The US Senate judiciary committee’s Democratic members on Monday unanimously urged the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, to investigate luxury trips taken by associate justice Clarence Thomas that were paid for by a hugely wealthy Republican party donor.
The senators deemed the justice’s conduct inconsistent with ethical standards for “any person in a position of public trust”, they said.
The committee will hold a hearing in the coming days on the matter, chairman Richard Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, and the panel’s 10 other Democratic members wrote in a letter to Roberts.
All Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate a report last week that detailed how Justice Clarence Thomas accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury trips from a Dallas-based GOP donor that weren't reported. pic.twitter.com/29EAx72MMk
— Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) April 10, 2023
The hearing, they said, would focus on “the need to restore confidence in the supreme court’s ethical standards”.
“And if the court does not resolve this issue on its own, the committee will consider legislation to resolve it,” they told Roberts. “But you do not need to wait for Congress to act to undertake your own investigation into the reported conduct and to ensure that it cannot happen again. We urge you to do so.”
ProPublica reported last Thursday that Thomas accepted expensive trips from the Republican donor and real estate magnate Harlan Crow over decades without disclosing them.
Thomas defended the trips on Friday, saying he had been advised he was not required to report that type of “personal hospitality”. But the conservative justice said he would abide by new, tighter rules that recently took effect.
Crow told ProPublica he had “never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue”.
The senators in the letter told Roberts: “You have a role to play as well, both in investigating how such conduct could take place at the Court under your watch, and in ensuring that such conduct does not happen again.”
The report by ProPublica found that Thomas had repeatedly vacationed with Crow, including on his private jet and superyacht in the US and around the globe. The news outlet said the frequency of the gifts has “no known precedent in the modern history of the US supreme court”.
“The report describes conduct by a sitting justice that he did not disclose to the public and that is plainly inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any person in a position of public trust,” the senators wrote.
The Democratic US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Sunday she wanted Thomas impeached over his trips.
“It is the House’s responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment,” she told CNN in an interview.
Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged, however, it was unlikely the Republican majority in the House of Representatives would want to take action against the conservative justice.
