Mitch McConnell’s Obtuse Defense for the Supreme Court Justices Mired in Scandal
Republicans really don’t care about the Supreme Court’s ethics (or lack thereof).
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he doesn’t think the recent Supreme Court scandals, in which multiple justices did not report major financial dealings, are that big a deal.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing Tuesday about ethics reform at the highest court, following a ProPublica report that Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disclose two decades’ worth of luxury vacations paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. Crow also bought Thomas’s childhood home, where his mother still lives, which similarly went unreported.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not disclose the name of the person who bought property from him in Colorado. The buyer turned out to be the head of a law firm that has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts is also under fire because his wife reportedly made more than $10 million as a headhunter placing attorneys at multiple law firms, including at least one that went on to argue a case before the Supreme Court.
But McConnell hit back at the arguments that Congress should implement an ethics code for the Supreme Court with a shameless display of whitewashing. “The left and some of their media allies want the American people to gasp in horror—in horror—that one Supreme Court justice vacations with his friends,” he said.
McConnell also dismissed the accusations against Gorsuch as just selling his house “when he moved” and the ones against Roberts’s wife as attacks on a modern, empowered woman with a career outside the home.
The Supreme Court has no official code of conduct, and it appears that the justices are exploiting that lack. The Senate has introduced a bill that would require the court to create a code of ethics within a year. So far, Lisa Murkowski, who co-sponsored the bill, is the only Republican to back it.