If you haven’t heard, the Democrats are making the case that conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a bad man. But the case being made against him hit a rather big bump in the road on Thursday when one GOP senator turned the tables on the Democrats.
It was during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, with a top agenda item labeled as “Authorization for Subpoenas Relating to the Supreme Court Ethics Investigation.”
Naturally, the Democrats, led by Senate Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois, were attempting to get subpoenas for “central players in the ethics challenge facing the court.”
Those individuals would include real estate mogul Harlan Crow and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo, both longtime friends of Justice Thomas and men the Democrats say Thomas had questionable relationships with in relation to his job.
However, before those subpoenas could be agreed on, Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee demanded a few subpoenas of her own.
The first, and a doozy of one, was for the flight logs of the late and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
According to Blackburn, it is well past time we “identify everybody who was on that plane and how many trips they took on that plane and the destinations to which they arrived.”
Of course, that was only the start of her list.
Additionally, she also asked for subpoenas into:
- liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor for her alleged part in a book scandal,
- former special counsel Robert Mueller’s staff regarding “donations and participation” during the Russian collusion probe,
- the DOJ for canceling a program to track down Chinese spies
- Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for losing track of 85,000 illegal minors
- And the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission regarding efforts to censor conservatives on social media.
Within moments of Blackburn making these requests, Durbin suddenly called the entire hearing to a halt – and without issuing a single subpoena.
Well played, Blackburn, well played.
