'Moment of reckoning': Senator calls for big change to force SCOTUS to play by the rules

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called for a major change to force U.S. Supreme Court justices to follow their own rules in response to Justice Samuel Alito displaying a MAGA symbol outside his home while the court was considering 2020 election cases.

The conservative justice blames his wife for flying the upside-down American flag outside their Virginia home, which he said was in response to a neighbor's "personally insulting" sign, but the Connecticut Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the court needed an inspector general to force the justices to play by the rules.

"I couldn't be more worried," Blumenthal said. "You know, the judicial system has no armies, has no police force. Its orders are obeyed because of its credibility, because people trust it. It has squandered that trust. The ones who have squandered it most irresponsibly are the highest court justices. We've worked for a code of ethics, been rejected by Republicans. We've worked for an inspector general. My proposal is the judicial branch have an inspector general, just like every other agency of government."

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"The Supreme Court has no code of ethics, uniquely among the branches of government," the senator added. "So I think it is a moment of reckoning for our democracy in a very real sense because of the trust that has been lost in our judiciary. I think we have a bipartisan obligation, we ought to come together as Republicans and Democrats because this issue is bigger than either party and any of us individually."

Blumenthal also called on Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist who was in contact with White House officials and state legislators pushing 2020 election lies and urging them to help overturn Donald Trump's election loss, to recuse themselves from the former president's immunity case and any others involving him.

"No one would have believed it," Blumenthal said. "Justice Alito should not sit on any of these cases involving Donald Trump, he ought to recuse himself. Here is the challenge to Chief Justice [John] Roberts. The United States Supreme Court's credibility is plummeting, lower than perhaps even the United States Congress, and that's saying something. It is due to the Supreme Court's own self-inflicted wounds. Alito and Thomas directly involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, now they're going to sit on cases involving pivotal legal questions? Absolutely unthinkable."

"I think that Chief Justice Roberts has to take leadership of this court," Blumenthal added. "He has to tell these justices that they have no business sitting on the court. It will still be able to decide the cases but not with Justices Alito and Thomas because, by virtue of flying the flag upside-down, whether it was his wife or not, it was his own. Justice Thomas, through his wife, being involved in helping to organize the insurrection, both have a direct interest here."

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