Facing threats of chaos and obstruction from their Republican counterparts, Senate Democrats abruptly retreated on Thursday from their attempt to subpoena billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo as part of their ethics probe into the men’s financial relationships with conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The Senate Judiciary Committee met on Thursday morning to consider the subpoenas, but Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ended the meeting 45 minutes in after Republicans revealed they planned to hold the process up by proposing dozens of amendments ranging in subject matter from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book sales and border security to billionaire Elon Musk and the deceased pedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“We're in a ditch, and it's gonna be a long day. we're gonna get zero done. You're gonna have a complete s*** show,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.. “But if that's what you want, that's what you're gonna get.”
While he called it quits for now, Durbin vowed to continue the probe and subpoena the major conservative players. He told CNN he hoped to bring the subpoenas for a vote “as soon as possible” and conceded Democrats had used similar tactics to obstruct Republicans in the past.
“Due to scheduling issues, we were unable to complete the markup today. We will continue our efforts to authorize subpoenas in the near future,” Durbin said in a statement. “The highest court in the land cannot have the lowest ethical standards.”
Republicans are in fierce opposition to the Durbin-lead investigation after a series of reports by the nonprofit ProPublica and other news organizations that revealed Thomas had an unreported financial relationship with the immensely influential Crow and other businessmen in industries significantly impacted by Supreme Court rulings.
“Americans are sick of reading in the paper that rich MAGA extremists are using their yachts and jets and gifts to pal around with the Supreme Court and doing so largely in secret,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in remarks on Thursday morning. “Americans know there's something shady going on when ultra-wealthy MAGA extremists can basically buy face time with the judges who then turn around and overturn Roe v. Wade, gut affirmative action, block student debt relief and greenlight discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.”
“The same millionaires, billionaires who are meeting with, giving gifts to, giving trips to these justices are the same people pushing a whole lot of this agenda with the Supreme Court and whoa, lo and behold the Supreme Court does it,” Schumer added.
The gifts included dozens of vacations, private jet and helicopter flights, a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, and access to an exclusive golf club. Crow specifically has been supplying Thomas with luxury travel and vacations for 20 years, including three trips on his private jet in 2022. Crow also bought Thomas’ mother’s home -- while renovating it and allowing her to continue to live here -- and paid for his nephew, who the justice raised, to go to private school, according to ProPublica.
Crow and Thomas have insisted they are simply friends and there is nothing inappropriate about their relationship. Thomas reported trips taken on Crow’s planes for the first time this year after the reports came out and belatedly acknowledged Crow purchased the family home.
Leo helps lead the conservative judicial advocacy giant the Federalist Society and was a key architect of President Donald Trump’s broadly successful effort to add right-wing judges to the federal bench, including three to the Supreme Court. He’s come under the Judiciary Committee’s scrutiny over him funding a fishing trip Alito went on in 2008.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has called the effort a “smear campaign.” In a statement last week, Leo said he “will not bow to the vile and disgusting liberal McCarthyism that seeks to destroy the Supreme Court simply because it follows the constitution rather than their political agenda.”
Both Crow and Leo have refused to cooperate with the committee’s probe. Another GOP donor, Robin Arkley II, was originally targeted for a subpoena but Durbin said he had begun cooperating voluntarily this week.
“Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow are central players in the ethics challenge facing the court. Their baseless refusal to respond to the committee's valid inquiries prevent us from understanding the full scope of this issue,” Durbin said during the hearing. “This issue may be one of the most important the committee can consider. We have now reached a point because of disclosures by the press about lavish gifts and trips to Supreme Court justices where the reputation of the court is at an all time low.”
According to Gallup polling dating back to 2010, 58% of the U.S. public disapproves of the job of the nation’s highest court. And results gathered over the last 50 years by Gallup shows that the percentage of Americans who have very little confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all time high of 38%. Only 27% have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence.
Democrats have expressed desire for ethics code legislation and several Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, have said in recent months that they want the court to develop its own revised ethics policy.
“It would be a good idea for us to do it, particularly so that we can communicate to the public exactly what it is that we’re doing in a clearer way than perhaps we’ve been able to do so far,” conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said last month. ““There is no lack of consensus among the justices — there’s unanimity among all nine justices — that we should, and do, hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards possible.”