Dick Durbin Deflates Left’s ‘Subpoena Clarence Thomas’ Balloon as Ted Cruz Nails What’s Really Going On

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

Democrats have been trying to shut Clarence Thomas up since the moment he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991, with then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.) leading the way in perpetuating the ugly, baseless smear campaigns against him.

Here we are in the spring of 2024, and nothing has changed as now Democrats are demanding Justice Thomas either resign or be subpoenaed before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions regarding his longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a billionaire real estate developer who has reportedly provided for, among other things, vacation trips Thomas and his wife, Ginni, have taken onboard Crow’s yacht, in his private jet and at his private resort.

The Usual Suspects in the media and on the left have presented this as a conflict of interest and a supposed violation of federal law, saying that Thomas was required to disclose the relationship but didn’t.

But as Wall Street Journal editorial writer Barton Swaim noted, this is a big nothingburger that has been blown up by the left in yet another effort to try and get him kicked off the bench:

The [ProPublica] account didn’t bother to note that under the law then in effect Justice Thomas wasn’t required to report the trips. Also making the ProPublica story’s broad hints of impropriety rather puzzling, Mr. Crow has never been party to any case before the Supreme Court. The reporters note that “the court periodically hears major cases that directly impact the real estate industry,” but this tenuous inference tellingly avoids mentioning how Justice Thomas came down in those “periodic” cases, never mind how they might indirectly affect Mr. Crow’s interests.

A later story noted that Mr. Crow purchased the Savannah, Ga., house where Justice Thomas’s mother lives, together with two empty lots, for around $133,000. In a statement Mr. Crow explained that he bought the properties with the aim of creating a museum “dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice.” Which, if you’ve read the justice’s 2007 autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” seems entirely reasonable. A self-styled “ethics watchdog” demanded an investigation and accused Justice Thomas of deceptively disclosing the sale.

But as my colleague James Taranto has shown, the ProPublica report badly misread the evidence. Justice Thomas should have reported the sale and didn’t, but the filing instructions were unclear and it was an honest mistake. The purportedly deceptive disclosure not only was nothing of the kind; it involved a different property entirely.

The bad reporting on this non-issue from left-wing media outlets has been palpable, but that hasn’t stopped the woke left including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) from demanding Thomas be impeached.

Sadly for the AOCs of America, that is unlikely to happen, because not only has Thomas done nothing wrong based on all available evidence, but as Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) admitted Thursday, they have zero power to subpoena Thomas right now because of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) absence from the committee.

“It takes a majority. I don’t have a majority,” Durbin told reporters. “There’s been no discussion of subpoenas for anyone at this point.”

In light of that, Durbin has done the next best thing he can do, which is to write a letter to the “conservative” Justice who he knows is the weakest link, Chief Justice John Roberts, and invite him to appear and testify before the committee “regarding the ethical rules that govern the Justices of the Supreme Court and potential reforms to those rules.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is keeping the spotlight right where it should be, not only by spilling the tea on the Democrats’ backroom plan to get rid of Feinstein, but also by highlighting the real reasons Democrats are targeting Clarence Thomas in the first place:

“I don’t believe that Senate Democrats are proceeding in good faith. I think many of them are seizing on the opportunity to attack a Supreme Court justice who is the leading conservative on the court, the leading defender of religious liberty and the Second Amendment,” he said.

“They reserve a particular animosity for Justice Thomas because he’s Black. Justice Scalia was every bit as conservative as Justice Thomas and yet the left didn’t loath Justice Scalia the way they loath Justice Thomas,” he said, referring to late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

He then added, “Today’s left views it as an apostasy for an African American to dare to hold conservative views.”

‘Nuff said.