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Any occasion on which a member of the U.S. Supreme Court leaves the bench through retirement (or death) is a significant political event, providing the incumbent president with the opportunity to nominate a successor who is ideologically congruent with the party in power and (in most cases) will remain on the bench for decades to come. The requirement that a Supreme Court nominee be confirmed by a vote of the U.S. Senate often touches off bitter fights between the two parties on the floor of that chamber. When Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his imminent retirement at the end of June 2018, it set the stage for a particularly momentous shift in the makeup of the Supreme Court, as Kennedy had long been the bridge between the court's liberal and conservative sides on a number of contentious social issues: Many critics still smarting over the Republicans' successful (and unprecedented) efforts at blocking approval of Merrick Garland, who had been nominated by outgoing president Barack Obama in 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia -- thus allowing incoming president Donald Trump the opportunity to fill the vacant court seat instead -- immediately jumped on a conspiracy theory involving the timing of Kennedy's resignation and his son's employment: The details of this conspiracy theory were somewhat hazy, most versions of it seemingly implying that President Trump somehow leveraged his financial connections with Kennedy's son Justin to convince or coerce the jurist to retire ahead of the November 2018 U.S. mid-term elections (during which Democrats might pick up enough Senate seats to block confirmation of Trump's preferred nominee). The most coherent form of the conspiracy theory posited that Kennedy's retirement was a sudden and unexpected event, a strategic move intended to allow Trump to nominate a friendly successor who would vote favorably on any issues involving Justin Kennedy that might come before the court as a result of the ongoing Mueller investigation into Russian election interference (whereas Kennedy would have to recuse himself from such issues if he remained on the bench): As the New York Times noted, Donald Trump did have a business relationship with Deutsche Bank, where Justin Kennedy once worked (he left the company in 2009), that went back many years to a time when many other banks were leery of doing business with Trump: And, of course, many news outlets have reported on the potentially suspect coincidence that right about the time Trump was sworn in as U.S. president, Deutsche Bank was fined an aggregate $630 million for their involvement in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme — and Deutsche Bank's records were later reportedly subpoenaed by special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections: Little hard evidence suggests that the Kennedy rumors are more than political conspiracy-driven speculation, however. Justin Kennedy left Deutsche Bank before the money laundering activity referenced above took place, and some sources have asserted that Justin Kennedy had little or no involvement with Trump's Deutsche Bank dealings: The level of engagement Justin Kennedy might have had with Donald Trump's financial dealings at Deutsche Bank remains ambiguous for now, but the New York Times gave little weight to the notion that Anthony Kennedy was directly pressured into retiring, observing that it's not unusual for presidents to be mindful of when an open seat on the Supreme Court bench might be in the offing and strategize around the possibility: Moreover, Politico reported back in April 2017 (before the Mueller investigation into Russian interference was even underway) that the Trump White House might have been utilizing connections between Trump's and Kennedy's children to ease the elder Kennedy into retirement. Notably, Politico referenced Justin Kennedy's having a connection with Donald Trump, Jr., not President Trump himself, and made no mention of Deutsche Bank: It may be true, as outlined above, that members of the Trump administration undertook efforts to assure Kennedy that his judicial legacy would be in good hands should he step down at the end of the court’s [current] term. But no substantive evidence yet suggests anything more than that President Trump and other members of his administration might have sought to curry favor with a justice who was already mulling retirement to influence the timing of that event.
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