(Headline USA) Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday rejected Democratic senators’ attempt to coerce him into meeting with them to discuss Supreme Court ethics following a manufactured controversy by left-wing media and activistsover flags that flew outside homes owned by Justice Samuel Alito.
It marked the latest desperate measure by Democrats to delegitimize the coequal branch, fearful that the court’s conservative leanings will have a disproportionate impact for decades to come given justices’ lifetime appointments and eager to engineer the “crisis” that would give them the pretense to interfere with its longstanding policy of self-policing.
The U.S. Constitution intentionally sets up a separation of powers that prevents the sort of coercion that would result in an undue political influence on court proceedings, but Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have been instrumental in the attempts to politicize the court for their own selfish ends, with their wild reactions to the fake controversy often exposing one hypocrisy after another.
Roberts’s response came in a letter to the senators a day after Alito separately wrote them and House members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 dissidents because of the a historic battle flag that he displayed, which also happened to be used by Jan. 6 protesters.
The Democrats had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 uprising or the Republican former president’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” Roberts wrote.
Justices decide for themselves when to step aside from cases, Roberts noted. Alito said he concluded nothing about the flags, both of which he said were flown by his wife outside their homes in Virginia and New Jersey, required his recusal.
Last year, Roberts declined to testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics, and he made mention of that Thursday in saying that chief justices only rarely have met with lawmakers.
“Moreover, the format proposed—a meeting with leaders only of one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the court—simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable,” he wrote.
Both Alito and an another conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, have rejected calls to recuse themselves from cases related to the 2020 election.
Democrats, meanwhile—including some of those demanding the recusals of the Supreme Court justices—have remained mum concerning the serious conflicts of interest involving Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the felony prosecution of Trump in Manhattan despite having a daughter who received millions in payments from Democrat politicians.
The justices are considering two major cases related to the Capitol uprising, including charges faced by the protesters and whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.
The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol. Curiously, the Washington Post later weighed in saying it had known about the story for three years but had not considered it to be newsworthy.
The Times also reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside of the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. The flag was a battle flag carried by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Alito has said the inverted American flag was flown by his wife amid a dispute with neighbors and he had no part in it. He said she also flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag but was unaware of its ties to the Capitol uprising.
The Supreme Court had long gone without its own code of ethics, but it adopted one in November 2023 in the face of sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices—another of the targeted attacks by left-wing activists designed to smear conservative justices specifically, although it equally affected liberal ones.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary panel approved legislation last year that would set stricter standards of enforcement for the court. But Republicans have been staunchly opposed to any efforts to tell the court what to do.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
