Senate Judiciary Committee Tells John Roberts To Investigate Clarence Thomas Or Else

In a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee told Roberts to open an immediate investigation into Clarence Thomas or they will take action.

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In a letter, the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in part:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has legislative jurisdiction over Federal courts and judges, has a role to play in ensuring that the nation’s highest court does not have the federal judiciary’s lowest ethical standards. 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. We urge you to immediately open such an investigation and take all needed action to prevent further misconduct.

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In the coming days, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing regarding 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. 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.

The implied message in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s letter to Roberts is that he needs to take care of this problem, or the Senate will get involved and take care of it for him.

Roberts has let this sort of corruption happen under his nose with the conservative Supreme Court majority for years. It will probably take a Senate investigation into Thomas and other conservative justices like Alito whose name has also come up in disclosure forms for the Supreme Court to impose ethics rules.

The odds of Chief Justice Roberts doing anything about Thomas are not good, so Senate Democrats should be prepared to act to investigate corruption on the Supreme Court.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association