Raskin calls out GOP for ignoring Supreme Court ‘sugar daddies’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) blasted GOP members for ignoring the “sugar daddies” who are financing luxury gifts for Supreme Court justices during a hearing aimed at investigating litigation funding.

“People are in an uproar over the money that billionaires are spending to influence justices on the United States Supreme Court,” Raskin said. “Americans see the personal gifts to justices from right-wing billionaires sugar daddies like Harlan Crow, and Federalist Society dark money expenditures are fundamentally perverting judicial ethics and undermining justice and the rule of law.”

The GOP-led House Oversight Committee held a hearing Wednesday to investigate how left-wing activists allegedly fund lawsuits to influence policy decisions. Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said at the hearing that the committee was looking into lawsuits that “are funded by progressive activists or private equity seeking to hijack America’s legal system to implement their policy desires or make a quick buck.”

Raskin, the committee’s Democrat ranking member, pointed out the scrutiny Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have faced for accepting luxury gifts, vacations and other perks in the opening statement, suggesting that there was some irony to the Republicans holding this hearing.

“In other words, while Supreme Court justices are jetting all over the world on fancy private family vacations paid for by right-wing billionaires or collecting hefty cash gifts from those billionaires for their personal museums and family members private school tuition payments, the GOP says the real problem in our legal system is that too many victims of corporate wrongdoing are fighting access to the courts in the first place,” he said.

Thomas and Alito have come under controversy after multiple reports revealed that billionaires financed private jet flights, private vacations and luxury experiences for the two justices. This resulted in numerous calls, largely by Democrats, to enact ethics regulations for the Supreme Court.

In his nearly 10-minute opening speech, Raskin was backdropped by staffers holding up signs with photos of Thomas and Alito. He questioned if the hearing was being held to distract from former President Trump’s legal woes and why Republicans were not focusing on the ethics of the Supreme Court.

“Everyone knows that a fish rots from the head down, and everyone knows what stinks to the heavens in the judicial system today is, alas, the Supreme Court itself. Let’s focus on where the corporate corruption of justice is actually taking place today,” he concluded.