The right has been trafficking in paranoid conspiracy theories for a very long time
This looks at a famous “moderate” Republican Supreme Court justice who was obviously immersed in the right wing fever swamp, before Fox news brain rot was a thing:
Conservative media’s influence on judicial thought, however, is not a new phenomenon. In his book Too Close to Call, a tick-tock of Florida’s disastrous 2000 presidential election that the Court ultimately handed to George W. Bush, author Jeffrey Toobin recounts a troublingly revealing nugget about the mindset of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. On December 4—the same day the Court issued its first opinion in Bush v. Gore—O’Connor absolutely teed off on the Gore campaign at a private party in Washington.
“You just don’t know what those Gore people have been doing,” said O’Connor, a Republican appointee, whom Toobin describes as “livid” and speaking “with fervor.” “They went into a nursing home and registered people that they shouldn’t have. It was outrageous.” The vibes here are consistent with her widely-reported morosity at an Election Night watch party, when she proclaimed news of Democratic candidate Al Gore’s apparent victory “terrible” and left the room.
Back in those days it was chain emails, right wing magazines and newspapers that spread this drivel. It’s always been there.
Yes, Supreme Court justices are human. They are also supposed to STFU about their partisan political leanings. But they don’t. O’Connor should have recused herself from Bush v Gore but she didn’t. And none of the current court will recuse if they are asked to weigh in on similar cases in the future. The judiciary is a political branch, just like the other two.