Democrat says judicial ethics problems are bigger than Clarence Thomas

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said during a Wednesday hearing on a possible Supreme Court code of ethics that he was “alarmed” by Justice Clarence Thomas not recusing himself from certain decisions given his wife’s controversial text messages, but said judicial ethics problems extended well beyond the justice.

Johnson, chairman of the House Judiciary courts subcommittee, said it was “disturbingly clear that, without explicit enforceable rules, certain members of the high court are going to try to keep trying to get away with more and more until they have gotten away with our whole republic.” 

“I’m alarmed, for example, about unanswered questions about Justice Thomas’s failure to recuse from a decision that we now know might have implicated the actions of his wife and her apparent efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” he added, referencing Ginni Thomas’s texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. 

The texts pressed Meadows to not let former President Trump concede the election, claimed election fraud had taken place and said that other Republicans had not done enough to overturn the results. 

“This problem is much bigger than Clarence Thomas, however, but this is a case in point for why enacting enforceable ethics rules is long past due,” Johnson added on Wednesday.

The panel also heard further testimony about a possible code of ethics for the Supreme Court from experts including Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court.

“When asked over the years how they confront questions of ethics that go beyond the recusal law, the justices say they look to precedent or scholarly articles or seek advice from their colleagues or law professors,” Roth said in his testimony to the panel. 

“That there’s not a single definitive source the justices used for guidance means that they’ll be more likely to come up with different conclusions about their ethical obligations. This era of nine justices operating as has been said, like nine independent law firms, must end,” he added.

While some on the left have floated the idea of impeaching Thomas, several House Democrats have said they are not sure his conduct rises to that level, focusing instead on implementing more universal ethics standards on the Supreme Court.

Also on Wednesday, the House unanimously approved legislation to broaden financial reporting requirements for the judiciary branch.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) then said that based on the Judiciary Committee’s work, that legislation could be part of a larger effort to address ethics across the federal government, to include Congress and the White House.

“As you know, there’s legislation also being discussed with reference to members of Congress,” he said. “And the effort of all of those is to ensure transparency and confidence on behalf of the American public that those who serve them — whether in the judiciary or in the legislative, or for that matter in the executive branch of government — are serving them and not their own special interests.”

Mike Lillis contributed reporting.