Oregon’s U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have co-signed a letter with Senate and House colleagues to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts.
A release said the lawmakers are demanding answers regarding Justice Thomas’s potential violation of federal ethics law, after last week’s reporting on the alleged efforts of his wife, Ginni Thomas, to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The release said Justice Thomas was the lone dissenting vote in a Supreme Court case requiring that former President Trump’s White House records be turned over to the January 6th House Select Committee earlier this year.
The lawmakers demanded a written explanation from Justice Thomas about his failure to recuse himself given those potential conflicts of interest. They also sought Justice Thomas’s recusal from future cases involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election or the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and called on Chief Justice Roberts to create binding, enforceable ethics rules for the Supreme Court.
The release said to fix what the lawmakers called a “long pattern of ethics breaches at the Supreme Court”, they called on Chief Justice Roberts to commit to creating a binding Code of Conduct for the Court that includes enforceable provisions and a requirement that all Justices issue written recusal decisions. The letter asked that Justice Roberts respond by April 28th.
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