The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo said he would not comply with the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena into their ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethics practices, CBS News reported.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin issued the subpoena on April 11, several months after the Democrats on the committee voted to authorize it.
The committee has been looking into multiple claims published by the far-Left advocacy group Pro Publica about conservative Justice Clarence Thomas’s yearslong friendship with Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow.
In announcing the subpoena, Durbin accused Leo of playing a “central role in the ethics crisis” on the Supreme Court and said he “stonewalled” the committee’s investigation.
In a letter to Chairman Durbin, Leo’s attorney David Rivkin said his client would not comply with the subpoena, which he described as “unlawful and politically motivated.”
Leo co-chairs the Federalist Society, which played a crucial role in the nominations of several conservative Justices on the Supreme Court. He said in a statement that he would not capitulate to Durbin’s “lawless support” of an effort by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and dark money groups “to silence and cancel political opposition.”
A Democrat aide on the Judiciary Committee told CBS News that the committee had several options to enforce the subpoena if Leo did not comply.
The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham blasted the Democrats on the panel for issuing the subpoena, saying in a statement that the Democrats were subpoenaing a “private citizen for political clickbait” at a time when “the border is broken” and “the Biden Administration is completely incompetent on multiple levels.”
Graham described the subpoena as illegal and said the allegations behind it were “frivolous.”
Republicans on the committee have argued that the Democrats failed to follow the rules of the Judiciary Committee when they voted to issue the subpoena last November because they lacked a quorum needed to hold a vote.
