Ocasio-Cortez unveils articles of impeachment against Justices Thomas, Alito

WASHINGTON (CN) — Congressional Democrats on Wednesday fired their latest salvo in their battle against ethical malfeasance at the Supreme Court, as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filed articles of impeachment against Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito.

Though the move may prove mostly symbolic in the House, which remains in Republican control, it’s the most drastic effort yet to hold the justices to account for what Democrats and many legal experts have long said are flagrant violations of the kind of ethical conduct expected of the nation’s highest court.

“Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a statement Wednesday.

Both justices have come under scrutiny over the past year or so amid reports that they both failed to disclose gifts and travel paid for by wealthy conservative benefactors including billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow and Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.

Thomas and Alito have also resisted calls from lawmakers to recuse themselves from cases involving the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In articles of impeachment against Thomas, Ocasio-Cortez argued that the justice’s failure to report gifts and hospitality from Crow undermined the impartiality and integrity of the Supreme Court.

“His conduct has caused a reasonable person to believe the gifts were offered and accepted in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act and from the same or different sources on a basis so frequent that a reasonable person would believe that he used his public office for his own private gain or for the private gain of his donors,” the New York Democrat wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez contended that impeachment against Thomas was further warranted because he refused to recuse himself from election-related cases despite reports that his wife, Ginni, was involved in efforts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She argued that the justice had a legal obligation under federal law to step back from such litigation.

“By flagrantly violating federal ethics law, Justice Thomas betrayed his judicial oath to ‘faithfully and impartially discharge and perform’ his duties ‘under the Constitution and laws of the United States,’” the lawmaker said.

In separate impeachment articles against Alito, Ocasio-Cortez made similar arguments, pointing out that the justice also declined to recuse himself from election-related cases after reports emerged that symbols of the “Stop the Steal” movement and Christian nationalism were displayed at two of his residences following the Capitol riot.

Although Alito has said that his wife, Martha Ann, was responsible for the displays — an upside-down American flag and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag — Ocasio-Cortez argued that the incidents were enough that a reasonable person could question his impartiality in cases related to the 2020 election.

“Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., has engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with the trust and confidence placed in him as a justice of the Supreme Court,” the New York Democrat said, “by failing to disqualify himself from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”

Congress has sole power to impeach the justices of the Supreme Court. In a process similar to a presidential impeachment, the House votes on articles of impeachment for the offending jurist and, if passed, the Senate holds a trial. It would then take a two-thirds majority in the upper chamber to convict and remove a justice.

It’s unlikely that Ocasio-Cortez’s articles of impeachment against Thomas and Alito will see a vote in the Republican-led House, let alone pass in the lower chamber.

But during remarks on the House floor Wednesday evening, the New York Democrat said she knew the chances were slim that her action would result in either justice getting the boot, arguing instead that it was the right thing to do.

Thomas and Alito’s conduct is “fundamentally incompatible” with service on the Supreme Court, she contended.

Speaking to Courthouse News following her floor remarks, Ocasio-Cortez said that the issue had been generally raised among court reform-minded Democrats and that they had been in discussions about it “for some time.”

Some more senior House Democrats, though, signaled that they were still undecided on whether to support the effort.

“I’m still looking at it,” Georgia Representative Hank Johnson told Courthouse News outside the House chamber Wednesday afternoon. Johnson, who heads up the lower chamber’s Democrat-led court reform task force, said he had yet to form any opinion about whether it was a good idea to move ahead with impeaching the justices.

“They were just put forward today,” he said of the impeachment articles, “so we’ll see what happens as far as my participation, if any.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that she wouldn’t speak on behalf of her colleagues.

“But,” she added, “I think we are all profoundly united in the urgency and existential threat of this.”

The lawmaker’s move to oust the justices comes just days after Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas’s ethics lapses.

Democrats in both the House and Senate have for months tried to force an ethics reckoning at the Supreme Court, demanding among other things that the justices adopt a formal code of ethical conduct. While the high court responded last year with a set of ethics standards approved by all nine justices, lawmakers and legal experts pointed out that it lacked a clear enforcement mechanism.

Senate Democrats, led by Whitehouse and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, have said that Congress should step in to force the Supreme Court to establish a binding code of ethics if it won’t do so of its own accord.

That effort came last month in the form of Whitehouse’s Supreme Court Recusal, Ethics and Transparency Act, which among other things would mandate the court adopt binding ethical standards. Democrats tried to pass the measure on the Senate floor using a procedural mechanism known as unanimous consent, but Republicans blocked the bill from moving forward.

Neither Whitehouse nor Durbin responded to a request for comment on Ocasio-Cortez’s articles of impeachment.

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