Democrats bash Justice Clarence Thomas but their plan to investigate ethics allegations is unclear

Cnn
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On Tuesday, the Democrats of the Senate remunerated against Judge Clarence Thomas in the midst of the information according to which the conservative of the Supreme Court did not disclose luxury trips, gifts and a real estate transaction involving a megadoneur of the GOP, but their plan to investigate the conservative lawyer remains uncertain.

The President of the Senate’s judicial power, Dick Durbin, promised that his committee will hold an audience on alleged ethics violations in the coming weeks, but has not shared any detail when he is in a hurry by CNN to find out if the legislators will ask for testimonies from Thomas or other people who could have knowledge about his relationship with the donor, the billionaire of Texas, the billionaire Crow.

When asked if the assignments were on the table, Durbin said that no decision had yet been made on this subject. He said it was “too early” to share more information on what his audience could look like about the ethics of the Supreme Court. He and other judicial democrats sent a letter to chief judge John Roberts last week him to open an investigation into Thomas’ allegations.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut democrat who sits on the judicial commission, told journalists on Tuesday that “the American people deserves all the facts surrounding the blatant violation of the law of judge Thomas”.

“I hope that [Thomas] Will appear voluntarily, and if not, we should consider assignments for him and others, like Harlan Crow, who have information, “said Blumenthal.

Other Democrats of the Committee said on Tuesday that they withdrew from Durbin, who huddled with the Democrats on Monday evening to discuss their strategy towards Thomas.

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem mainly united in the defense of Thomas, suggesting that the court can manage its own affairs.

The head of the Senate minority, Mitch McConnell, attacked the Democrats for criticizing the court and declared that he had confidence in Roberts “to deal with these internal questions of the court”.

“The Democrats, it seems to me, spent a lot of time criticizing the individual members of the court and continuing the court as an institution,” McConnell told journalists on Tuesday.

Bringing more transparency to the High Court had bipartite support in the past, but the jolt of the court on the right – in particular with the three judges that former president Donald Trump put on the bench – raised the partisan issues around the question. In recent years, the conservative majority has managed pivotal decisions canceling the rights of abortions, the dismantling of regulations on firearms and the reintegration of the powers of executive branch agencies – all causing an uproar of the Democrats.

Even if the Democrats of the Senate have not yet established a plan for their own response to the allegations of Thomas, they sought to underline the question and to oblige it in their broader thrust for a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, which is excluded from many of the rules of ethics which apply to lower failures of the federal judicial power.

“I am disturbed by recent reports potentially detailing contrary to ethics – even potentially illegal conduct – at the highest levels of our judicial system,” Senator Alex Padilla, California Democrat said on Tuesday during a court hearing for three candidates lower than the courts. “It should go without saying that judges at all levels should be held to strict and enforceable ethical standards.”

Durbin said in a speech that Congress should not have to wait for the court to act.

“The Supreme Court does not need to wait for the Congress to clean its act; the judges could act today if he wanted, and if the court does not act, the Congress must,” Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, said on Tuesday.

Consecutive reports to Propublica this month have detailed how luxury trips and gifts to Thomas de Crow – and even a real estate transaction – have not been reported in the annual financial disclosure of Thomas.

Thomas said that travel and gifts to him and his family financed by the crows are not reported because he had been informed that he was not required to do so, under an exemption from the rules for the disclosure of the court for the so-called “personal hospitality”. After meticulous examination of these rules by legislators, the judicial conference – which operates as the organization of policies for the federal judiciary – recently concluded an escape from the rules which seem to have covered part of the hospitality that Thomas that Thomas received. Thomas said he intended to follow these advice updated in the future, and a source close to justice also told CNN that he had planned to modify his disclosure form to report the real estate transaction, the sale of his mother’s home in Crow.

“If the reports are correct, it stinks,” said Senator Mitt Romney on Monday evening, in rare comments from a republican criticizing Thomas’ lack of transparency.

Republicans defend Thomas and say that Scotus can treat ethics internally

Other Republicans aligned themselves to defend justice – which was appointed to the Supreme Court by President George HW Bush in 1991 – and said that it was not the place of the Congress to push a code of ethics on the High Court.

Senator Josh Hawley, republican member of the judicial committee, suggested that the accusations against Thomas were part of an “effort of several decades to target Clarence Thomas by these groups of liberal activists”.

This is not the first time that Thomas has been at the center of an ethical controversy. Last year, CNN reported that his wife Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, had sent SMS with the chief of staff to Trump’s White House, Mark Meadows, the efforts of the former president canceled his electoral defeat in 2020, and his political lobbying has long raised questions on the time the judges are forced to challenge himself.

However, the Republicans have shown little interest in joining the Democrats in the use of legislation to impose a code of ethics on judges.

“The court, in a way, historically, I think, has somehow took care of it,” said Southern Dakota senator John Thune, the Gop Senate whip, who said that Thomas had been “solid justice over the courts over the years and is well acquitted.”

“Let’s see what the court is doing,” the South Carolin Senator, the South Carolina senator, said in CNN on Tuesday, the best republican of the judicial committee. “I prefer that they do it internally.”