𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬' 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐬

Democrats said Thursday that in the wake of a detailed news report that claimed Justice Clarence Thomas accepted expensive gifts from a wealthy Dallas businessman and omitted the costly travel from his yearly financial disclosure filings for decades, the Supreme Court justices must adopt an enforceable code of conduct. They demanded inquiries, harsher gift regulations, and possibly Thomas' dismissal.

They requested inquiries, harsher gift regulations, and possibly Thomas' dismissal.

After reading a thorough investigation report by nonprofit ProPublica on Thomas's behaviour, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) promised to look into the findings and take appropriate action.

The reported acceptance of gifts from wealthy Republican contributor Harlan Crow was referred to as "corruption" by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who called for Thomas's impeachment on Thursday.

Durbin claimed that calls for Thomas's impeachment coming from within his own party were "not realistic" last summer (Business Insider). Any articles of impeachment brought against a Republican-appointed justice would not be accepted by the current Republican-led House. A high court justice was once impeached, but the Senate decided to clear him in 1805.

When it came to Thomas's ethics last year, there were

Giving gifts without disclosing them and without establishing clear guidelines is bad for Chief Justice John Roberts, she continued .

Roberts has bemoaned the politicization of the Supreme Court in the media on numerous occasions. With a strong conservative majority, the court has been willing to overturn at least one important legal ruling in order to defy popular opinion and grant states the right to outlaw abortion and punish those who provide reproductive healthcare. A draught opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade that was leaked to Politico and eventually nearly exactly adopted as the majority ruling by the court last year also shocked the court. The source of the leak was not revealed in a later internal court probe, which characterized it as "an unusual betrayal of trust."

The Democratic lawmaker from New York is hardly the only one to criticize Thomas. The ProPublica findings, according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), requires a separate investigation.

The Hill: Democrats express outrage following ProPublica’s report on Thomas’s luxury travel.

In a statement, Crow told ProPublica that he and his wife have been friends of Thomas and his wife since 1996, five years after Thomas joined the high court. Crow said that the “hospitality we have extended to the Thomas’s over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends” and that the couple “never asked for any of this hospitality.”