By Democrats have become obsessed with who Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s friends are. Over the last year, as it has become clear that the left will not control the Supreme Court for quite some time, liberals have launched a massive smear campaign against Clarence Thomas and other conservatives on the Supreme Court.
In April, The Wall Street Journal explained the nasty tactics being deployed by Democrats hoping to undermine the credibility of the court.
“The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.
ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.
The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.
Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.
But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips.”
Playing into the smear, Senate Democrats intended to subpoena Crow and some other friends of Thomas and Justice Alito, under the guise of creating “ethics rules” for the Court. Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, however, discovered one thing Dick Durbin and the Democrats hate more than attacking the conservatives on the Court: releasing the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express,” which she tied to the subpoenas.
When the choice was putting a friend of a conservative under oath in exchange for seeing who routinely flew to Epstein’s island, Dick Durbin suddenly got cold feet.
Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn is pressing for the Senate Judiciary Committee to issue a subpoena for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs in order to identify possible perpetrators partaking in his “horrific conduct.”
“Since we’re in the business of issuing subpoenas now, here are a few more that I’ve filed,” Blackburn told the committee during a Thursday hearing looking into possible subpoenas being pushed by Democrats related to a Supreme Court ethics probe.
“A subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to provide the flight logs for his private plane. Given the numerous allegations of human trafficking and abuse surrounding Mr. Epstein, we’ve got to identify everyone who could have participated in his horrific conduct,” she said.
“If you want to take up our time and go there, Mr. Chairman, we can go there. This is a sad day in the history of this prestigious committee, but I’m confident that the American people see this sham for what it really is,” she said.
Following Blackburn’s resistance, as well as that of her Republican colleagues on the committee, Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., halted the authorization of the Supreme Court subpoenas, wrote Fox News.
After Epstein’s death in jail in 2019, which was ruled a suicide, several lists have circulated online purporting to show powerful figures who had visited Epstein’s private island, located in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Reports have claimed that Epstein “owned at least three jets, including a Gulfstream II sold in November 2013, a Gulfstream IV sold before his arrest, and a Boeing 727 nicknamed the ‘Lolita Express,’ which infamously transported prominent individuals and girls all around the world,” noted The Daily Wire.
“In December 2021, prosecutors reportedly released thousands of flight records in the sex-trafficking trial of his alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who pleaded not guilty but was ultimately convicted.
Victims of Epstein, and one of his pilots, have since come out and claimed that public figures, including Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump, traveled with the disgraced financier.”
Business Insider has also claimed that flight manifests unsealed in a defamation case against Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, including former President Bill Clinton, supermodel Naomi Campbell, and Democratic senator and astronaut John Glenn.
The last name on the list may point to why Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin suddenly got cold feet when Epstein’s logs got put into play. He has claimed that Senator Glenn helped him win his first campaign.
The Illinois senator did not explain why he suddenly pulled the vote on subpoenas once Epstein’s logs became part of the mix.
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