Sheldon Whitehouse Profile picture
Nov 16, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Let’s take a look at some of the tweaks the Supreme Court made to the lower courts’ code of conduct. Swapping out “judge” for “justice” makes perfect sense, but a few of these edits ought to raise eyebrows.

Here’s the “no ratting out your colleagues” switch: Image
Note here the addition of “knowingly.” Image
Deleted: “that a judge’s conduct contravened this Code, that a judicial employee’s conduct contravened this Code, that a judicial employee’s conduct contravened the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees, or that a lawyer violated applicable rules of professional conduct.” Image
"Shall" is swapped for "should." Image
"Shall" swapped for “should,” and “knowingly” sprinkled in a few more times. Image
And one more excerpt.

Setting aside the main problem of no process/no umpires, even the Code itself is watered down for Their Olympian Highnesses. Image

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More from @SenWhitehouse

Jul 24
Now that the smoke has mostly cleared from Canada’s wildfires, let’s try to clear some of the bogus smoke ABOUT Canada’s wildfires, particularly Trump’s fossil-fuel-friendly denial that climate change has anything to do with it.
Is it “bad forest management”? Canada’s forest is over 900 million acres. The entire continental US is 1.9 billion acres. They’re supposed to “manage” a forest half the size of the whole Lower 48? Grow a brain.
Plus, it’s wilderness. As in wild. As in without roads. For normal people, a vast wilderness still existing on our planet is a good thing. So the notion of “managing” this vast wilderness is too stupid to be real.
Read 9 tweets
Jul 14
Well, I told you to watch the Florida proceedings about whether a “fraud on the court” was committed in the slush fund case, and we now have the federal judge’s decision, and it’s a doozy.

Here’s how she framed the question:

🧵
Whether Trump and the defendants “ignored ethical norms, court rules, and legal authority to manipulate the judicial process …. to gild their efforts to gain unprecedented access to the public fisc with the patina of legitimacy.”
Punchline: they did. “Plaintiffs [Trump et al] improperly employed this lawsuit to justify … access to taxpayer funds and exemption from audits and other investigations … accomplished by leveraging control over Defendants [Blanche et al].”
Read 17 tweets
Jul 1
For most of our American history, Congress set up agencies and commissions to deal with complex and specialized questions. 

We made them expert, independent and often bipartisan. 

Every single one of the fifty states has done the same at some point.

It worked.

🧵
Expertise helped them resist being tricked by industry. Independence (“quasi,” anyway) helped them resist corrupt influence. 

Bipartisanship steadied the ship. Yup, it worked. 

America became a global leader in regulated areas (securities and pharmaceuticals, e.g.).
Six extremists on the billionaire-built Supreme Court just upended that: ninety years of its own precedent, and over 100 years of practice, reliance and success.

They think they know better, than Congress, the people, their own predecessors, and all fifty states.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 25
A new chapter in a sordid saga opened this week with the DC Circuit agreeing to reconsider, en banc, the decision of a 2-1 divided panel regarding contempt of court at senior levels of the MAGA DOJ. 

The full DC Circuit will now weigh in.

🧵
This began with the midnight deportations ordered halted by Judge Boasberg, which continued anyway. In that matter, MAGA DOJ thug Emil Bove reportedly said lawyers should be ready to tell the judge to “f*** off.”
DOJ’s noncompliance caused the judge to open an inquiry into possible contempt of court. In that contempt proceeding, Emil Bove might have had to testify, and his conduct would have been scrutinized.
Read 11 tweets
Jun 12
We have a President who is petrified of the truth getting out about his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Many questions remain.

🧵
nytimes.com/2026/06/10/mag…
Lisa Bloom, who likely knows as much as anyone about the credibility of the accusations against Trump, says “the man who is mentioned probably more than anyone else in the Epstein files should be subpoenaed to testify: Donald Trump.”
thedailybeast.com/lawyer-for-don…
Bloom’s firm represented Jane Doe 4, the woman who accused both Trump and Epstein of assaulting her when she was underage, as well as another Trump accuser in 2016.
Read 12 tweets
Jun 11
When Trump thug lawyer Emil Bove joined the MAGA Justice Department, he quickly became involved in three instances of likely prosecutorial misconduct.

One of them caught the attention of a federal judge as potential contempt of court.

🧵
When the judge scheduled a hearing to look into whether contempt of court had been committed by the MAGA DOJ, two Trump judges on the DC Circuit court suddenly stayed those contempt proceedings. (The dissent is worth reading.)
The “administrative stay,” customarily a very short-term intervention, in this case lasted four months. In those four months, Emil Bove was rammed through the Judiciary Committee and into a Third Circuit judgeship.
Read 9 tweets

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