An attorney for conservative leader and private citizen Leonard Leo revealed that Leo would not be complying with a subpoena issued by the Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee.
In a letter addressed to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, David B. Rivkin, Jr., the attorney for Leo, co-chairman of the Federalist Society, labeled the subpoena as “unlawful and politically motivated.”
The letter to Durbin comes in response to a subpoena issued to Leo by Durbin on Thursday.
“For the reasons previously set forth, Mr. Leo is not complying with the Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee members’ unlawful and politically motivated subpoena,” Rivkin wrote in the letter shared with Breitbart News.
“Today, I received an unlawful and politically motivated subpoena from U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin,” Leo said in a statement shared with Breitbart News. “I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senate Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”
In Oct. 2023, the Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they were issuing a subpoena to Leo, in an effort at “reverse court-packing,” despite being told by Leo’s attorney that they have no constitutional authority to punish private citizens.
Durbin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have been pushing a so-called ethics bill, known as S.359, or the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERT), in an attempt to have conservative Supreme Court justices taken off some cases in order to ensure a more liberal decision is made.
Due to being unable to subpoena Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Durbin and Whitehouse have issued subpoenas and demanded personal records from Leo, due to his longtime friendship with both men.
“We have put forward clear and detailed reasons why the Committee’s inquiry is a form of political retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection component of the Due Process Clause,” Rivkin wrote in an Oct. 19 letter to Durbin. “But, for the most part, the October 5 Letter ignores these points, and, since our last correspondence, the Committee has only expanded the retaliatory campaign it is mounting against Mr. Leo. We also have explained at length why the Supreme Court ethics legislation the Committee has written would violate the separation of powers if enacted, and thus cannot legitimate the Committee’s inquiry.”
In his Oct. 19 letter, Rivkin references attacks from the Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee in which they claim “[d]ark money continues to be a dire threat to American democracy and the integrity of the Supreme Court,” while implying that “Leonard Leo and a gaggle of fawning billionaires” have created a “calculated financial scheme.” In another reference, Rivkin references Whitehouse claiming that Leo belongs to a “filthy web of dark money, right-wing billionaires” and “compliant Supreme Court Justices.”
“These new statements, along with the ones cited in our July 25 Letter and many others, remove any doubt, if there was any to begin with, that the Committee is targeting Mr. Leo out of hostility toward his political views and associations,” Rivkin adds.
At the end of Nov. 2023, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to authorize a subpoena to Leo.