Chris Lieberman, FISM News
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Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed plans on Monday to hold a hearing on the Supreme Court’s ethical standards following an explosive report claiming that Justice Clarence Thomas received a number of undisclosed gifts from a wealthy conservative.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has legislative jurisdiction over Federal courts and judges, has a role to play in ensuring that the nation’s highest court does not have the federal judiciary’s lowest ethical standards,” wrote Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. “You have a role to play as well, both in investigating how such conduct could take place at the Court under your watch, and in ensuring that such conduct does not happen again. We urge you to immediately open such an investigation and take all needed action to prevent further misconduct.”
Thomas has come under fire from Democrats after a ProPublica report last Thursday alleged that the conservative justice went on several luxury vacations with billionaire Harlan Crow and failed to disclose them publicly.
In response to the report, Thomas issued a statement saying, “Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”
“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”
The U.S. Judicial Conference adopted new rules last month placing more stringent requirements on federal judges in disclosing gifts. In his statement, Thomas said that he would adhere to the new guidelines going forward.
But Democrats are demanding action be taken against Thomas, including calls for his impeachment.
“This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted in response to the allegations.
But conservatives are rallying around Thomas, claiming that the Democrats’ attacks on the conservative justice are politically motivated. The writers at the Wall Street Journal defended him in an editorial, saying,
This ethics talk is really about setting Thomas declined the calls for recusal up an apparatus that politicians can then use against the Justices if there is any transgression, however minor or inadvertent. The claims of corruption are intended to smear the conservative Justices and tarnish the Court to tee up case recusals, impeachment or a Court-packing scheme if Democrats get enough Senate votes to break the filibuster. It’s all ugly politics, but the left is furious it lost control of the Court, and it wants it back by whatever means possible.”
Thomas, the court’s conservative stalwart, has been a frequent target of the left, dating back to his contentious 1991 confirmation hearing, when he was accused of sexual harassment by law school professor Anita Hill.
More recently, Democrats were outraged by reports of text messages from Thomas’ wife, Ginni, urging Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. Those messages led to calls for Thomas to recuse himself from all cases related to the January 6 Capitol riots. Thomas declined such calls, further infuriating Democrats.