Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are asking Chief Justice John Roberts to reply a collection of questions on his consciousness of an upside-down American flag that flew over Justice Samuel Alito’s house.
Citing reporting from The New York Occasions, the letter from the 2 Democrats on the Home Oversight Committee asks Roberts why Alito was bumped from drafting an opinion on a case, Fischer v. U.S., that finally decided prosecutors had erred in indicting quite a few Jan. 6 defendants on costs associated to obstructing an official continuing.
Alito had been set to deal with writing the opinion, however Roberts took over 4 days after the Occasions revealed a flag related to Trump’s efforts to dam the switch of energy was flown exterior Alito’s Virginia house. Alito mentioned his spouse had raised the flag due to a dispute with a neighbor.
“Your decision suggests that you recognized that Justice Alito’s partisan ideological activity called into question his impartiality with regard to the Fischer matter,” Raskin, the committee’s rating member, and Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a letter obtained by The Hill.
“Yet, Justice Alito, like Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement are well established, was allowed to participate in the Fischer case, in violation of the Court’s institutional commitment to the principle that a Justice must ‘disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.’”
The courtroom didn’t instantly reply to request for remark.
The letter, despatched simply forward of the courtroom’s new time period, asks Roberts to reply a collection of questions in regards to the episode, together with to supply his rationale for bumping Alito from drafting the opinion and whether or not he mentioned the transfer with every other justices.
It additionally asks Roberts when he turned conscious that Alito flew the inverted flag at his house in addition to one other raised at his New Jersey trip house – an Enchantment to Heaven flag that has additionally been related to Jan. 6.
The letter additionally asks questions on Thomas, whose spouse contacted White Home and different officers forward of the Jan. 6 certification of President Biden’s electoral victory.
The lawmakers ask Roberts to reveal whether or not he spoke to both justice in regards to the matter, together with whether or not they need to recuse themselves.
“By taking the half measure of replacing him as the opinion’s author, instead of requiring him, as well as Justice Thomas, to recuse wholly from the matter, you allowed the Court to violate and defy federal law, the Constitution, and its own Code of Conduct,” they wrote..
“The notion that individual Justices can decide for themselves whether their own conduct violates the Constitution, federal law, or the Court’s Code of Conduct is untenable in our Republic and clearly violates the fundamental and original principle of due process that “no man can be a judge in his own case.”
Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez beforehand requested the courtroom and the Judicial Convention to weigh in on Thomas’s acceptance of items and splendid journeys.
However the duo bought solely a brief reply from the top of the Judicial Convention.
“The Judicial Conference, which was established in order to provide guidance to and coordination among the lower federal courts, cannot review a Justice’s inherently judicial decision whether to recuse in a case,” Decide Robert Dow, the top of the convention, wrote in a July 12 letter.
“That would place lower federal court judges in the position of supervising the Justices, contrary to the Constitution’s command there be ‘one supreme court.’”
