Senate Democrats said Monday they plan to subpoena Republican megadonor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo for more information about their roles in organizing and paying for luxury travel for Supreme Court justices.
The announcement by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee comes as the court is being pressed to adopt an ethics code, a move that has been publicly endorsed by three of the nine justices.
The committee could act as soon as next week to authorize Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the panel’s chairman, to issue subpoenas to Crow, Leo and another wealthy donor, Robin Arkley II.
Crow has been identified as a benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas for more than two decades, paying for nearly annual vacations, purchasing from Thomas and others the Georgia home in which the justice’s mother still lives and helping pay for the private schooling for a relative.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats said Monday they plan to subpoena Republican megadonor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo for more information about their roles in organizing and paying for luxury travel for Supreme Court justices.
The announcement by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee comes as the court is being pressed to adopt an ethics code, a move that has been publicly endorsed by three of the nine justices.
The committee could act as soon as next week to authorize Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the panel’s chairman, to issue subpoenas to Crow, Leo and another wealthy donor, Robin Arkley II.
Leo, a Federalist Society executive who worked with former President Donald Trump to move the court and the rest of the federal judiciary to the right, and Arkley helped arrange and pay for a private jet trip to Alaska for Justice Samuel Alito in 2008.
Crow “offered to produce certain limited information that fell well short of what the Committee needs and to which it is entitled,” Durbin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a joint statement.
The bill would set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest.
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