Republican senators accused Democrats on Tuesday of attempting to hold back funding for Supreme Court security in exchange for implementing a code of ethics.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform on Tuesday, Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (TX), accused Democratic colleagues of "threatening to cut off the funding for security at the Supreme Court" if the justices did not agree to come up with a novel code of conduct to govern themselves.
Now Democrats threaten to cut off security funding for Supreme Court - unless the Justices do what Dems want. This is AFTER an assassin tried to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Talk about threatening the rule of law pic.twitter.com/5HmtxV23FW
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) May 2, 2023
Cruz claimed the Democrats' condition was striking given that Justice Samuel Alito suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that attacks on the Supreme Court's legitimacy are making them "targets of assassination."
"The threat is, 'We will deny you security unless you do what we want. We will deny you security unless you do what we want,'" Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) concurred with Cruz in a statement during the hearing.
The criticism comes against 15 members of the Democratic Caucus, six of which sit on the judiciary panel, who have floated language to be attached to next year's Supreme Court funding bill that would require the justices to adopt new procedures for recusals and ethics allegations. Republicans largely believe fulfilling such a request would betray the separation of powers between Congress and the federal judiciary.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who leads the appropriations subcommittee charged with writing the annual funding bill for the judiciary, voiced support for the deal in an April 3 interview with the Washington Post.
Although Van Hollen's office did not lay out specifics for the plan, it would likely involve leveraging the roughly $200 million budget request for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The Tuesday hearing was inspired largely due to Democrats' concerns that the justices cannot be trusted to police their own ethics after a series of reports revealed Justice Clarence Thomas accepted lavish travel gifts from a wealthy GOP donor who also purchased a home from the justice. In a rare response last month, Thomas said he was "advised" that he did not have to disclose the trips.
Chief Justice John Roberts was invited by committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) to testify on Tuesday but declined his request in a letter last week.
Roberts has written that the justices take necessary steps to maintain transparency and the public's trust.
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"I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted," he wrote in a 2011 year-end report. His 2021 report emphasized the need for the judicial branch to have "institutional independence" while suggesting the highest court can be trusted to police itself without the interference of Congress.
The Washington Examiner contacted Van Hollen for a response.