Editors at National Review Online highlight a “dangerous stunt” perpetrated by Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden say they want the Justice Department to prosecute Justice Clarence Thomas. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she wants to impeach both Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. These are political disagreements dressed up in the clothing of criminal law. If taken seriously, they represent an ominous slide down the path of the authoritarian impulse to criminalize differences of opinion. At best, they are cynical campaign ploys aimed to distract from the implosion of the Biden presidency.
Enraged by the end of Roe v. Wade and other outcomes they dislike, progressive Democrats have been campaigning for the past several years to delegitimize or intimidate the Supreme Court’s majority by any means necessary. The rationales change, but the cause remains the same. So does the ultimate end: Court “reform” that either removes the current majority or swamps it with Court-packing. Not for them is the patient work of winning elections and legal arguments by which conservatives, Republicans, and other constitutionalists built this majority over four decades.
Whitehouse and Wyden have written a letter calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas. There are many good reasons why this won’t and shouldn’t happen. The transparent flimsiness of their pretextual legal arguments speaks volumes about the real political motivations in attacking Thomas for being a faithful steward of the Constitution.
To start with, even the most political of Justice Departments look skeptically on requests for a criminal referral that are not endorsed by the proper congressional authorities. This is not a letter from the full Senate Judiciary Committee; neither its chairman Dick Durbin nor its ranking member Lindsey Graham joined the letter, which was not approved by a vote of the committee.
