(WASHINGTON) — New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Ocasio-Cortez has long criticized multiple conservative members of the Supreme Court, but the rhetoric of impeachment was amped up in the wake of recent rulings, including the court’s decision on presidential immunity.
“The unchecked corruption crisis on the Supreme Court has now spiraled into a Constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. “Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed.”
Ocasio-Cortez specifically criticized gifts Thomas received from his friend, billionaire Harlan Crow.
“Clarence Thomas, in his conduct as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors, by refusing to report the source, description, and value of gifts, and by failing to report of real estate property,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the articles, going on to list gifts he did not reportedly reveal.
Thomas acknowledged in his latest annual financial report, released in June, that he had “inadvertently omitted” reimbursement for food and lodging expenses for the July 2019 travel.
The articles against Thomas, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by George H.W. Bush in 1991, also cites Thomas’ “refusal to recuse from matters concerning his spouse’s legal interest in cases before the court” and “refusal to recuse from matters involving his spouse’s financial interest in cases before the court.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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