Sen. Marsha Blackburn Blasts Judiciary Committee Chair For Blocking Epstein Subpoena
While the weaponization of the judicial system has been a fervent criticism of former president Donald Trump throughout the litany of lawsuits brought against him to ostensibly interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election, he isn't the only one who has found himself in the cross hairs of this arm of the Biden administration's political machine. Conservative justices aboard the Supreme Court have increasingly become targets of that tactic as well. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have become the focus of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Supreme Court ethics probe since it was launched earlier this year that has only become more and more politicized the longer it's gone on.
Given the politicization of the probe, outspoken critics of the committee have called its own integrity into question. One of the most outspoken of those critics is Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Earlier this month, Blackburn highlighted the farcical nature of the committee's ethics probe by using it as an opportunity to attempt to expose the rampant corruption pushing its agenda. When the Senate Judiciary Committee was accepting subpoenas for the probe earlier this month, Blackburn chose to file a subpoena against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein for consideration. The outcry against her decision to do so brought the committee's hearing to a halt, leaving the subpoena aimed at further exposing the inner network of Epstein's human trafficking operation languishing.
On Thursday, the opportunity to have the subpoena finally be issued was denied by the Senate Judiciary Committee once more. With 177 amendments up for consideration, the committee approved several other subpoenas but denied Blackburn's request. The latest denial sent put the Tennessee Senator on the offensive against the committee. Blackburn took Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin to task, accusing the Illinois senator of covering up the flight logs she aimed to expose.
.@SenatorDurbin BLOCKED my request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 30, 2023
What are Democrats trying to hide?
“This is a sad day in the history of the prestigious Judiciary Committee and further underscores the Left’s two tiers of justice crusade. Senate Democrats have long been trying to undermine the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas, but want to ignore Justice Sotomayor allegedly using her taxpayer-funded staff to coordinate speaking engagements in exchange for selling and promoting thousands of her books. They also don’t want to have a conversation about the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to find out the names of every person who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking ring.” Senator Blackburn said in a press release.
In addition to the subpoena aimed at the Epstein estate, Blackburn also issued a separate request against the staff of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The basis behind that subpoena request revolves around allegations that the Obama appointed Supreme Court Justice's staff was tasked with arranging speaking arrangements for Sotomayor in exchange for promises that the hosts of those engagements would purchase thousands of copies of books she has authored since joining the nation's highest court. Since she became a justice in 2009, Sotomayor has earned $3.7 million for the works she has authored, including a memoir and several children's books.
Given the Senate Judiciary Committee's stated concern over the ethics of the conduct of justices on the Supreme Court, Blackburn's request to subpoena Sotomayor's staff for that very consideration seemed entirely in line with the supposed mission of the probe. Despite this, the committee's selective outrage saw Blackburn's attempts to highlight Justice Sotomayor's alleged abuses die on the vine while action aimed at conservative justices like Alito and Thomas moved forward without any resistance. Meanwhile, the possibility that any Supreme Court Justice may have been affiliated with Jeffrey Epstein was met by the committee with wanton abandonment of the seismic impact that revelation would have.
Here's 118 pages worth of Epstein's flight logs:https://t.co/f7uAOVWOMF
— blueapples (@ashesofacacia) December 1, 2023
You should retweets this.
Thus far, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ethics probe has effectuated little-to-nothing. Midway through November, the Supreme Court did adopt a 14-page code of conduct signed by all 9 justices in the aims of improving optics since the probe calling their integrity into question was launched. The code of conduct sets forth rules on how to avoid the appearance of impropriety, when to accuse a justice from a case, and a reaffirmation of the existing rules around accepting gifts, among other principles. While many of these tenets have existed for some time, the lack of a published code of conduct has been detrimental to public perception of the rules governing the justices. Despite now being formally commemorated, critics doubt their impact given the lack of any mechanism to enforce them.
Among the many justifications for the Senate Judiciary Committee's decision to launch its ethics probe was the revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas had taken trips aboard GOP donor Harlan Crow's private plane. On the same day it declined Blackburns requests, the committee voted to authorize subpoenas for both Crow and Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the Federalist Society who has been involved in the selection process of several conservative Supreme Court Justices.
Thomas has since disclosed the trips he took aboard Crow's private jet, leaving little for the subpoena targeting the conservative donor to reveal. Despite the benign nature of Thomas' trips aboard Crow's private plane, the Senate Judiciary Committee seems unmoved by the incendiary evidence that could be revealed by Blackburn's subpoena request aimed at revealing who flew aboard the Lolita Express in the hopes of shedding greater light on the political corruption that facilitated Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network.
