Democrats’ hearing aims to destroy political enemies on Supreme Court, not uphold ethics.
Senate Democrats’ Smear Campaign Against Conservative Justices
For decades, Senate Democrats have been slinging mud at Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices. Despite years of failed attempts to stifle confirmations and ruin reputations, their campaign to delegitimize the justices and institution as a threat to their unconstitutional agenda continues with a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on “ethics.”
But their concerns about justices’ financial disclosure and ethics practices are not genuine. It wasn’t until a string of coordinated recent hit pieces calling conservative-nominated justices’ integrity into question that leftist legislators on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to take action.
Shoddy “Investigations” and Debunked Accusations
Politico’s Heidi Przybyla, who smeared Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, recently painted Justice Neil Gorsuch’s real estate – initiated two years before confirmation to the Supreme Court – as a picture of corruption. That piece of shoddy “investigation” was debunked just as easily as ProPublica’s attempt to accuse Justice Clarence Thomas of cozying up with a conflict of interest was quashed.
To justify their ongoing smear campaign, Democrats brought in congressional witnesses such as Kedric Payne, who is not only quoted in Politico’s Gorsuch smear but also works for a legal group that asserts on its front page the Supreme Court is “a threat to our democracy.”
Legislation to Compel Ethics Reform
They’ve also already introduced legislation that would compel the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal courts’ policymaking body, to create a code of conduct, designate an Ethics Investigations Counsel, and mandate justices to disclose cases in which they recused or risk losing the court’s federal funding for their requested security budget.
But their tactics have become even more extreme. Democrats now threaten to cut off security funding for the Supreme Court – unless the Justices do what Dems want. This is AFTER an assassin tried to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Talk about threatening the rule of law.
- Senate Democrats’ campaign to delegitimize conservative-nominated Supreme Court justices continues with a hearing focused on “ethics.”
- Their concerns about justices’ financial disclosure and ethics practices are not genuine.
- Recent hit pieces calling conservative-nominated justices’ integrity into question have been debunked.
- Democrats brought in congressional witnesses who work for a legal group that asserts the Supreme Court is “a threat to our democracy.”
- Legislation has been introduced to compel ethics reform.
- Democrats now threaten to cut off security funding for the Supreme Court – unless the Justices do what Dems want.
Republicans See Through Democrats’ Shenanigans
During a recent hearing, Democrats attempted to push for new ethical rules for the Supreme Court, claiming that the current framework is not good enough. However, Republicans saw right through their shenanigans and called out their efforts to destroy the legitimacy of the current conservative court.
“The truth is the left simply disagrees with [Thomas’s] decisions and with the decisions of our current Supreme Court,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee said at the hearing. “And they obviously can’t persuade the American people to adopt their radical policies through legislation, so they’re attempting to destroy the court’s credibility and intimidate the Republican-appointed justices and their families. Starting with Justice Thomas, they’re making clear that justices who disagree with them will pay a price.”
The Supreme Court Is Not Home Depot
Democrats argued that the Supreme Court needs new, “binding” ethical rules, citing private companies like Home Depot as an example. However, Republicans pointed out that the Supreme Court is solely responsible for its financial disclosure and ethics rules, and that decisions about Supreme Court ethics are not for Congress to decide.
“The relationship the Constitution establishes between the Article One Congress and the Article Three Supreme Court is one of co-equals,” witness Thomas Dupree Jr. said during his testimony. “The judiciary is not an inferior branch.”
Republicans and Witnesses Speak Out
- Ranking Member Lindsey Graham: “This is not about trying to upgrade the ability of the court to be more transparent, but an effort to destroy the legitimacy of this current conservative court.”
- Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey: The Supreme Court is “solely responsible for its financial disclosure and ethics rules.”
- Thomas Dupree Jr.: “The judiciary is not an inferior branch.”
All nine members of the Supreme Court also signed a statement for the judiciary committee explaining that they did not plan to testify. Chief Justice John Roberts specifically wrote that any future congressional testimony by him on any issue would remain “exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
undation (@Heritage) May 2, 2023
Dems Drum Up Fake ‘Ethics’ Crisis While Dobbs Leaker, Leftist Provokers, And Their Own Party Get Away Scot-Free
It’s true that, as Democrats claim, Americans have historically low trust in the head of the judicial branch of the U.S. government. Yet, judiciary committee members rejected attempts to explore their role in the loss of that faith.
Democrats don’t actually care about ethics. If they did, they would have already addressed their own decades-old violations.
Not only has the Senate Select Committee on Ethics issued zero disciplinary sanctions since 2007, but some of the same congressmen lecturing Republicans on why the court needs to be babied are guilty of crossing ethical lines. Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Peter Welch all raised eyebrows with their shady actions in the past yet didn’t receive any punishment or meaningful pushback.
As recently as 2022, Biden-nominated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had to revise her financial disclosures. Similarly, Justice Sonia Sotomayor amended her financial disclosures in 2021 while Justice Stephen Breyer made several long-term travel arrangements that were funded by the left-wing Pritzker family. Once again, these actions, which were recently deemed by Democrats and the corporate press as contentious for conservative-nominated justices, were quickly accepted by those same political players as routine.
This is the playbook followed by politicians like Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who publicly threatened conservative court appointees over how they use their decision-making authority.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said in March 2020.
One year ago today (May 2nd), an unnamed leaker prematurely released the Supreme Court’s decision to rule in favor of ending Roe v. Wade. Leftist legislators freaked out while angry mobs and at least one assassin surrounded the justices’ homes.
Justice Samuel Alito disclosed to the Wall Street Journal in late April that he has “a pretty good idea who is responsible” but warned, “that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.”
While the status of punishing or potentially firing the person who violated federal law is muddy, Alito did acknowledge that the leak “was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court.”
“And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court,” he admitted.
The lack of accountability for those who wreaked havoc on the justices’ reputations and safety rests not on the absence of a congressionally-mandated code of ethics; it rests on a lack of interest by those in power — the Democrats — to investigate, condemn, and prosecute.
The judiciary committee shouldn’t have spent two and half hours asking, “How low can the court go?” as Durbin posited on Tuesday morning. It should have asked, “How low are Democrats willing to go to delegitimize an institution they no longer deem useful to their cause.”
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