Ex-RNC Chair Asks Why Supreme Court ‘Allowed to Get Away’ With Scandals

Amid recent scandals involving some Supreme Court justices, Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), questioned on Saturday why the highest Court is “allowed to get away” with it.

Last month, a photograph taken on January 17, 2021, of an upside-down American flag displayed outside of conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s home was reported by The New York Times. The inverted flag is associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement that has been used by supporters of former President Donald Trump to contest the 2020 presidential election results and was taken less than two weeks after a group of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

In response, several critics have called for Alito to remove himself from the Court’s ruling on Trump’s presidential immunity case. The former president is seeking protection from federal charges related to his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election through presidential immunity. However, Alito has said he “had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” placing all the responsibility on his wife, Martha-Ann Alito. In addition, in a letter to Democratic senators dated May 29 Alito told them that he refused to recuse himself because incidents they cited did “not meet the conditions for recusal.”

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has also faced calls to recuse himself from such rulings due to his wife’s actions related to January 6. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas has come under scrutiny over her actions in the wake of the 2020 election, including sending text messages to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to help overturn the results of the election.

Meanwhile, Alito and Thomas have also accepted lavish gifts and trips from GOP donors in the past, a revelation that led to the Supreme Court’s adoption of its first code of ethics last fall, which prohibits justices from making political statements on issues that may come before them. However, Thomas defended his trips in a statement in April 2023 and said that he “sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

During Saturday’s MSNBC’s The Weekend, Steele, who is a co-host on the program, discussed the ongoing controversy among the justices as he questioned why the Supreme Court is “allowed to get away with this” as he addressed Representative Jamie Raskin about why Congress can’t take action, referencing that Congress controls the court’s budget.

“I can’t help but think as most Americans are looking at this and say why is the Court allowed to get away with this? Why is the Court not being pulled in as any other institution of government would be pulled in? We get the separation of powers and how the Constitution is set up, but I mean, despite what Chief Justice [John Roberts] may say publicly, have oversight,” Steele said.

He added: “There’s a little thing called a budget item and it says ‘Supreme Court’ and it has a number behind it and when you put a zero there, you are going to get the chief justice’s attention. I think a lot of Americans sort of look at this and go if it’s that important and it means that much, why are you so helpless as Congress, not just Democrats versus Republicans, but as Congress do something about it?”

Newsweek has reached out to the Supreme Court and Steele via email for comment.

Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, highlighted that it may be hard to hold the justices accountable with the current Congress, but added that there are a few actions they can take.

“The highest Court in the land has the lowest ethical standards. They’re the only court that doesn’t have a binding ethics code where you can actually go to make a complaint…You’re right, we control their budget, but it goes beyond that. We’ve got the right to impeach Supreme Court justices, we can impeach them and we can change the appellate jurisdiction,” the congressman said on Saturday.

Newsweek has also reached out to Raskin via email for comment.

Last month, Raskin said that the Supreme Court justices could be removed from Trump’s presidential immunity ruling by petition of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The theory, which Raskin wrote in an op-ed published by the Times in May, is that action could be taken by prosecutors at the DOJ, as they “can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law.”

“The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality,” the congressman wrote.

The Senate Judiciary Committee revealed on Thursday that Thomas allegedly did not disclose three trips, which included a private jet flight from Missouri to Montana in May 2017; a second private jet flight from Washington, D.C., to Georgia and back in March 2019; and a further flight from D.C. to California in June 2021.