Rep. Jamie Raskin argued that the DOJ could force the recusals of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. Via The Hill:
“Everyone assumes that nothing can be done about the recusal situation because the highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or process outside of personal reflection,” the Maryland Democrat said in an opinion piece in The New York Times published Wednesday. “Each justice decides for him- or herself whether he or she can be impartial.”
Raskin then noted that Alito and Thomas “could choose to recuse themselves,” but that “begging them to do the right thing misses a far more effective course of action.”
“The U.S. Department of Justice — including the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed U.S. special counsel and the solicitor general, all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing Mr. Trump’s constitutional and statutory claims — can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law,” Raskin continued.
Raskin said the DoJ and Merrick Garland can invoke the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455.
