By Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin is failing at his job of holding the Supreme Court accountable. While he continues issuing stern statements and making floor speeches about Justice Samuel Alito’s recent flag scandals, he isn’t actually doing anything about it. Now other Democrats—like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland—are stepping up to fill the leadership void.
Alito already blew off Durbin and Whitehouse’s demands that he recuse himself from insurrection-related cases, despite his display of Stop the Steal flags. Whitehouse followed up with a letter Monday, inquiring about a tax case from which he pressed Alito to recuse himself.
Before the hearing for that case, Alito was interviewed for The Wall Street Journal by one of the lawyers, David Rivkin Jr. In the article, Alito declared that both he and the Supreme Court are above the law.
Whitehouse wrote that it “appears that you offered an improper opinion regarding a question that might come before the Court; did so in the context of a known ongoing legal dispute involving that precise question; did so at the behest of an interviewer who as a lawyer represented a client in that ongoing dispute; and did so to the benefit of his client, your personal friend, and to the benefit of yourself, as a recipient of undisclosed gifts that are the subject of our investigation.”
“I note that the Supreme Court is the only place in all of government where issues of this nature have no place or means of investigation or resolution,” he continued. “So far, my questions regarding these events seem to have disappeared into a black hole of indifference.”
This letter is likely to fall into the same black hole, but it does help build the case against Alito and the rampant corruption he and fellow Justice Clarence Thomas have brought to the court.
Whitehouse will be joined by Raskin and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in discussing Supreme Court corruption during a roundtable discussion on Tuesday.
“The highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards. This mismatch is producing unequal justice under law in America,” Raskin said. “Behind closed doors, billionaire sugar daddies give Supreme Court justices lavish gifts and push through an extremist agenda against the rights of the people. The whole country is caught in a supreme ethics crisis. Our democracy and our freedom are both in peril.”
The fact that this discussion is happening in a minority roundtable discussion in the House instead of in official hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee is a travesty of Durbin’s making. He is still dragging his heels, even after his polite request to Chief Justice John Roberts to discuss this corruption was met with contempt.
Kudos to these other Democratic lawmakers who are taking action. But what this crisis demands is Senate hearings—now.
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