Democrats are trying to intimidate Supreme Court justices by having the House Judiciary Committee hold a hearing on abortion, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson told Newsmax Wednesday.
Appearing on "Wake Up America," the Louisiana congressman and vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, said the timing of the hearing was "outrageous."
"The Democrats are trying to intimidate the Supreme Court. This is a brazen attempt to do it," he said.
The move comes on the heels of protesters "picketing and harassing the justices at home, which is a blatant violation of federal law in and of itself."
In addition, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have been calling out and threatening justices by name, he said.
Now, Johnson charged, Democrats "are using the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over our whole system of justice, to try and intimidate and influence the court" regarding its ruling on abortion.
"Nothing like this has ever happened in our system, and it is a dangerous precedent," he said.
Johnson also bemoaned that the identity of the person who leaked the draft opinion on the abortion case has not yet been revealed nearly three weeks later.
"We have to figure out who this person is," Johnson said, insisting that it "is a very small pool of potential leakers."
He said he is currently working on legislation, called the Leaker Accountability Act, that would make a future attempt like this a violation of criminal law with a long prison sentence.
The damage this leak has caused "is so profound," he said.
It can't be that "justices will be looking over their shoulders as they deliberate over cases," he added.
"We have to have accountability here because the independence of the judiciary is a critical component of our system and it must be maintained at all costs."
He added that the system will be in deep trouble "if all future judicial decisions are to be determined by political pressure."
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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