Raskin calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump case

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from President-elect Trump’s hush money criminal case in a statement on Thursday.

Raskin, in making his case, pointed to reporting that Alito and Trump spoke by phone “just hours” before Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court to intervene to halt his criminal sentencing in the New York case involving hush money payments before the 2016 election.

“Justice Alito has made his political leanings and support for the president-elect clear, whether it be his display of flags in apparent support of the January 6th insurrectionists and the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, or his self-proclaimed ideological battle with ‘the Left,’” Raskin wrote in his statement.  

“In our democracy, Americans expect their cases to be heard by impartial judges. This concept of impartiality goes back further than the Court’s own Code of Conduct and underlies even the earliest versions of the federal recusal statute,” he continued.

Raskin noted that Alito confirmed the phone call but said he and Trump did not discuss Trump’s emergency application to halt the sentencing.

Instead, Alito said, they discussed one of Alito’s former law clerks, who asked “me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito said in a statement. 

“I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon,” Alito added. “We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed.”

But Raskin said that taking such a phone call, “especially when paired with his troubling past partisan ideological activity in favor of Trump … makes clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes himself to be above judicial ethics altogether.”

“The mere act of having a personal telephone conversation with the president-elect, while he has active interests in matters currently pending before the court, is plainly sufficient to trigger a situation in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” Raskin said.

“Every federal judge and justice knows he or she must avoid situations such as this. Yet Justice Alito did not,” Raskin continued. “Impartial justice under the Constitution demands that Justice Alito hold himself to the highest ethical standards and avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

“In light of his continuing display of political bias and corresponding abuse of the public trust, Justice Alito has a duty, under the Constitution and federal law, and under the Supreme Court’s own Code of Conduct, to recuse from Donald J. Trump v. New York, et al., if the matter is in fact now referred to the entire Court.”