You have to give it to them. Some of our Congress members are quite adept at finding new and creative ways to squander taxpayer funds.
Enter Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Wednesday. The move comes after the Supreme Court handed down multiple rulings that brought cascading waterfalls of tears from the eyes of progressives across the country.
In the filing for Thomas, Ocasio-Cortez referenced allegations of impropriety related to his relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow, an issue that Democrats have been harping about for over a year. The documents said Thomas failed to report various gifts he received from his friend, including trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, and Greece. It also brought up tuition payments for the justice’s nephew.
“Over the course of at least 15 years Justice Thomas and his wife Virginia Ginni Thomas have received gifts of significant value from Harlan Crow without reporting the source description and value of such gifts,” the filing reads.
The lawmaker also accuses Thomas of being unduly influenced by Crow in his rulings. She claims the justice “regularly adopted” the positions of the American Enterprise Institute. Crow had served as a board member for the organization.
The filing mentions Thomas’ alleged failure to “disclose the 2014 sale of a single-story home and two vacant lots previously held by Justice Thomas and two family members, to Mr. Crow for $133,363, an amount significantly higher than the price of other properties in the neighborhood and significantly higher than $15,000, the amount that Justice Thomas valued his one-third stake in the properties in 2010.”
The articles filed against Alito center on his refusal to recuse himself from cases in which he supposedly had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a political party. Ocasio-Cortez seized on the nontroversy over Alito (or his wife) flying an upside-down American flag outside his residence. She alleges that this indicates support for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
In January 2021, Justice Alito allowed an upside-down American flag to be flown outside his primary residence for several days. At the time, an upside-down American flag was widely understood to be an expression of support for the criminal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and was a symbol displayed by those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, an event that occurred only shortly before Justice Alito allowed the flags to be flown outside his residence.
The lawmaker argues that “By displaying this flag, he showed support for domestic enemies of the United States, some of whom engaged in an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, in violation of his Constitutional Oath of Office.”
UpsideDownFlagGate prompted a flurry of fake outrage coming from Democrats, who called on him to recuse himself from cases involving former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol building.
Alito responded by essentially telling them to go pound sand. He argued that a “reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal.”
Obviously, this effort is going nowhere, and AOC knows it. It appears the lawmaker has grown weary of not being in the limelight as often as she was when she first entered Congress and is looking for a way to make her way back into the spotlight using taxpayer dollars.
