WASHINGTON — A lengthy investigation by Senate Democrats into alleged ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices ended Saturday with the release of a report criticizing the judiciary and calling for legal reforms opposed by new Republican leaders.
Republicans will take control of the Senate in January, meaning the report will likely be the final word on the issue for a while.
“The Supreme Court is embroiled in an ethical crisis of its own making by failing to address the ethical misconduct of judges for decades,” the report said.
The 95-page document details previously reported alleged violations, including secret trips Judge Clarence Thomas took with his friend, billionaire Harlan Crow. It was ProPublica’s reporting on the trips that began in April 2023 that sparked the investigation.
The renewed focus on the court’s ethics eventually led to the judges adopting a new code of ethics in November 2023, but it was immediately criticized as insufficient, especially because it lacks an enforcement mechanism.
In the report, Democrats lamented the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts declined to speak to the Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
They also called on Congress to pass a law to establish a stricter code that would allow ethics complaints to be reviewed by an independent panel.
This year, the bill passed the Judiciary Committee on party lines, but Republicans blocked a final vote in the Senate.
“An enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme Court is essential in light of the court’s inability to exercise its own oversight,” the report said.
In other findings, the report shows that judges are lax in identifying conflicts of interest that should trigger a denial. It also criticizes Thomas for not recusing himself from cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters due to the role of his wife, Ginni Thomas, in supporting then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. .
The report also takes aim at the administrative branch of the judiciary, saying the Judicial Conference “has failed to enforce financial disclosure rules.”
Mark Paoletta, a conservative ally of Thomas, opposed the investigation into the judges in a lengthy post on X prior to the report’s release.
“This entire investigation was never about ‘ethics,’ but about efforts to undermine the Supreme Court because the Court no longer acts as a super-legislature that advances opinions to implement the Democrats’ political agenda,” he wrote.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
