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Conservative legal activist Leonard Leo swiftly rejected a subpoena issued Thursday by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of their investigation into lavish gifts to conservative Supreme Court justices.
The committee had voted along party lines in November to authorize subpoenas to Leo and billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee finally acted this week to subpoena Leo; it’s unclear why they did not subpoena Crow.
“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 of Sen. Dick Durbin, the committee chairman, in a statement. (Whitehouse is also a member of the Judiciary Committee.) Leo’s attorney told Durbin in a letter that his client will not comply with what he called an “unlawful and politically motivated subpoena.”
Democrats on the committee have been investigating the ethical implications of gifts to Supreme Court justices, particularly Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, following multiple reports that they did not disclose substantial gifts and luxury trips they received thanks to wealthy right-wing legal activists like Leo and Crow. Crow, in particular, has had an especially close relationship with Thomas, as ProPublica has reported.
Leo, who is co-chairman of The Federalist Society, is an outsize force behind U.S. courts’ dramatic rightward shift: He helped to place reliable conservatives in powerful positions across the judiciary and personally saw to it that conservative justices on the highest court were content, according to ProPublica’s reporting.
“Mr. Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the Supreme Court and, unlike the other recipients of information requests in this matter, he has done nothing but stonewall the Committee,” Durbin said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This subpoena is a direct result of Mr. Leo’s own actions and choices.”
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have claimed that the subpoenas are invalid due to a procedural matter, and they publicly told Crow and Leo to ignore any subpoenas. If Leo does not comply, Democrats would need 60 votes in the Senate to seek enforcement of the subpoena in court.
With the party’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, that appears unlikely to happen.