“This is a shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires,” Sen.
Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote on Twitter. “Justices Thomas and [Samuel] Alito have made it clear that they’re oblivious to the embarrassment they’ve visited on the highest court in the land.”
He said that if the court wouldn’t reform itself, Congress should step in and do it for them.
But other lawmakers went even further, calling for Thomas to step down.
“Thomas takes cash bribes while crushing your freedoms,” Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) wrote on Twitter. “He’s corrupt as hell and should resign today.”
Others also called on him to pack up his robes:
Would billionaires have given Justice Clarence Thomas massive gifts if he was just a law clerk? NO. That’s what makes this corrupt. They were seeking to curry favor with Justice Thomas, either directly or indirectly. And Justice Thomas violated the law in accepting the gifts.
Justice Thomas has brought shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court with his acceptance of massive, repeated and undisclosed gifts. No government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately.
The Thomas scandal has led to growing call for ethics reform of the court ― but at least one justice has bristled publicly at the notion of Congress stepping in.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito
told the Wall Street Journal last month. “Period.”
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