Democrats to subpoena billionaires involved in Alito, Thomas vacations

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee plan to subpoena Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo and Robin Arkley. Members want to compel the three of them to provide more information about the travel and accommodations they provided to Supreme Court justices.

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Reporting from Pro-Publica revealed Crow provided Justice Clarence Thomas with vacations valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, bought his mother’s house and paid a family member’s tuition. Arkley let Justice Samuel Alito stay at his fishing lodge in Alaska free of charge. Leonard Leo helped organize multiple trips and events that justices attended. 

“This vote is the next step in the Committee’s ongoing investigation on the ethics of the Supreme Court. It comes only after Mr. Crow refused to comply with Committee requests, and Mr. Leo and Arkley outright stonewalled the Committee in the exercise of our constitutional authority,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. 

Durbin and other Democratic members of the committee have been in contact with Crow, Leo and Arkley. They wrote a letter to Arkley and Leo in July and again in October, but they did not receive the information they were looking for. In May, Crow said in a letter that he did not believe the committee had the authority to investigate his personal friendship with Justice Thomas. 

Senate Democrats are trying to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. The legislation would require the high court to create a stricter code of conduct, increase reporting requirements for when a justice has a connection with someone involved in a case, and it would require public explanations for recusal decisions. 

“Unlike employees of the executive and legislative branches, virtually all of them, unlike Members of Congress and all other federal justices, the nine Supreme Court justices alone decide for themselves what conduct is and is not appropriate,” Durbin said in a statement. 

Republicans have called for a stronger ethics code, but also said the Senate should not tell a separate but equal branch of government how to conduct its business.

“This is about the confidence of the American people. And that’s why I think the Supreme Court should look at it, all nine of them. This is not just a job that the chief justice can get done on his own,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told SAN in July when The Associated Press reported that Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s government-paid staff called colleges about buying her book. 

There are 11 Democrats on the committee and 10 Republicans, so a party line vote would be enough to approve the subpoenas.