WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Democrats on Saturday published a new report rolling up more than a year of investigation into the Supreme Court, detailing what lawmakers said were a “consistent stream of ethical lapses” by the justices and the repeated failure of court leadership to address them.
But despite the report’s findings — and the 20 months of congressional probing which contributed to them — Democrats are set to give up their majority in the upper chamber without passing any major legislation aimed at addressing what they have long framed as the court’s ethical crisis.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, has since last spring investigated reports that several Supreme Court justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, failed to report lavish vacations and other gifts on their annual financial disclosures. Some of the undisclosed gifts were paid for by prominent conservative figures, some of whom later had business before the high court.
And in Saturday's report, obtained by Courthouse News, the Judiciary Committee Democrats summarized their findings from the yearlong probe.
The survey, which offered little new information from the panel’s investigation, repeated a claim that has become a refrain among Democrats: that influential people have sought to gain private access to Supreme Court justices using gifts and other hospitality.
The report referenced several court benefactors who have been previously named, such as billionaire real estate developers Harlan Crow and Robin Arkley. But it dialed in on Federalist Society cofounder Leonard Leo, who the report said has “made a career” of advancing conservative interests by facilitating access to the justices.
“For decades, Leonard Leo has connected conservative attorneys and activists with Republican-appointed justices and their families in an apparent effort to advance conservative causes,” Democrats wrote. In recent years, Leo has sent money to organizations led by Thomas’ wife, Ginni, and has helped set up trips with Alito and other justices, they added.
The report also rehashed conclusions about the justices themselves, saying among other things, that Thomas violated federal law by failing to disclose travel and other expenses bankrolled by Crow. The justice, the report added, neglected to report further gifts from the conservative megadonor that were later unearthed by the Judiciary Committee.
Democrats similarly found that Alito had misused a loophole in federal financial disclosure guidelines allowing justices to leave off “personal hospitality” expenses. The justice leveraged that exemption to conceal a 2008 fishing trip to Alaska, during which Alito reportedly traveled on a private jet owned by Leo.
Before Alito, the report said, the so-called “personal hospitality exemption” was abused by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who Democrats said accepted gifts from billionaires and other benefactors for more than a decade without disclosing them. Scalia, who died in 2016, went on “hundreds” of trips paid for by Republican donors and politicians, the report found, which he “obfuscated” by only reporting portions of the trips related to his duties.
The report further restated longstanding complaints from lawmakers that Alito created the appearance of impropriety when he sat for an interview with David B. Rivkin, a Washington-based lawyer who would later have business before the court. In the interview, published by the Wall Street Journal in August 2023, the justice slammed Congress for its efforts to regulate ethics at the Supreme Court.
Democrats on Saturday also pointed to reports that two flags bearing symbols related to the “Stop the Steal” movement flew outside homes belonging to Alito following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“Despite the appearance of impropriety, Justice Alito refused to recuse himself from cases concerning the 2020 election and January 6 and the case involving the attorney who interviewed him,” the report said.
Follow @BenjaminSWeiss
