Democrat Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Ron Wyden (OR) have asked the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas due to gifts he allegedly received.
The two senators announced on Tuesday that they “sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week requesting he appoint a special counsel to probe whether Thomas violated ethics, false statement and tax laws,” per The Washington Post.
The action marks a significant escalation in efforts by Democratic senators to address ethics controversies related to Thomas and the court in recent years. Whitehouse’s staff said it was likely the first time anyone had requested a special counsel investigate a Supreme Court justice. Whitehouse sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, while Wyden chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said the Justice Department has the legal authority to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas, but whether it would is another matter. “Inevitably it would be seen as political retribution for rulings the justices made that they don’t like,” he said. “I just don’t know how you get out of that box.”
The Justice Department has issued no comment on the request. In their statement, Whitehouse and Wyden said that evidence shows Justice Thomas “committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws.”
“We do not make this request lightly,” they said. “The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have complied with their federal tax obligations.”
Elliot S. Berke, the justice’s attorney, previously said that Thomas “has always strived for full transparency and adherence to the law, including with respect to what personal travel needed to be reported,” adding that any failures of disclosure were “strictly inadvertent.”
The two senators specifically called on the DoJ to examine a “$267,000 loan Thomas used to purchase a luxury motor coach in 1999, adding that they have not received adequate answers from Thomas about how he handled the matter,” per the Post.
File/Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, ready themselves for a formal portrait in Washington, D.C., Nov. 1, 1991. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma)
As Breitbart News reported last year, the justice disclosed gifts received after financial disclosure rules were changed.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s financial disclosures this week have fueled hyperventilating attacks from leftwing Democrats, but they actually show their concerted efforts against the only black conservative on the nation’s highest court are groundless,” reported Ken Klukowski.
“Financial disclosure guidance for federal judges changed in March, and Thomas accordingly disclosed additional details from hospitality and gifts he had received in past years. His critics – who happen to ardently oppose his views of the Constitution and the law – pounced, arguing that these disclosures suggest wrongdoing,” he added.
Conservatives argue that this is reverse court-packing. Some liberal Democrats pushed legislation to increase the number of Supreme Court justices so they could add liberal members. When that failed, they started targeted campaigns to force the most conservative members of the court to recuse themselves from high-profile cases.
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