Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., or AOC, wants Chief Justice John Roberts to testify to Congress about the alleged corruption of the Supreme Court.
AOC claimed major cases such as the Colorado First Amendment case in which a Christian web designer was taken to court by that state because she would not make a website celebrating a same-sex marriage was corrupt. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor by a 6-3 margin. She also took exception to the high court’s rulings on student loans and affirmative action.
“We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach, and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “We should be considering investigations.”
Ocasio-Cortez stated that conservative Justice Samuel Alito had taken an undisclosed flight on hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer’s private jet in 2008. ProPublica claimed that Alito ruled in favor of Singer’s hedge fund in a 2014 dispute with Argentina in a quid pro quo.
“Judging from the trips and gifts they have received, both Alito and Thomas appear to have been beneficiaries of something like a billionaire buddies program, in which they’re paired with a particularly generous friend. I say ‘paired’ because these connections aren’t as spontaneous as they may seem,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote last month.
She claimed that Alito had voted against the Biden administration’s student loan policies for political patronage reasons instead of legal ones.
“Justice Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness. After the gifts, Alito voted to overturn. This SCOTUS’ corruption undercuts its own legitimacy by putting its rulings up for sale,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote without providing any hard evidence for her claim.
AOC argued that Roberts had a lot to answer for.
“If Chief Justice Roberts will not come before the Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we should pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., plans to hold hearings on judicial ethics reform this month.
“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of the separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” Roberts wrote in April declining to testify.
Court Defenders Cry Harassment by AOC and Left
Defenders of the conservative majority see an effort by the Left to intimidate the justices into doing things their way. They see an agenda in play.
“ProPublica, which is backed by the same donors who fund the left-wing dark money groups attacking the Supreme Court, had their upcoming hit piece debunked by Justice Alito before it was even released. Justice Alito wouldn’t stand for a blatant character assassination attempt,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino tweeted last month.
Severino sees the campaign as one based on ideology instead of legal principles or ethics.
“As long as the Court embraces originalism and the rule of law, the harassment and intimidation campaign from the Left won’t stop,” Severino tweeted in May.
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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