Democrats suspended a key Senate Judiciary Committee Rule on Thursday that allowed the majority members to authorize the subpoenas of private citizens over their relationships with Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The decision to take an illegal vote after deliberately ignoring Rule IV, which states that objections to a vote without further debate can only be overruled if at least one minority member votes to terminate debate, left Republicans without a chance to discuss the 177 subpoena amendments they introduced related to issues deliberately overlooked by the Senate’s leftist majority.
Democrats, their dark-money allies, and the corrupt corporate media weaponized Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo’s friendships with Republican-nominated justices to fuel their coordinated campaign to undermine the Supreme Court with congressionally mandated ethics oversight and regulation. Republicans identified the Crow and Leo subpoenas as a partisan ploy to delegitimize the Supreme Court that lacks precedence.
Crow, who “remained willing to engage with the Committee in good faith,” criticized the decision as a demonstration of “the unlawful and partisan nature of this investigation.”
“So far, Committee Democrats have been dismissive of Mr. Crow’s good faith offer and unwilling to engage in constructive dialogue. Committee Democrats have made intrusive demands of a private citizen that far exceed any reasonable standard and to this date have not explained why this request is necessary to craft legislation, particularly now that the Committee has completed its work on ethics legislation. Still, Mr. Crow maintains his readiness to discuss the matter further with the Committee,” the office of Harlan Crow said in a statement.
In an attempt to hamper the Democrats’ scheming, the GOP issued dozens of subpoena amendments concerning Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, the Department of Justice’s termination of programs aimed at rooting out U.S.-based Chinese spies, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion hoaxing, the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of Elon Musk, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra’s missing migrant children, and Justice Sotomayor’s staff over her book-selling scandal.
At one point in the heated debate, Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked if Republicans could subpoena the names of the people in a recent Washington, D.C. brothel sting.
Democrats originally planned to vote on the Crow and Leo subpoenas earlier this month but ultimately postponed after Republicans filed dozens of amendments emphasizing legitimate oversight routinely ignored by the majority. The last-minute pivot to GOP subpoenas rattled Democrats and effectively stalled them from taking action that day.
When the committee reconvened on Thursday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin vowed to authorize the Crow and Leo subpoenas no matter how long it took.
Ranking Member Lindsey Graham tried, once again, to stonewall the process by raising a point of order and invoking the rule to end debate, citing Rule IV. Durbin then moved to suspend the rule so Democrats could authorize the subpoenas without addressing Republicans’ amendments.
Because the roll-call vote continued beyond the two-hour mark, limiting the committee’s activity, several Republican senators left the room. Democrats illegally passed the subpoena authorization despite their violation of at least two Senate rules.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter to Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb demanding information on his politically motivated investigation of Leonard Leo and certain nonprofit groups he is affiliated with.
[RELATED: Subpoenaing Friends Of SCOTUS Justices Will Immediately Backfire On Senate Democrats]
Earlier in the hearing, Graham challenged Democrats to abandon their “political exercise” and pass legislation addressing Supreme Court ethics, including Democrat-nominated justices’ decades-old violations.
“You’re doing an investigation to fix a problem that you already have a legislative solution for,” Graham insisted.
He also warned Durbin and democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who only became interested in the “ethics” of SCOTUS because it was politically and personally strategic for their party to target the conservative-controlled court, that Republicans aren’t “going to act like nothing happened.”
“I think it will provoke a constitutional crisis,” Kennedy warned.
Shortly after the committee hearing began, Durbin derailed it when he bypassed Republicans’ right to speak by immediately moving to roll-call votes. He demanded an immediate consensus on judicial nominees who were sent back to the committee from the Senate floor earlier this month after the Senate parliamentarian ruled Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons’ proxy votes invalid.
Durbin’s decision to disregard committee rules and procedures to accommodate the favorable recommendation of several radical, soft-on-crime judges to the federal bench was staunchly opposed by Republicans. Graham called Durbin’s actions “political theater at the expense of this committee.”
“You’ve just destroyed one of the most important committees in the United States Senate … Congratulations on destroying the United States Senate Judiciary Committee,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas added.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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