How Trump and Senate Republicans are circling the wagons to save Clarence Thomas

WASHINGTON — The cycle continues: Clarence Thomas has former President Donald Trump’s back, Trump has Senate Republicans in his back pocket and Senate Republicans, in turn, have Thomas’ back.

No matter how much financial dirt journalists and watchdog groups dig up on Thomas, and no matter how much Democrats single Thomas out for what they consider his shameful jurisprudence, his legend only continues to grow within conservative circles.

And those conservatives are striking back.

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Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and other Republicans on Capitol Hill say they have no plan to drop their blockade of Democrat’s proposed ethics reform package for the Supreme Court as long as Thomas’ gaggle of prominent detractors continue lambasting his for what reform organization Fix the Court tallies is more than $4 million in gifts from wealthy benefactors.

Last July, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the SCERT Act —Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 — which would force the court to adopt an ethics code, establish an enforcement mechanism and increase transparency. Just last month, Senate Republicans brought their blockade to the Senate floor where the GOP quashed the measure.

Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

“There's like a Clarence Thomas story every week. I'm sure next week it'll be something else. I mean, they're just hounding the poor guy. They want to hound him off the court,” Hawley told Raw Story before the Senate left town for senators' two-week long July Fourth recess.

“But none of them have been good headlines,” Raw Story pushed. “He admitted to... ”

“Well, of course not,” Hawley replied. “They’re like oppo research for the campaign. I mean, of course, they're not good headlines. They’ve been trying to discredit him. They tried to do this from the moment he got on the court.”

‘OK with felons’

Democrats aren’t surprised.

“Well, I think you have to understand that the little billionaire elite that put these people on the court is also heavily, heavily, heavily funding the Republican Senate political operation. So they have strings everywhere to pull,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story. “Do the math.”

Democrats are increasingly frustrated, though. And they don’t get the GOP’s blanket immunity from every unseemly accusation flying Thomas’ way, including that the upward of $4 million in gifts he accepted is “nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time,” according to the Democratic majority on the Judiciary Committee.

“I think it's unacceptable. I’m stunned that he did not think this would undermine not just the view of his impartiality but will undermine the institution itself,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story.

But Booker says Democrats aren’t merely singling Thomas out, particularly with a Supreme Court that has regularly ruled in Trump’s interests. One such ruling dropped Monday, when the conservative majority led a 6-3 ruling that gave Trump (and future presidents) significant, if not absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.

“There's no way to objectively look at this other than showing that the highest court in the land is descending into some of the lowest examples of, I think, unethical behavior that points to horrendous influence of people who have issues, matters and, frankly, strong beliefs about which direction the court should go in,” Booker said.

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Other Democrats say the problem is the ethical standards — and lack thereof — on the right have been upended in this Trump-era.

“You have a Republican Party now that their presumptive nominee is a felon, so I guess that's, you know, where Republicans are now. They're OK with felons running for high public office,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told Raw Story.

While Raw Story tried to press Peters — who is chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — on the politics of the court ahead of November, Peters refused to go there.

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) at the U.S. Capitol on September 28, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“We have to have a court that is respected by the American people, and when things like this happen, people start losing respect for the court,” Peters said. “And the court’s power is based on the respect of the rule of law and the integrity of the justices. If you damage that, you damage the court.”

Some Republicans won’t go there, either.

Many point to the code of conduct Chief Justice John Roberts announced last fall. While it laid out some specific instances when justices need to recuse themselves — like, say, if a justice or their relative is tied to a case — it falls short of requiring recusal. And there’s no enforcement mechanism.

Still, that’s good enough for many of today’s Republicans.

“The Supreme Court has developed its own code of ethics, and I have not reviewed that,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Raw Story.

“Did you see that Clarence Thomas got $4 million in gifts?” Raw Story asked. “What do you make of that number?”

“I really haven't been focused on it,” Collins said as a “Senators Only” elevator closed on Raw Story.

‘Getting pressured’

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been focused on it, yet they’re whistling a similar tune.

“I’m all for getting the Article III branch to update, modernize their disclosure requirements and ethics rules, but please spare me this,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story. “I’m trying not to call out the individual members, but believe me we’ve got a rap sheet on every single one, both sides. And they should really come together.”

For one, Tillis is thinking of the disclosure that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted four tickets to see Beyoncé, an estimated $3,700 value.

While $4,000 and $4 million are worlds apart, it’s still unseemly to Tillis and others. That’s why he’s hoping the court just adopts its own stout ethics standards already.

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“They’re vulnerable,” Tillis said. “And, quite frankly, I’d like for the new ethics standards to get done when we have a majority conservative Supreme Court, and they can’t say it’s just because they’re getting pressured.”

Other Senate Republicans seem to have also outsourced their thinking on the Supreme Court to the court.

“Look, I trust the chief justice,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) — who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — told Raw Story.

The American people generally don’t.

Back in 2009, 61 percent of Americans approved of a then divided Supreme Court, according to Gallup. These days, Gallup shows a mere 41 percent approval rating for the nation’s high court.

This is nothing new.

A decade ago, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2013, which would “require the Supreme Court of the United States to promulgate a code of ethics.”

“It's extraordinary that there's not more outrage. This seems to be a pretty simple grift,” Murphy told Raw Story. “Maybe we have to wait until there's some scandal with a Democratic appointed judge before anybody on the right cares about it.”

Most Republicans raise constitutional doubts about Congress’ power to write ethics rules for a separate branch of government. Still, some, like Hawley of Missouri, agree with the thrust of Democrat’s ethics proposal.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). (Nash Greg/TNS)

“Don't get me wrong, it would be helpful to everybody, if they had firm rules that they don’t accept gifts,” Hawley said. “They shouldn’t take gifts. I’m opposed to the gifts. They shouldn't take tickets, cruises, planes — they shouldn't do it. That's my view. They haven't asked for my opinion, but that's my view.”

“We don't have power over them. They’ve got to do it, but I think they should. I think it'd be helpful if they would just say, ‘we're not gonna do that,’” Hawley told Raw Story. “I don't think they should own stock either. Just like I don’t think members of Congress should. It’d just be cleaner. Like, ‘we don’t own stock. We don't take gifts.’ That'd be better for everybody.”

Overall, Hawley remains dubious of Democrats.

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“I just think that they should just adopt their own ethics code and it ought to mirror, as much as possible, what Congress and the executive branch do,” Hawley said. “And honestly, if that were to happen, they'd still be attacking Justice Thomas.”

As of now, the left is promising to continue highlighting the lavish life Thomas lives at the expense of the wealthy donors who’ve taken him under their private wings, and they are showing no signs of letting up.

Progressives in the House of Representatives have been frustrated with their Senate counterparts for not doing more, like deploying filibuster reform to expand the size of the court.

And now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for one, is angling to impeach Thomas and potentially his fellow conservative justices as soon as the U.S. House returns from recess.

Still, over in the Senate, most Democrats are resisting those calls from the party’s left wing. Instead, they’re promising to remain steady in their effort to expose this Supreme Court, so voters know the true choice facing the nation this November.

“You continue the investigation,” Whitehouse told Raw Story. “You continue the persistent pressure. Continue working with the judicial conference, which has been quite productive.”