AOC wants to impeach justices Thomas and Alito

AOC is taking on SCOTUS.Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/ZUMA

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wants justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas removed from the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the congresswoman filed articles of impeachment against the two justices, alleging in a speech on the House floor that they have a “years-long pattern of misconduct and failure to recuse in cases bearing their clear personal and financial involvement.” Ocasio-Cortz said these represent “an abuse of power and threat to our democracy fundamentally incompatible with continued service on our nation’s highest court.”

The filing to impeach Thomas focuses on his failures to disclose financial gifts from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow—as first reported by ProPublica last year. It also mentions his refusal to recuse from cases before the court focused on the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection despite his wife, Ginni Thomas, having attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol. (Ginni Thomas is also reported to have urged Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to double down on the Trump administration’s attempts to overturn the election results—which she later said she regretted.)

The filing to impeach Alito centers on his failure to report a luxury fishing trip granted by billionaire Paul Singer—which was also first reported by ProPublica last year. The impeachment article notes Alito failed to recuse himself from cases Singer had before the court. And it points out that the justice and his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, flew insurrection- and Christian nationalist-themed flags outside their homes. Samuel Alito subsequently blamed his wife for flying the flags. But the impeachment article says he should have recused himself from the election and Jan. 6 cases before the court regardless.

The Supreme Court hasn’t publicly commented on the impeachment articles. As my colleague Arianna Coghill wrote last November, the Supreme Court’s so-called ethics code, introduced last year, is toothless—which AOC and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) noted in a letter they wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts last month demanding clarity on the court’s internal investigative process. Given that, plus the record-low levels of public trust in the court following the leak of the Dobbs decision, it might be good to remind the justices that they are not kings.