The Supreme Court will likely continue to face public pressure from Democrats and left-wing groups seeking to advance their desired electoral outcomes in 2024, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
After special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to consider Trump’s request to dismiss his election interference case based on presidential immunity, Democrats began calling for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case. Demands like this demonstrate their concern is less about ethics and more about influencing the outcome of critical cases, experts told the DCNF.
“With an originalist majority, Democrats can no longer count on the Supreme Court to enact liberal policies from the bench, so they’ve turned to a judge-bullying campaign that heats up every time a significant case is added to the docket,” JCN President Carrie Severino told the DCNF. “Having failed to pack the Court, they now want to strategically remove originalist justices by manufacturing fake grounds for recusal.”
Three significant issues relating to former President Donald Trump are now before the Supreme Court, or soon will be, including special counsel Jack Smith’s request for justices to weigh in on Trump’s immunity from prosecution, an obstruction statute connected to two charges in the indictment against Trump for alleged election interference and his eligibility to hold office under Section Three of the 14th Amendment.
“Their temper tantrum will continue as long as the liberal dark-money keeps flowing,” Severino continued.
The left-wing donor backed group whose lawsuit led to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling this week that Trump is disqualified from the state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is the same organization that has been calling for Clarence Thomas to be investigated or resign based on ProPublica’s reporting on his alleged ethics violations.
ProPublica also shares major donors with CREW, including Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Marisla Foundation and George Soros-backed Foundation to Promote Open Society, and has cited experts affiliated with the organization in its articles on Thomas. (RELATED: Left-Wing Activists Who Orchestrated Trump Ballot Removal Called For Clarence Thomas To Resign)
“The Left sees judicial independence as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a principle to be protected,” Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the DCNF. “The current campaign to smear conservative justices is the Left’s latest strategy for pushing the courts to advance liberal political interests.”
If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump. pic.twitter.com/7mennWFT38
— Rep. Hank Johnson (@RepHankJohnson) December 18, 2023
In April, CREW filed a complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Chief Justice John Roberts requesting an investigation into Thomas based on ProPublica’s reporting on gifts he received from his friend and billionaire Harlan Crow.
“All these attacks on Justice Thomas are geared towards having him recuse in important cases,” South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In September, 50 House Democrats called on Thomas to recuse himself from an upcoming case that could rein in the authority of executive agencies, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, based on a ProPublica story about his presence at a 2018 Koch network event. The Koch network’s staff attorneys represent the plaintiffs, which they argued presented a conflict of interest.
Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin also called on Justice Samuel Alito in August to recuse from a big tax case, Moore v. United States, after David Rivkin, an attorney who was representing the plaintiffs, interviewed the justice for The Wall Street Journal.
More recently, eight Democratic representatives argued in a Dec. 15 letter to Thomas that he must recuse from the case due to his wife’s political involvement in the 2020 election. Ginni Thomas exchanged text messages with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election raising concerns about potential fraud, which she has denied discussing with her husband.
“If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump,” the letter states.
Article III Project President Mike Davis told the DCNF that calls for recusals “leads to political gamesmanship to affect the outcome of cases, like we are seeing now with hot-button election-related cases that are oftentimes decided by a closely divided Supreme Court.”
“Unlike with the interchangeable lower federal court judges, there is a strong presumption that the nine Supreme Court justices do not recuse from cases before them,” he explained. “The reason is clear: the Court cannot substitute in other justices if a justice must recuse, like the lower federal courts can easily do.”
Senate Democrats called on Thomas to recuse from any future cases involving 2020 election interference or Jan. 6 in March 2022, after details about his wife’s text messages were reported.
“Moreover, it is a frivolous–and sexist–legal argument to call for the recusal of a Supreme Court justice based upon a spouse’s personal political views,” Davis continued. “Justices don’t own their spouses, and their spouses are allowed to think for themselves.”
Earlier this year, a coalition of left-wing activist organizations known as United for Democracy launched a $1 million ad campaign in states with key Senate races calling the Supreme Court “captured by right-wing extremists.”
Jipping said the current campaign against the Supreme Court will only succeed in “destroying public confidence in the judiciary’s integrity and even the idea of the rule of law.”
“We would all be better off if the Left even attempted to explain why decisions they may not favor are wrong on the law rather than try to destroy the judicial independence that has made the American judicial system the best in the world,” he said.
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