Rubin and Elie Mystal discussed the shocking revelation that Supreme Court Justice flew a reversed “Stop the Steal” flag on his front lawn as the court was considering a 2020 election case. The revelation came not long after we learned that Justice Clarence Thomas gives the distinct appearance of having broken the law by dodging taxes on a forgiven RV loan.
It's long overdue for Democrats to stop wringing their hands and start doing something about it.
Mystal noted that it was already obvious from Alito’s and Thomas’ written opinions and comments at oral arguments that they support the insurrection and are doing everything they can to help Trump evade prosecution and accountability for his crimes. “That’s what they’ve always been,” Mystal said. The question now is, “what are the rest of us going to do about it?” he asked.
Rubin had some excellent ideas. First, she pointed out that Alito ran to Fox News, which you could argue was part of the Stop the Steal movement, to plead his case. More importantly, she also pointed out that Alito was not flying a pro-Trump flag, he flew a flag sympathizing with the overthrow of the Constitution, “a clear violation of his oath.”
Then she suggested we all insist on an end to the “mambsy-pambsy” response from Democrats that has gotten us nowhere.
RUBIN: So what do we do? Well, first of all, Dick Durbin's got to get off his Duff. He has been sitting around, twiddling his thumbs on any kind of mandatory ethics reform. It needs to be on the floor of the Senate on Monday. Put it to the House and let them decide that they don't want to improve the Supreme Court.
Secondly, there should be an impeachment inquiry. There's no excuse for it. Understand that while this was going on, Sidney Powell and her pack of malpracticing, unethical lawyers were concocting a plot to have Alito intervene in the election count. That was their scheme. We have tape of Sidney Powell saying, yes, that was the scheme, to get Alito into this. If that's not grounds for an impeachment proceedings, I don't know what is.
Third this is not just an Alito and a Thomas problem. This is a Chief Justice Roberts problem. He is complicit in this. He has the choice. He can go public if need be. He can demand these people recuse himself. He can go to Congress and ask for a mandatory ethics regime, but he hasn’t because he is weak because he wants to allow the conservative majority to remain so he can advance whatever political views he has. He is complicit in all of this.
Ultimately, what we need is investigation. We need court reform. We need Democrats in this election to elevate court reform, come out in favor of not only term limits, but in my book, at this point, we need court expansion. So, there's lots of things to be doing, but we cannot do them if people like Dick Durbin sit around and say, “Oh please, Mr. Alito, would you recuse yourself?” That's not going to get the job done and Democrats shouldn't tolerate that kind of mambsy-pambsy approach.
Amen.
