A prominent Christian activist was caught on hot mic bragging that she prayed with justices inside the Supreme Court, according to Rolling Stone.
Peggy Nienaber who serves as the Vice President of Faith & Liberty as well as Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, made the comments during an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court last week to celebrate the court striking down Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
“You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” a livestreamer identified as Connie IRL asked Nienaber in the video.
“I do,” Nienaber responds. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.”
“Some of them don’t!” Nienaber adds, not disclosing which ones.
The livestreamer then asked if Nienaber ministered to the justices in their homes or at her office.
*Neither,” she said. ‘We actually go in there.’”
Nienaber bragged that “we’re the only people who do that,’” referring to praying with the sitting justices.
According to Rolling Stone the disclosure suggest a major conflict of interest considering that Nienaber’s ministry’s umbrella organization, Liberty Counsel, frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court. They litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag, according to Politico.
What’s more disturbing is that the group weighed in on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, case as a friend of the court. The conservative majority that voted to strike down Roe, cited an amicus brief by Liberty Counsel in their opinion.
The group meeting and praying with SCOTUS justices is a practice that has been going on for some time now. Rob Schenck, the founder of the ministry, who left in 2018 after turning the operation over to Liberty Counsel, told Rolling Stone that he had “forged ministry relationships with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia and has been praying with them inside the high court” since the late 1990s until he retired.
Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 and is a “legal organization advocating for anti-LGBT discrimination under the guise of religious liberty,” according to Southern Poverty Law Center.
