Senate Republicans staged a walkout in protest of the Democrat-led vote Thursday to subpoena a billionaire conservative donor and a conservative legal activist linked to the Supreme Court’s ethics scandals.
Tempers flared before Senate Judiciary Committee took up a vote to subpoena billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, a benefactor of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, who was instrumental in compiling Republican former President Donald Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
Every Republican on the panel had left the room by the time Democrats passed the measure 11-0.
Senate Democrats renewed their criticism of the Supreme Court's new code of conduct as part of an ethics inquiry spurred by reports of undisclosed largesse directed to some conservative justices.
Senator Dick Durbin, the committee's chairman, emphasized at the contentious hearing the need for an enforcement mechanism for the code, announced by the court on Nov. 13, as he promised to continue to pursue the panel's ethics investigation.
"Without an enforcement mechanism, this code of conduct, while a step in a positive direction, cannot restore the public's faith in the court," Durbin said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the committee's top Republican, told the hearing that Democrats were engaged in a "jihad" against the Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority has handed major defeats to liberals in recent years on matters including abortion, gun rights and student debt relief.
"When you say you don't want to destroy the Roberts Court, I don't believe you," Graham said, referring to the court under the leadership of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts. "I don't believe a word you're saying."
Durbin has said subpoenas were necessary in light of the refusal by Crow and Leo to voluntarily comply with the panel's previous requests for information, including itemized lists of all gifts, transportation and lodging provided to any Supreme Court justice.
Lawyers for Leo and Crow in letters to the committee have criticized the committee's information requests as lacking a proper legal justification. Crow's lawyer had proposed turning over a narrower range of information but Democrats rebuffed that offer, according to the panel's Democratic members.
The news outlet ProPublica reported this year on Thomas's failure to disclose luxury trips and real estate transactions involving Crow, a Texas businessman.
The outlet also reported that Leo helped organize a luxury fishing trip in Alaska attended by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who failed to disclose taking a private jet provided by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer. Trump chose all three of his appointees to the court from lists of candidates that Leo played a key role in drawing up, giving it a 6-3 conservative majority.
Thomas has said he believed the Crow-funded trips were "personal hospitality" and thus exempt from disclosure requirements, and that his omission of the real estate transaction was inadvertent.
Alito, regarding the flight, said that Singer had "allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat."
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