CNN
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Senate Democrats criticized Judge Clarence Thomas in Tesday in the midst of reports that the conservative of the Supreme Court did not reveal luxury trips, gifts and a real estate transaction that involves a Republican megadonor, but also released his plan to investigate. Investigate.
The judicial president of the Senate, Dick Durbin, promised that his committee will hold a hearing on the alleged violations of ethics in the coming weeks, but did not share details when CNN pressed whether the legislators will seek testimony of Thomas or others that could have knowledge about their relationship with the donor, the Billonario of Texas Harlan Crow.
When asked if the summons were on the table, Durbin said that a decision has not yet been made. He said it was “too soon” to share more information about how the hearing of his committee on the ethics of the Supreme Court could be. He and other judicial democrats sent a letter to the president of the Supreme Court John Roberts last week asking him to open an investigation into Thomas’s accusations.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who is in the Judicial Committee, told journalists on Tuesday that “the American people deserve all the facts surrounding the violation of the law of Judge Thomas’s law.”
“I hope that [Thomas] It will appear voluntarily, and if not, we should consider citations for him and others, such as Harlan Crow, who have information, “said Blumenthal.
Other Democrats in the committee said Tuesday that they postponed to Durbin, who curled up with the Democrats Monday night to discuss their strategy towards Thomas.
Meanwhile, Republicans appear mainly united in the defense of Thomas, which suggests that the Court can handle their own matters.
The leader of the Senate minority, Mitch McConnell, attacked the Democrats for criticizing the Court, and said he has confidence in Roberts “to treat the internal problems of the thesis court.”
“The Democrats, it seems to me, spent a lot of time criticizing individual members of the Court and persecuted the Court as an institution,” McConnell told journalists on Tuesday.
Bringing more transparency to the Superior Court has had some bipartisan support in the past, but the tribute of the Court to the right, partly with the three judges that former President Donald Trump put on the bank, has raised the isound the isund the isund the isund the isund. In recent years, the conservative majority have handled the fundamental decisions that unravel the rights of abortions, dismantling the regulations of weapons and in the powers of the executive agencies, all causing protests of the Democrats.
Although the Senate Democrats have not yet decided a plan for their own response to Thomas’s accusations, they sought to highlight the problem and frame it within their broader impulse by a code of ethics for the supreme tea of supreme tea Magde-outte. Judicial.
“I am disturbed by the recent reports that detail the power, even the potentially illegal conduct, at the highest levels of our Judiciary,” Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat of California, on a hearing of the Judicial Committee for three nominees of the lower court on Tuesday, said Tuesday. “He must not say that judges at all levels should be heroes 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 Congress to clean its act; the judges could take action today if they wanted to, and if the Court does not act, the Congress must,” said Durbin, a Illinois Democrat, said Floor Studay.
Consecutive reports in Propublic this month detailed how luxury trips and gifts to Thomas de Crow, and even a real estate transaction, do not take over the annual financial disseminations of Thomas.
Thomas has said that trips and gifts for him and his family that were terminated by the crows were not informed because he had been informed that he was not asked to do so, under an exemption in the rules of dissemination of the court for the calls. “After the scrutiny of these rules by the legislators, the Judicial Conference, which operates as the policy formulation agency for the Federal Judiciary, recently closed a escape in those rules that seems to have covered part of the hospitality that Thomas received. Sale of his mother’s house to Crow.
“If the reports are precise, stinks,” said Senator Mitt Romney on Monday night, in strange comments from a Republican who criticizes Thomas’s lack of transparency.
Republicans defend Thomas and say that Scotus can address ethics internally
Other Republicans aligned in defense of Justice, which was appointed for the Supreme Court by President George Hw Bush in 1991, and said it was not the place of Congress to promote a code of ethics in the Superior Court.
Senator Josh Hawley, a republican member of the Judicial Committee, suggested that the accusations against Thomas were part of a “effort of multiple decades now to point to Clarence Thomas by these liberal activist groups.”
This is not the first time that Thomas has been at the center of an ethics controversy. Last year, CNN reported that wife Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, was sending text messages with Trump’s White House chief, Mark Meadows, about the efforts of the former president, the challenge of the 2020 elections, and its long long -term long long long long long long -ines political policy long long long long long long long long long long line.
However, Republicans have shown little interest in joining Democrats in the use of legislation to impose a code of ethics on judges.
“The court, I think he has watched himself,” said South Dakota Senator John Thune, the whip of the Senate of the Republican Party, who said that Thomas had been a “solid justice in court over the years and has absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely.”
“Let’s see what the court does,” Senator of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, the best Republican in the Judicial Committee of the Judicial Committee, told CNN on Tuesday. “I prefer to do it internally.”