UPDATE! In a House hearing yesterday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to formally request that the Supreme Court require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves from cases involving January 6 and Trump, as Rep. Jamie Raskin recently suggested in a New York Times op-ed.

A Constitutional expert, Raskin writes that the Constitution’s Due Process clause can be invoked to require that Alito and Thomas recuse themselves after their spouses hung insurrectionist flags and collaborated with insurrectionists.

Garland refused to answer in the hearing, but this move can only happen if he and the Department of Justice initiate the process. That’s why thousands of PCCC members have been taking these actions:

1. SIGN THE PETITION: Tell Merrick Garland to formally insist that the 7 other Supreme Court justices require that Justices Alito and Thomas recuse themselves from cases involving January 6 and Trump.
2. Call the Department of Justice and leave a voicemail for Merrick Garland now. (We’ll give you the phone number and a script.)
3. Chip in $3 to Jamie Raskin’s re-election campaign for continuing his ongoing heroic work to save our democracy.

Jamie explains this way:

"The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455. The Constitution has come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions striking down rulings by stubborn judges in lower courts whose political impartiality has been reasonably questioned but who threw caution to the wind to hear a case anyway...

"The recusal statute, if triggered, is not a friendly suggestion. It is Congress’s command, binding on the justices, just as the due process clause is. The Supreme Court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices. Ignoring it would trespass on the constitutional separation of powers because the justices would essentially be saying that they have the power to override a congressional command.

"When the arguments are properly before the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor will have both a constitutional obligation and a statutory obligation to enforce recusal standards."

Raskin notes that:

"At his Senate confirmation hearing, Chief Justice Roberts assured America that 'Judges are like umpires.'"

"But professional baseball would never allow an umpire to continue to officiate the World Series after learning that the pennant of one of the two teams competing was flying in the front yard of the umpire’s home. Nor would an umpire be allowed to call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire’s wife tried to get the official score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team. If judges are like umpires, then they should be treated like umpires, not team owners, team fans or players."

Take urgent action today. The Supreme Court could rule on giving Trump immunity for Jan. 6 at any moment.

1. SIGN THE PETITION telling Merrick Garland to insist that the other 7 justices require Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves from cases involving January 6 and Trump.
2. Call the Department of Justice.
3. Chip in $3 to Jamie Raskin’s re-election campaign. We need this brilliant constitutional scholar in Congress fighting to save our democracy!

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

-- The PCCC Team

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