AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
In recent weeks, the Democrat establishment and its army of progressive activists have mobilized to target conservative justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Amid an apparently well-organized – and well-funded – effort to undermine the legitimacy of the Court and intimidate its justices, conservatives are asking: who is directing these political attacks?
Last month, ProPublica, a non-profit with a long record of promoting left-wing causes, published a report accusing Justice Clarence Thomas of “secretly accept[ing] luxury trips from a major Republican donor,” a real estate developer named Harlan Crow. By accepting these gifts, the group claims, Thomas “appears to have violated” Supreme Court disclosure obligations by not reporting his airline travel as “gifts” from Crow.
Despite the fact that Thomas has been close friends with Crow for nearly three decades and, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed,” leftists have nonetheless called for Thomas’s impeachment.
“Thomas must be impeached and SCOTUS needs a binding code of ethics,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose call for impeachment was echoed by the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrat members of Congress.
Almost immediately after the left’s attacks on Thomas failed to gain momentum, they turned their attention to Justice Neil Gorsuch, essentially accusing him of lying on a financial disclosure form. Gorsuch, Politico alleged in an April 25 piece, failed to “disclose the identity of the purchaser” of a property he owned in Colorado. The purchaser was the CEO of a law firm, who Politico suggests was trying to influence Gorsuch’s legal decisions.
But as legal commentator Ed Whelan notes, the purchase of the property “was an arm’s-length transaction at market price and raises no ethical concerns.”
Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence of any corruption or wrongdoing on the part of either Thomas or Gorsuch, the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee proceeded to stage a hearing on so-called “Supreme Court Ethics Reform,” apparently trying to delegitimize the High Court, which is now controlled by constitutionalists.
Of course, the Democrats’ war on the Supreme Court is hardly the only instance of escalating left-wing attacks on conservatives with a traditional understanding of the rule of law. The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the increasing flurry of state-level investigations and indictments against President Donald Trump, details surrounding Joe Biden’s stashes of classified documents, the leaking of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, and the corporate media’s embrace of former FBI employees like Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe are all cause for grave concern.
Even though the left’s vitriol toward prominent conservative figures is far from new, the regularity and cohesion with which they are now targeting conservative leaders raises questions. How, precisely, are these attacks being coordinated? Is anyone in the executive branch, Congress, or any other government entity coordinating with left-wing activists to research, roll out hit pieces against, and ultimately persecute their ideological opponents? If so, who is behind the curtain—and what are their motives?
Such inquiries might at first sound somewhat conspiratorial in nature. However, given what we now know about collusion among the intelligence community, mainstream media, Democrat operatives, and the Clinton campaign to interfere with the 2016 election by perpetrating the “Russia hoax,” as well as revelations from the Twitter Files about the coordination between Deep State government bureaucrats and Big Tech to censor news like the Hunter Biden Laptop story, questions about the latest round of baseless attacks from the left are more important than ever.
This well-established pattern of attacks on conservative centers of power is more than enough to warrant wide-ranging inquiries and subpoenas. The prospect of a left-wing network working behind the scenes with officials of the federal government to undercut vital American institutions and the rule of law is a deeply troubling possibility—and remains far more likely than many in the Republican Party would likely care to admit. House Republicans have a moral, constitutional, and political duty to get to the bottom of the left’s attacks, and—when applicable—to hold those responsible accountable.
In other words, Republican voters need a Sherlock Holmes to identify who is behind the left’s smear machine—and the House GOP must do everything in its power to give them one.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.