Democrats continue to look for ways to undo the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Liberals think they found a magic bullet.
And Democrats made this legal threat that is aimed squarely at Clarence Thomas.
Democrats target Clarence Thomas through Federalist Society witch hunt
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced the committee was subpoenaing Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo as part of a witch hunt targeting Clarence Thomas, after the media ran a series of fake news hit pieces baselessly smearing Thomas as corrupt simply for complying with Supreme Court financial disclosure rules.
Leo’s lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr. said Leo wouldn’t be complying with this illegal subpoena.
“For the reasons previously set forth, Mr. Leo is not complying with the Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee members’ unlawful and politically motivated subpoena,” a letter from Rivkin to the committee read.
Leo blasted the subpoena as another lawless attempt by Democrats to weaponize the government against their political opponents.
“Today, I received an unlawful and politically motivated subpoena from U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin,” Leo wrote in a statement. “I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senate Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”
Dispute between Leo and Senate Democrats began in October
Democrats subpoenaed Leo because Rivkin informed the committee last October that Leo wouldn’t comply with their document requests.
In a letter dated October 19, Leo cited Democrats on the committee personally attacking Leo as well as the unconstitutional nature of the probe being why Leo refused to comply.
“We have put forward clear and detailed reasons why the Committee’s inquiry is a form of political retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection component of the Due Process Clause,” Rivkin wrote. “But, for the most part, the October 5 Letter ignores these points, and, since our last correspondence, the Committee has only expanded the retaliatory campaign it is mounting against Mr. Leo. We also have explained at length why the Supreme Court ethics legislation the Committee has written would violate the separation of powers if enacted, and thus cannot legitimate the Committee’s inquiry.”
“These new statements, along with the ones cited in our July 25 Letter and many others, remove any doubt, if there was any to begin with, that the Committee is targeting Mr. Leo out of hostility toward his political views and associations,” Rivkin continued.
The Federalist Society emerges as a bogeyman on the Left
A group of conservative students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago law schools founded the Federalist Society in 1982 to combat the leftward rift on campus and in the faculty.
The Federalist Society became a training group for aspiring conservative lawyers, and Republican Presidents pick their judicial nominees from their ranks.
Democrats now want to go after Leo due to his connections to Thomas and other conservative Justices to paint the entire conservative legal movement as corrupt.
The point of this exercise is if the Democrats keep the White House and Senate plus win a majority in the House of Representatives, they will have created the pretext to gut the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court with as many as six new liberal Justices.