Democratic members of Congress took some steps this week to take as-yet-untried stabs at Supreme Court accountability after this month’s striking immunity ruling, which gave former President Trump, and all future presidents, sweeping criminal immunity.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate “potential violations of ethics, false statement, and tax laws by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the benefactors who have supplied him with undisclosed gifts.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, introduced articles of impeachment in the House against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for their refusal to recuse themselves from key cases in which they’re credibly accused of having a conflict of interest.
And this afternoon Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that his panel will hold a hearing in September on “the immediate legal and policy ramifications” of the high court’s immunity ruling. The decision, sweeping and vague, surprised even legal experts who are clear-eyed about the court’s recent, radical lurch to the right, and who are concerned it essentially greenlights a January 6 redo. The dissenting liberals noted that the majority opinion could be read to allow a president to do something as extreme as assassinating a political rival without any accountability.
“During this upcoming hearing, we will examine the breadth of future misconduct that may be immunized from prosecution, consider the unprecedented nature of this immunity in American history, and discuss legislative solutions to the dangers of this decision,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday.
“This dangerous decision immunizes presidents who commit crimes, no matter how serious, as long as they claim their offenses were ‘official acts,’” he continued. “The far-right justices responsible for this decision like to claim that they are guided by ‘textualism’ or ‘originalism,’ but the reality is that they’re engaged in judicial activism unmoored from the text of the Constitution and intentions of our framers.”
While the strong words from Durbin don’t do much of anything in the practical sense of holding the rouge court accountable for the disastrous immunity ruling, a legislative hearing is a start.
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One candidate is patently unfit for the White House. It’s not Biden — LA Times
AOC offering one of the few things that made me smile in over a week
Hot diggity dog ma, break out the still, the Feds have been handcuffed!
In other news, the legislative branch thinks about defending itself from the power hungry judiciary. Will somnolent legislators wake up in time to keep the judiciary from making them obsolete? Dobbs did not, but taking their power and agency may be a bridge too far.
If it is so important to cut the budget, according to the GOP, here is a way to do it. Cut all funding for SCOTUS staff and security. Just pay the Judges. And no one else.
How could the GOP possibly object?
To the surprise of absolutely no one:
Trump seeks dismissal of N.Y. charges, verdict after Supreme Court ruling
Donald Trump’s legal team has formally asked a judge to toss out the former president’s hush money conviction and the indictment that led to his trial, saying last week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity means some of the evidence prosecutors used should not have been allowed.
OT… but this specimen of manliness wants to “take us back”.
https://www.rawstory.com/glenn-grothman-1960s/