Senate Democrats use ethics investigation to target conservative Supreme Court justices
By
Gabrielle M. Etzel
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.
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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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/supreme-court/3268046/senate-democrats-use-ethics-investigation-to-target-conservative-supreme-court-justices/
