Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) warned conservative voters on Friday that Democrats would pack the Supreme Court if they keep the White House and Senate in 2024, saying they were already laying the groundwork to "delegitimize" two current Supreme Court justices.
DeSantis said liberals fear the conservative-leaning court and would take over the Supreme Court by packing it with liberal justices if they remain in power next year. The Supreme Court currently holds a 6-3 conservative majority.
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“If they’re able to sweep in [2024], they’re going to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with liberal justices,” DeSantis said in a speech.
“They’re hard at this effort of trying to lay the groundwork for that by delegitimizing our great conservative justices. I stand with Justice [Clarence] Thomas. I stand with Justice [Samuel] Alito in the face of these attacks," he added.
DeSantis said if he were elected president in 2024, he would nominate justices to the Supreme Court who were in the "mold" of Thomas and Alito. Both justices are currently facing attacks from the Left after ProPublica published two reports on them that centered on alleged conflicts of interest.
The accusations against Thomas occurred earlier this year after the outlet reported that he took several trips with billionaire GOP donor and friend Harlan Crow that were previously undisclosed. Alito allegedly took an expensive trip with a different friend, Paul Singer, to an Alaskan fishing lodge in 2008. Both justices have defended the friendships and trips.
In the case with Singer, he reportedly had business interests that appeared before the court, which he won, including with Alito's vote.
“ProPublica has leveled two charges against me: first, that I should have recused in matters in which an entity connected with Paul Singer was a party and, second, that I was obligated to list certain items as gifts on my 2008 Financial Disclose Report. Neither charge is valid,” Alito wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
Thomas maintained that he had conferred with colleagues in the judiciary on the trips and was told gifts from close personal friends were not reportable if they did not have business in front of the Supreme Court.
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Both justices have been sitting on the Supreme Court for more than a decade. Thomas is currently the longest-serving justice on the court, having been nominated and appointed to the court in 1991. Alito has served on the court since 2006.
DeSantis acknowledged that he respected the three newest conservatives on the court, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, who were nominated by former President Donald Trump, but he said he would "do better than that."