested in a keynote speech on the Texas Tea Celebration Republican Ladies’s 2023 Christmas occasion. “You suppose they’re simply going to go away, swiftly discover Jesus and [there will] be an trustworthy election? I don’t suppose so.”
Devine is a former anti-abortion activist who claims that church-state separation is a fantasy and, as a state district decide in Harris County within the Nineteen Nineties, fought to have a duplicate of the Ten Commandments posted in his courtroom. In his profitable 2012 marketing campaign for the Texas Supreme Courtroom, he claimed to have been arrested 37 occasions at anti-abortion protests within the Eighties, and has since been a dependable ally of conservative, Christian voters within the state. Devine narrowly survived a GOP major problem final month that centered round his ethics, and now faces state district courtroom Decide Christine Vinh Weems, a Democrat, within the November basic election.
Devine acknowledged in his speech that the courtroom might hear extra election circumstances — together with these involving Harris County, which Devine accused of attempting to “bastardize” election legal guidelines when it expanded voting entry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Lots of the county’s protocols have been later shot down by the Texas Supreme Courtroom.
“I believe these sorts of circumstances are going to be again to us on this cycle,” he mentioned.
Devine then praised Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who championed quite a few legal guidelines that have been aimed toward Harris County within the wake of the 2020 elections. Final 12 months, the Texas Supreme Courtroom declined to dam a legislation, authored by Bettencourt, that eliminated Harris County’s elections administrator place.
Bettencourt, who attended Devine’s speech, returned the reward: “You’re one of many the reason why we do win fights on the Supreme Courtroom,” he informed Devine.
Harris County Legal professional Christian Menefee blasted Devine’s feedback in a Saturday assertion, calling them “shockingly inappropriate” and tying them to broader mistrust within the judiciary.
“Judges ought to be truthfully evaluating and making use of our state’s legal guidelines, not giving partisan speeches baselessly accusing members of a distinct political occasion of ‘dishonest’ in elections,” Menefee mentioned. “It’s shockingly inappropriate for a sitting justice to make disparaging feedback a few occasion that has been and can proceed to be earlier than his courtroom. I hope Justice Devine acts with integrity and recuses himself from Harris County circumstances shifting ahead, however given his concession that he views himself as aiding Republicans in a ‘struggle’ in opposition to Democrats, I received’t maintain my breath.”
Election disputes weren’t the one hot-button points on which Devine opined that evening. All through his 40-minute speech, he blasted authorized challenges to Texas’ abortion legal guidelines as a “mockery of God,” and invoked apocalyptic language when discussing Democrats — saying his judgeship gave him a “front-row seat to the top of the world.”
“Our tradition is dying earlier than our very eyes,” he mentioned. “The church appears to be weakened and never know what to do. We now have a corrupted authorities. On a federal degree, we’re run by a felony enterprise. … None of you will escape this. And so I’d implore you to get nearer to the Lord. I’d implore you to arrange. I’d implore you to convey different individuals on board.”
Devine didn’t reply to a request for remark Friday concerning the feedback or the net criticism of them. The backlash comes barely a month after the Tribune reported on one other speech he gave final 12 months, during which he once more claimed that Democrats had tried to steal elections. In that speech, Devine additionally blasted his colleagues on the all-Republican Texas Supreme Courtroom as “brainwashed” by “Huge Regulation.”
“At occasions I really feel like they’d sacrifice the Republic for the sake of the method,” Devine mentioned in that speech. “My concern is that all of them bow all the way down to the altar of course of slightly than to constancy to the Structure. And once I say that, it’s not meant to be malice in direction of my colleagues. I believe it’s how they have been skilled — how they have been brainwashed.”
Devine has lately confronted different questions on his ethics. Earlier this 12 months, Bloomberg Information reported that he had missed greater than half of oral arguments earlier than the courtroom this time period as he campaigned for reelection.
And in February, the Tribune reported that Devine didn’t recuse himself in 2022, when the courtroom thought of a high-profile intercourse abuse lawsuit in opposition to Southern Baptist chief Paul Pressler and his longtime legislation accomplice, Jared Woodfill. Devine, the Tribune discovered, had labored for Pressler and Woodfill’s legislation agency for years — and on the identical time that the plaintiff within the lawsuit alleged he was molested by Pressler whereas additionally working on the agency.
This text initially appeared within the Texas Tribune.
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