Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) deflected Supreme Court ethics concerns by suggesting that Democrats were paving the way for a justice to be killed.
Instead of addressing a billionaire's unreported gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas at Tuesday's Senate hearing, Hawley accused Democrats of cutting the security budget for the high court.
"$10 million of security funding that the court is specifically asking for this year in their budget request," Hawley noted. "And that just happens to be, magically, the exact same number that my Democrat colleagues want to deny the Supreme Court unless they stop their judicial recalcitrance and submit to the compulsion of this body."
"So, in other words, the threat is, we will deny you security unless you do what we want," he continued. "We had an assassin come to the home of Justice Kavanaugh and try to murder him. We have had credible threats on the lives of other justices."
Hawley asserted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had contributed to the danger because he said that Justice Brett Kavanaugh had "released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price."
"I hope that we don't have to see another assassination attempt," he said. "I hope we don't have to have a justice actually killed before this body will take judicial security seriously and stop its attempts to coerce an independent branch of government."
Watch the video below from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
