US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is refusing to testify in the US Congress about business dealings by two conservative justices and lavish gifts one received that have raised ethics issues.
Roberts cited “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence” in declining the committee’s invitation in a letter dated Tuesday to the US Senate Judiciary Committee.
He included a copy of court ethics guidelines and a statement signed by the Supreme Court’s nine justices in which they “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices.”
Photo: REUTERS
However, Roberts made no direct reference to the controversy engulfing the court’s most senior justice, Clarence Thomas, that he and his wife, Ginni Thomas, received lavish gifts and took vacations worth millions of US dollars with property billionaire Harlan Crow.
Clarence Thomas did not report those gifts, which included a flight on Crow’s private jet to Indonesia for an island-hopping cruise on Crow’s 49m yacht, independent news Web site ProPublica reported.
Nor did he report regularly vacationing at luxury resorts owned by Crow, or that the tycoon bought properties in Savannah, Georgia, from the justice, including the home occupied by Clarence Thomas’ mother, ProPublica said.
Roberts’s refusal to testify also followed a report by Politico that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, just after being confirmed to the court in 2017, sold a large rural Colorado property to the head of Greenberg Traurig, a major US law firm that regularly handles cases before the court.
Gorsuch had tried without success to sell the property for two years before joining the court, and he did not disclose the buyer on his personal disclosure reports, Politico said.
US Senator Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, on Thursday last week asked Roberts to appear on Tuesday next week to discuss ethics issues around the court.
Since the last time justices appeared before Congress in 2011, also on ethics questions, “there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected,” Durbin said.
The 2011 appearance by two justices was also sparked by allegations of Clarence Thomas and his wife benefitting financially from relations with Crow and other powerful Republican donors.
A specific focus then was Crow’s donation of US$500,000 to fund Ginni Thomas’ new Liberty Central advocacy group.
Ginni Thomas is currently under scrutiny for her role in former US president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign claiming, without evidence, that US President Joe Biden’s election victory over him was fraudulent.
After Roberts turned down the committee invitation, US senators Angus King and Lisa Murkowski announced a bill requiring the court to create a code of conduct and appoint an official to review potential conflicts and public complaints.
Supreme Court justices are the only US federal judges not explicitly bound by a code of conduct, they said.
“The American public’s confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low,” Murkowski said. “Americans have made clear their concerns with the transparency — or lack thereof — coming from the Supreme Court and its justices.”
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