Democrats are waging a way on the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Justices are fighting back.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court just sent Democrats in Congress a bombshell letter.
In lieu of testifying at a pending hearing on Supreme Court ethics, Chief Justice John Roberts has informed Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin that he will issue a new statement, signed by all nine justices, intended to “clarify” the high court’s ethics procedures to the general public.
In a letter, the Illinois Democrat invited Roberts to voluntarily participate at a May 2 hearing on Supreme Court ethics. The request was made in response to a ProPublica investigation that revealed Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted invitations to take multiple expensive vacations from GOP mega-donors.
Thomas said in a statement that he had not disclosed the visits since doing so had not been required by the ethical rules in force at the time.
“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote in a letter to Durbin that was made public by a high court spokesman on Tuesday.
“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” he continued.
Roberts just appended a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” to which he stated, “All of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe,” according to the letter.
The latest statement, which was signed by all nine judges, claims that the justices wish to give the public “new clarity.”
According to the freshly written court statement, the justices “today reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe in carrying out their responsibilities as Members of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Roberts has already emphasized, and it is reiterated in the statement, that the justices “consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues.”
In a rare statement on April 7, Thomas claimed that he had sought counsel from his colleagues before deciding that, in accordance with the ethics rules in effect at the time, vacations paid for by GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow did not have to be revealed in his yearly financial disclosure forms.
The revised statement underscores that while lower court judges adhere to the Judicial Conference’s code of conduct, the conference “does not supervise the Supreme Court.”
The standards for recusals must be more stringent because, unlike the lower courts, which can arbitrarily replace one district or circuit court judge for another, the Supreme Court only permits cases to be heard by its own members.
The sentence explains why recusal decisions must be made by individual justices “rather than the Court”.
“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual Justices, it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its Members may participate,” it states.
The Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncements demonstrate that all nine Justices are ready to defend Justice Clarence Thomas from the charges leveled against him.
The exceptionally liberal Justices like Ketanji Brown Jackson are included in this.
That’s a significant setback for the Democrats, who are attempting to entirely overturn the U.S. Supreme Court because they disapprove of recent court decisions.
There aren’t many issues on which the nine justices can agree, but one of them is defending Justice Clarence Thomas from the recent attacks, which shows how out of control the Democrats have become.
Stay tuned to DC Daily Journal.
