In the wake of revelations about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's lucrative friendship with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, there doesn't seem to be much indication that he'll be held accountable, according to Eric Lutz writing in Vanity Fair this Friday.
Lutz spoke to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who still holds out hope that Thomas will face some sort of consequence, saying that the "attention, and this pressure on the court, and the outrage that many federal judges feel, and the prospect of hearings and legislation being debated — that to me is all a big step forward."
“I’m very much glass half full about the progress that’s been made in the last weeks, though I am glass half empty about where this ends. We don’t know where this ends," Whitehouse said.
Lutz points out that despite years of facing calls for more accountability, the court still has not established formal ethics requirements. As a result, Thomas seems to feel "little to no responsibility to publicly acknowledge any conflict of interest concerns around his friendship with Crow and the involvement of Thomas’s wife, Ginni, in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election," Lutz writes.
Executive director of Take Back the Court, Sarah Lipton-Lubet, told Lutz that the court's conservative wing is "pursuing an ideological agenda on behalf of a small elite and they are going to continue bulldozing that path until they’re stopped," adding that SCOTUS has “amassed so much power” that it has become difficult for Congress to rein it in.
"Lacking sharp legislative teeth, Democrats are essentially hoping to outsource immediate oversight to the executive and judicial branches — calling for a Justice Department investigation, which it has yet to open," writes Lutz.
Read the full op-ed over at Vanity Fair.