WASHINGTON – Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) played a clip of Justice Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination hearings in 1991 and called out Democrats’ long history of relentless attacks and harassment against Supreme Court justices. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here.

“That was one of the searing memories that I’ve had about Supreme Court confirmation hearings and, I think, provides an important context for today’s hearing.”

“Members of the United States Supreme Court, when they’d been nominated for the job, have been subjected to relentless campaigns of harassment and intimidation, which as Justice Alito recently pointed out can lead not just to intemperate attacks – like the Senate Majority Leader made against Judge Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh by name back in 2020 – it can lead unstable individuals to decide that they are going to conduct an assassination of these members of the Supreme Court.”

“Things have gotten terribly out of hand.”

“I look back at the rules of the United States Senate, our ethics rules by which we are governed, and they are rules that are set by the Senate itself. How do you think the Senate would react if the United States Supreme Court said, ‘We don’t like the ethics code of Senators or members of the House of Representatives.’ Would the same principle of separation of powers and co-equal branches of government apply in that circumstance?”