On Monday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) called for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to step down following the recent controversy concerning his financial disclosures and the ethical concerns that those have raised in the highest court.
During an event to advocate for reforms in the Supreme Court, Markey argued that Thomas needed to resign and that currently “His reputation is unsalvageable.” He proceeded to claim that justice is unable to distinguish and judge right from wrong, and therefore he should not be allowed to rule in some of the “country’s most important cases.”
ProPublica recently put out a report in which they detailed that Thomas had for years received luxury gifts in the form of vacations from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow and that those trips had not been disclosed in any of his disclosures from the past two decades.
Thomas defended himself by arguing that he had been “advised” that he did not need to disclose the trips.
A different ProPublica report also noted that Thomas had not disclosed a 2014 real estate deal that he had made with Crow.
Markey along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and some House Representatives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), have called for Thomas to resign from court following these recent revelations. The reports have also led to many calls for a revision in the ethical standards that justices need to follow
Following the ProPublica report, Ocasio-Cortez stated that “this degree of corruption is shocking — almost cartoonish” and that Thomas needed to be impeached.
