Senate Judiciary Democrats Reject Unfounded Refusals to Comply with Information Requests by Those Seeking to Influence Supreme Court Justices

Letter

Dear Mr. Leo:
This letter follows up on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s July 11, 2023, request for information
in your possession that is relevant to the Committee’s ongoing legislative efforts to address the
judicial ethics crisis overshadowing the Supreme Court.

Since that letter, investigative reporting has continued to expose serious shortcomings in the
ethical standards that apply to Supreme Court justices. This additional reporting, along with
recent actions by Justice Alito, have further demonstrated your unique involvement in much of
the conduct that has contributed to the Court’s ethical crisis.

In your letter dated July 25, 2023, you declined to provide the information the Committee
requested to inform its legislative efforts in these areas. As justification, you claimed this inquiry
lacks a valid legislative purpose and that it constitutes political retaliation against you. There is
simply no merit to your arguments that the Committee’s requests are outside of its Article I
oversight authority or that they violate separation-of-powers principles. Your position is at odds
with basic separation-of-powers principles favoring checks and balances and rejecting the
“archaic view of the separation of powers as requiring three air-tight departments of
government.” Your argument is especially unreasonable in the government ethics context, given
that the Judicial Conference is a creation of Congress, a number of longstanding judicial ethicsrelated laws have been passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court has adhered to those laws without complaint in multiple instances.

Furthermore, your claim that this inquiry is political retaliation against you personally is
frivolous and mischaracterizes the focus of the Committee’s investigation. As support for this
assertion, you cite a list of conduct by other justices you claim has “been ignored.” But all the
conduct you cite was properly disclosed, whereas the Committee’s investigation focuses on the
problem of undisclosed conduct. Specifically, the Committee has been examining how the
current ethical framework governing federal judges fails to capture the full scope of previously
undisclosed gifts, transportation, and lodging made available to Supreme Court justices by
parties with business before the Court.

As undisclosed gifts by wealthy benefactors continue to be revealed, one commonality in these
reports is your connection to the undisclosed gifts from these benefactors. In addition to your
involvement in the undisclosed transportation and lodging provided by Harlan Crow to Justice
Thomas and facilitating the undisclosed transportation and lodging provided by Paul Singer and
Robin Arkley II to Justice Alito, you have also directed tens of thousands of dollars in payments
to Justice Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas under the guise of consulting payments through
nonprofits with business before the Court. Additionally, you arranged for and accompanied
Justice Thomas as he attended private events for major donors to a political advocacy network
that frequently appears before the Court.

As parties with matters before the Court continue to take advantage of access to justices made
possible by both disclosed and undisclosed transportation, lodging, and other gifts, the
Committee must have a comprehensive understanding of the types of gifts provided and how this
access is used in order to ensure that legislation is appropriately tailored to address this ethical
crisis. As an apparent enabler of this access, you are uniquely situated to provide the Committee
with the information we need.

Because you do not have a proper basis to withhold information from Congress, we request that
you provide the Committee with all of the information requested in our July 11 letter by October
19, 2023.

Sincerely,

Richard. J. Durbin

Source