On Wednesday, New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filed articles of impeachment against Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas due to their “pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the Court.” Over the past year, both justices have been mired by their own ethics scandals. “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.
The congresswoman explained that Thomas’s impeachment resolution centers around his “failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.” It also includes his “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.”
Last year, Thomas came under fire for his relationship with GOP donor Harlan Crow, which resulted in Thomas receiving many gifts from the Texas billionaire. ProPublica reported that Thomas took 38 vacations on the dime of his wealthy friends, which he failed to disclose in the justices’ required financial disclosure reports.
Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, has also been a problem for the judge. Ginni is a longtime right-wing activist, and in the wake of the 2020 election, she lobbied lawmakers in Arizona to overturn Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump in the state.
As for Alito, Ocasio-Cortez’s statement explained that the judge’s impeachment resolution centers on his “refusal to recuse from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the Court,” as well as his failure to make accurate financial disclosures.
Earlier this year, Alito found himself in the center of a scandal. The New York Times reported that he was flying an upside-down American flag (a symbol used by the “Stop the Steal” movement) at his private residence in January 2021. The Times later reported that another flag, this time an “Appeal to Heaven” flag also popular with insurrectionists, had also been flown at Alito’s home. In both cases, the justice said that his wife was the one flying flags at their home. This violated Supreme Court ethics laws, which forbids justices from engaging in political activity, let alone political activity used by people who believe that Biden stole the election from Trump. When the flag controversy arose, Alito declined to recuse himself from two Trump-related cases that were pending before the Court.
The articles of impeachment are co-sponsored by Representatives Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Delia Ramirez, Maxwell Frost, Ilhan Omar, and Jamaal Bowman.
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