WASHINGTON – Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) called out Democrats’ long-standing campaign of intimidation and harassment against Supreme Court Justices, including their push for a new Supreme Court code of ethics, which attempts to make Justices bend to the will of Congress. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here.

“This is just another episode and a long-standing campaign of intimidation and harassment of the Supreme Court and its members.”

“Some of the threats against the judiciary are overt, like the Senate Majority Leader. Others are more subtle, or covert, like the letter that was sent by members of this Judiciary Committee and asked to defund the Supreme Court of $10 million if the Chief Justice did not put into effect a public code of ethics for Justices of the Court.”

 “The Supreme Court and the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government. I can’t help but believe that this long campaign of intimidation and harassment is designed not to treat it as a co-equal branch of government, not to build and maintain public confidence in some of our most important institutions, but rather to make it subservient to the will of Congress.”

“If the Supreme Court last term had decided a bunch of cases the way that our folks on the Democratic side liked, we wouldn’t be having this hearing. We wouldn’t be seeing all these attacks against the Justices, the threats, the intimidation.” 

“Our founders are rolling in their grave when they see how much the United States Senate and some of its leaders – including the Majority Leader – have engaged in this long campaign of intimidation and harassment, and undermined public confidence in one of the most important institutions in our government.”