Senate Democrats' attempt to get conservative legal activist Leonard Leo to turn over information on any travel, gifts, or payments involving Supreme Court justices is being sharply criticized as "modern-day McCarthyism."
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, slammed the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee for requesting the information from Leo as an "attempt to punish and silence" him. Leo declined to offer documents in a letter to the committee on Tuesday.
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Senators Whitehouse and Durbin don't like anything about Leonard Leo's political views, and that's why he's a top target on their "enemies list."
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) July 25, 2023
Their modern-day McCarthyism is an attempt to punish and silence Leo and anyone who agrees with him.
It's not going to work. https://t.co/1jB66vYESA
"Senators Whitehouse and Durbin don't like anything about Leonard Leo's political views, and that's why he's a top target on their 'enemies list,'" Severino tweeted. "Their modern-day McCarthyism is an attempt to punish and silence Leo and anyone who agrees with him. It's not going to work."
Leonard had until Tuesday to hand over the information, which was requested by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), but he rejected the demand as an infringement of two of his constitutional rights, including his First Amendment right to free speech.
In the letter to the Senate Democrats, legal counsel for the co-chairman of the Federalist Society also decried the request as "political retaliation."
Durbin and Whitehouse first requested the information earlier this month, when they said they were seeking information from Leo along with two "right-wing billionaires implicated in recent reporting on the Supreme Court’s ethics crisis."
“To date, Chief Justice Roberts has barely acknowledged, much less investigated or sought to fix, the ethics crises swirling around our highest Court," the two senators said in a joint statement at the time. "So if the Court won’t investigate or act, Congress must. Answers to these questions will help the Committee’s work to create reliable ethics guardrails at the Court, under Congress’s clearly established oversight and legislative authority.”
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Increased scrutiny on the high court from Democrats comes after multiple reports surfaced about Justices Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Clarence Thomas conducting allegedly unethical behavior by accepting undisclosed gifts, among other accusations. The initial report about Thomas allegedly accepting undisclosed gifts from GOP donor Harlan Crow in April sparked a cavalcade of reports regarding the justices. All justices have denied any wrongdoing amid the accusations of unethical behavior.
The scrutiny by Democrats also comes as the party has been vocally upset about recent decisions by the Supreme Court in cases involving abortion, affirmative action, and President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, among other opinions.