Senate Democrats Announce Plans to Subpoena Influential Republicans Over Gifts to Supreme Court Justices

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans Monday to seek subpoenas for three influential conservatives who have been a key focus of the panel’s investigation into Supreme Court ethics.

In a joint statement, Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, said previous inquiries the panel sent to GOP donors Harlan Crow and Robin Arkley II, as well as judicial activist Leonard Leo, were “critical” to their work following a series of news reports about conservative justices accepting gifts and trips paid for by billionaires without disclosing them. The senators said the committee had received refusals to comply or “limited information,” necessitating the need for subpoenas.

“By accepting these lavish, undisclosed gifts, the justices have enabled their wealthy benefactors and other individuals with business before the Court to gain private access to the justices while preventing public scrutiny of this conduct,” Durbin and Whitehouse said. “In order to adequately address this crisis, it is imperative that we understand the full extent of how people with interests before the Court are able to use undisclosed gifts to gain private access to the justices.”

Read the source article at NBC News