Conservative frustration with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts boiled over earlier this year after he "saved" Obamacare.
In a 6-3 decision issued on June 25 - penned by Roberts - the high court delivered a conclusive victory to President Barack Obama. It upheld that the administration could legally hand out healthcare subsidies in all 50 states.
The decision in King v. Burwell shocked conservatives on Capitol Hill, who accused Roberts of betraying the party by fortifying the key component of President Obama's legacy.
The same day as the Supreme Court's historical decision, the biggest Obamacare conspiracy theory surfaced and spread throughout right-wing media outlets:
Had Chief Justice Roberts been coerced into the decision?
There are two parts to this theory...
Obamacare Conspiracy Theory, Part 1: The chief justice was bribed with stock shares.
Right after the Supreme Court announced its decision, a link appeared on The Drudge Report that went to a CNBC list of healthcare stocks. Many of them shot to all-time highs. Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) hit its year-to-date high of $132.60 - up 4% from $127.51 the day before. Cigna Corp. (NYSE: CI) also peaked that day at $169.77 - up 2.5% from $165.75 the day before.
On his June 25 broadcast, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh urged listeners to check out this link and, from there, simply "follow the money." Limbaugh claimed the share-price increases were evidence that perhaps some in the Republican Party were more responsive to "money people" and "donors" over voters than others.
While Limbaugh added "I'm not accusing anybody of anything," he also maintained that "when you follow the money, a lot of questions that seem unanswerable become clear."
And then there was a more sinister scenario being tossed around...
Obamacare Conspiracy Theory, Part 2: The chief justice was blackmailed.
Also on June 25, over at Glenn Beck's website The Blaze, Wayne Allyn Root endorsed another angle that pointed to the coercion conspiracy theory about Roberts.
Root posited that perhaps the chief justice had been blackmailed.
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"Is it impossible to believe that Obama and his socialist cabal that learned from Saul Alinsky that 'the ends justify the means' would hold something over a Supreme Court justice's head?" Root asked. "It's time to assume the worst of this government... All it takes to destroy America and pass Obama's agenda is to control a few key powerful positions in Washington, D.C."
Root pointed out that it was rather odd that, after such a sweeping victory in midterm elections, Republicans were having such an awfully hard time passing measures in Congress and in the Supreme Court.
He went on to outline how a possible blackmail scenario behind closed SCOTUS doors might go down:
"They threaten to expose something terrible like an affair, or corruption, or malfeasance, or immorality that would shock the nation, ruin their career, destroy their legacy, cost their marriage, destroy their relationship with their children and leave them unemployable by any respectable law firm or lobbyist."
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