This week, Democrats quietly ramped up their blatant assault on the Supreme Court and conservative legal activists.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin issued a subpoena to conservative and constitutional legal scholar Leonard Leo, claiming he has valid interest in Leo's friendships with Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
In response, Leo, the man behind the powerful and influential Federalist Society, is telling Durbin to pound sand.
“Today, I received an unlawful and politically motivated subpoena from U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin. I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left's dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition," Leo said in a statement to Townhall.
Durbin’s goal, backed by unhinged Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and leftist dark money groups, is clear. They are using the most powerful committee in the Senate to silence and cancel political opponents — all while their own activists pump billions of dollars into the legal and political ecosystem.
“Totalitarian Democrat Party and its thugs are trying to destroy the conservative legal community, disbarring and threatening individual lawyers and the Federalist Society, while they claim Trump wants to destroy democracy,” constitutional scholar and radio host Mark Levin observes about the situation.
Much like the IRS targeting small Tea Party groups across the country for countering President Barack Obama’s government takeover of the American healthcare system in 2010, Senators Durbin and Whitehouse and others are openly abusing their positions as elected officials to target the relationships of conservative activists. They’re doing this by issuing subpoenas and demanding private information, all while claiming it’s for the sake of “ethics” on the Supreme Court. If that were true, Democrats would also pursue so-called “inappropriate” relationships and perks enjoyed by liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Justice Stephen Breyer.
“Justice Breyer has taken more than a dozen trips paid for by one of the wealthiest families in America, the Pritzker family. As a juror for a Pritzker-funded architecture prize, Breyer accepted free trips to Africa, South America, Europe, and elsewhere to view architectural sites and attend award ceremonies—private events attended only by those select individuals who received invitations ‘directly from the Pritzker family,’” Leo’s legal team uses as one of many examples.
This isn’t simply an application of a double standard, it’s a violation of rights afforded to Americans in the constitution. Durbin is targeting Leo, claiming he’s a powerful king maker who should be held accountable. But the message is clear to anyone wanting to get involved in politics or the legal arena: if you do, we’ll harass and destroy you — so don’t even try.
But Democrats want a fight, and they’re going to get one.
"The Committee Democrats have already made up their minds about Mr. Leo. In Committee Democrats’ imagining, Mr. Leo is a 'right-wing' 'fixer' who sits atop a conspiracy to capture the Supreme Court and poses a 'direct threat to American democracy,' and they appear determined to use the Committee’s investigative tools in an attempt to uncover evidence to substantiate those noxious beliefs, or at least to impose immense and costly burdens on Mr. Leo in order to punish him for his disfavored views. It is not our responsibility to aid in that partisan effort, and we choose not to do so," Leo’s attorney, David Rivkin, told Durbin back in October.
Democrats continue their patterns of breaking rules and norms with the arrogance that the new rules won’t apply to them. Someday, they will, and there’s no doubt Durbin, Whitehouse and their dark money backers will whine when they’re held accountable to their own standards.