The committee voted along party lines Nov. 30 to subpoena Leo and Texas billionaire Harlan Crow following reports that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito accepted — and did not disclose — free luxury trips and gifts from Crow, Leo and conservative donor Robin Arkley II.
Crow had not received a subpoena Thursday, his spokesman Michael Zona told the Post.
In a statement to the Post, Durbin said issuing a subpoena to Leo was a necessary step.
“Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s legitimate requests for oversight with a flat refusal to cooperate,” Durbin said. “His complete disregard left the Committee with no choice but to move forward with a mandatory procedure. For this reason, I have subpoenaed Mr. Leo.
“Mr. Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the Supreme Court and, unlike other recipients of requests for information in this case, has done nothing but stonewall the Committee. This subpoena is the result direct from Mr. Leo’s own actions and choices,” Durbin continued.
The committee did not respond when asked why only Leo received a subpoena. And when asked why so much time passed between the vote and the sending of Leo’s subpoena, Durbin’s office declined to go beyond its initial statement.
David B. Rivkin, Leo’s attorney, said in a letter to Durbin dated Thursday that Leo would not comply with the committee’s “unlawful and politically motivated subpoena.”
With Leo refusing, Democrats would be forced to hold a vote in the Senate if they wanted to enforce the court subpoena — a nearly impossible task in a closely divided chamber with 60 votes needed to break a filibuster .
The November vote to subpoena Leo and Crow came two weeks after the Supreme Court announced that the justices would, for the first time, follow a broad code of conduct aimed at promoting “integrity and impartiality.” . The High Court’s new ethics rules have been hailed by some as a positive first step. But legal ethics experts have criticized them for not including a process for handling complaints that a judge has violated standards and for giving individual judges too much discretion over recusal decisions.
At the November hearing, Democratic senators said the code didn’t go far enough and that it was necessary to use subpoenas and push for more information from Crow and Leo to inform the bill.
“Without an enforcement mechanism, this Code of Conduct, while a step in a positive direction, is insufficient to restore public confidence in the Court,” Durbin said in his prepared opening statement. “For this reason, Congressional action remains both appropriate and necessary. The Committee’s investigation into the Court’s ethical crisis – and these subpoenas in particular – are key elements of our legislative efforts to establish an effective code of conduct.
Republican members of the committee criticized the subpoena attempt as a political attempt to discredit the high court’s conservative majority.
Democrats on the committee launched an investigation into the justices’ dealings with private benefactors after ProPublica revealed in April that Thomas, for many years, failed to disclose free luxury vacations and travel in his annual reports. private jet that he had received from Crow, his long-time friend. Thomas also did not initially report Crow’s purchase of three properties from Thomas and his relatives or that Crow had paid the boarding school tuition of Thomas’ great-nephew, of whom Thomas had legal custody.
ProPublica also revealed that Leo arranged a luxury fishing trip to Alaska for Alito in 2008, including free accommodation and private jet travel. Accommodation, according to the ProPublica report, was provided by Arkley. Thomas and Alito said they do not believe they are required to report their travel on annual reporting forms. After ethics rules were revised in March, clarifying that judges and justices must report private jet travel, Thomas disclosed three trips in 2022 aboard the Crow jet. It also, for the first time, listed the real estate sale to Crow in 2014, a transaction that most ethics experts say should have been reported long ago.
In July, the Judiciary Committee proposed legislation that would require the high court to adopt a code of ethics, create a system for investigating alleged violations of that code, and require judges to publicly explain recusal decisions. The bill lacks the bipartisan support needed to win approval from the full Senate and is unlikely to come up for consideration in the GOP-controlled House.
washingtonpost
