Yesterday, no less than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stood in front of the Supreme Court of the United States at a pro-abortion rally and said this, as reported here by Fox News:
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer warned. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Say what? As the Court prepared to take on a case involving a Louisiana abortion law – the Democrats’ leader in the United States Senate actually threatened two Supreme Court Justices, Justices Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh?
Yes. In fact, that is exactly what Schumer did. And in an extraordinarily rare move, no less than Chief Justice John Roberts quickly went public with a reprimand. Said the Chief Justice:
“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”
So too did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell call out Schumer. The Hill wrote up McConnell’s upbraiding of Schumer this way:
“‘I’m not sure where to start. There is nothing to call this except a threat, and there is absolutely no question to whom, to whom it was directed. …The minority leader of the United States threatened two associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court by name, period. There’s no other way to interpret that,’ McConnell said from the Senate floor.
…McConnell called the comments ‘astonishingly, astonishingly reckless and … irresponsible.’ He added that the subsequent explanation was an attempt to ‘gaslight the entire country and stated that he was actually threatening fellow senators, as though that would be much better.’
‘A Senate leader appearing to threaten or incite violence on the steps of the Supreme Court could literally be a matter of deadly seriousness. So I fully anticipate our colleague would quickly withdraw his comments and apologize. …Instead, our colleague doubled down. Doubled down,’ McConnell added.”
Indeed he did.
Recall in 1954 that Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was famously leading a campaign to oppose Communists inside the US government and elsewhere in American society. His tactics were so offensive to his colleagues that Republican Senator Ralph Flanders from Vermont moved to have the Senate censure McCarthy because McCarthy “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Without question, Schumer’s open threat to two Justices on the United States Supreme Court is nothing if not having “acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
Schumer has drawn public condemnation from the Chief Justice.
Now it must be the Senate’s turn.
Censure Chuck Schumer.
