Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Supreme Court justices are “in a fact-free zone as well as an ethics-free zone.”
Whitehouse said, “The work that we’re doing on ethics in the court ought to be easy, and yet it’s not; it’s partisan also. So I think that the first step is going to be for the judicial conference, the other judges, to put some constraints around the Supreme Court’s behavior and treat the Supreme Court the way all other federal judges are treated, and that happens inside the judiciary.”
Anchor Chuck Todd said, “The Chief Justice has to make this decision, though, right? Separation of powers, whether, I mean, it’s pretty established, Congress can’t make a law that does that, right?”
Whitehouse said, “No, it absolutely can.”
Todd said, “Well, it doesn’t mean it’s constitutional.”
Whitehouse said, “Yes, it does. It means it’s constitutional because the laws that we’re talking about right now are actually laws passed by Congress. The ethics reporting law that is at the heart of the Clarence Thomas ethics reporting scandal is a law passed by Congress.”
He continued, “When Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from the January 6 investigation that turned up his wife’s communications, he made the case that that was OK — he had no idea she was involved in insurrection activities.”
Whitehouse added, “That is a question of fact. That’s something that could have and should have, been determined by a neutral examination, and then we’d all know. And so, the problem with the Supreme Court is that they’re in a fact-free zone as well as an ethics-free zone.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.