Senate Democrats on Saturday morning concluded a nearly two-year-long investigation into the ethical practices of the Supreme Court, issuing a final report that focused on the court’s conservative members, identifying rampant impropriety such as accepting lavish gifts and failing to recuse amidst conflicts of interests.
“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in a statement Saturday morning.
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The 97-page staff report accuses Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, of receiving millions of dollars in gifts over the years with a level of extravagance that has “no comparison in modern American history.”
The report also alleges that, following public reporting about Thomas’s largesse in 2004, Thomas “stopped disclosing the vast majority of gifts he received,” which the report says “constitutes a violation of federal law.”
Justice Samuel Alito was also accused in the report of misusing the personal-hospitality exemption for his 2008 Alaskan fishing trip, at a lodge which cost more than $1,000 per day, paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.
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The report also refers to the incident in which Alito’s wife flew an upside-down American flag in their yard on January 6, 2021, saying that the Alitos have “created the appearance of impropriety in several instances that necessitate his recusal in specific cases under federal law.”
None of the report’s 14 major findings reference by name Justices Elana Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, or Ketanji Brown-Jackson, the three currently sitting justices appointed by Democrat presidents.
Reports indicate that the ethics investigation had no participation from Republican members of the committee. Republican staff members for the committee did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
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The investigation’s conclusion comes as a last-ditch effort for Democrats to pass legislation to impose a formal ethics code on the Supreme Court via legislation, a move that has met significant resistance from Republicans and from the high court itself.
“Chief Justice Roberts’s continued unwillingness to implement the only viable solution to the Court’s ethical crisis—an enforceable code of conduct—requires Congress to act to restore the public’s confidence in the highest court in the land,” reads the report.
The report says that passing the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, which passed out of the committee in September 2023, is a “necessary step.”
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But the leading argument against passing an ethical code through congressional legislation is the constitutional issue of whether Congress can regulate the conduct of a co-equal branch of government.
“While the justices interpret the law, they are not above it,” reads the report. “The Roberts Court has seemingly forgotten this, and the only way forward is the implementation of an enforceable code of conduct.”
