Far-left House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY.) is filing articles of impeachment against Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The charges repackage familiar talking points about the justices, whom Democrats have broadly accused of corruption. There is little chance the impeachment articles will advance in the Republican House.
The impeachment threat escalates a left-wing campaign to discredit the conservative Supreme Court, which ended its most recent term by handing President Trump a huge legal victory in its ruling on presidential immunity.
In sweeping language, AOC claims that Thomas and Alito committed "high crimes and misdemeanors" by failing to disclose certain gifts from conservative billionaires.
The charges also accuse the justices of wrongdoing by failing to recuse themselves from January 6th cases.
Liberals have sought to tie Thomas to the January 6th riot over his wife's role in the "Stop the Steal" protest movement, and Alito has faced similar backlash over flags that his wife flew - an inverted American flag and an "Appeal to Heaven" flag - that were displayed by some January 6th participants.
The impeachment articles accuse Alito of harboring "a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the court," and Thomas is similarly accused of failing to recuse himself from cases where his wife had financial and legal "interests."
In a breathless statement, Ocasio-Cortez decried an "unchecked corruption crisis on the Supreme Court."
"Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed."
A handful of Democrats are backing AOC's longshot proposal, including New York's Jamaal Bowman, who recently lost his seat in a primary.
The Supreme Court ended its term with a historic ruling affirming that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution. The ruling was a huge blow to Democratic efforts to prosecute Trump before the 2024 presidential election.
Supreme Court justices serve for life during good behavior. Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached before, Samuel Chase, in 1804, for "arbitrary and oppressive conduct of trials," but he was acquitted by the Senate.
