The U.S. Supreme Court has confronted several tough-to-defend ethics controversies over the last several months, most notably difficult questions surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas. The alleged lapses left many members of Congress with all kinds of questions.
On Thursday, senators took a step toward getting some answers. NBC News reported:
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to approve subpoenas for conservative activists Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo over their involvement with Supreme Court ethics lapses. The subpoenas were approved by 11 Democratic senators; no other senators voted.
Republicans on the panel, who’ve spent the year downplaying the Supreme Court’s scandals, would’ve voted against the measures, but they instead stormed out of the room when the Democratic majority circumvented a GOP plan to introduce 177 amendments.
The proposed amendments were not, of course, serious attempts at governing. Rather, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were trying to disrupt and delay the process to help protect conservative allies.
Regardless, the vote to approve the subpoenas marks the latest step in a lengthy process. It was in early April when ProPublica first reported on Thomas and the lavish, undisclosed benefits he’s received from Crow, a prominent Republican megadonor. About a month later, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee reached out to Crow with questions about the alleged ethics lapses.
In the months that followed, Thomas’ benefactor and Democratic senators traded pointed correspondence several times, including an instance in June in which Crow and his attorneys came up with a provocative claim: As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, Crow argued that the Judiciary Committee’s members are “not allowed to investigate him or, by extension, Thomas and the Supreme Court.”
With this level of obstinance in mind, Democrats concluded that they didn’t have much of a choice: If those directly involved with the Supreme…
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