Transcripts For MSNBCW Symone 20240706 : vimarsana.com

Saying in a new interview about his reelection campaign, concerns about his age, and where this Debt Ceiling Standoff goes next. Plus, you have to see this one to believe it, former president Donald Trumps Video Deposition in the Defamation Lawsuit against him. He defends he is Access Hollywood comments on even insults the attorney asking the questions. The impact the testimony could have on the jury as the civil trial comes to an end. We have a lot to talk about, so lets get started. We are going to dig into President Bidens new interview with Msnbc Stephanie Ruhle in just a few moments. But first, is the Supreme Court compromised . More stunning reports about conservative Justice Clarence thomas have Many Americans and democrats calling for greater oversight on the judicial body. We cited think statements that billionaire gop, harlan crow, paid for thomass nephew to attend boarding school. That same day, the Washington Post detailed correspondents in 2012, between former Vice President of the federal society, leonard leo, and then kellyanne conway. That kellyanne conway. Citing documents at msnbc has not independently confirmed, the post says that they instructed conway to pay 25,000. To affirm belonging to Justice Thomass wife, conservative activist, ginni thomas. The thomass have yet to respond to our request for comment. We are told the post that the concern was for the promises privacy. Take a listen. In this case ginni thomas was one of our contractors she worked in the reagan administration. This is working in Public Policy for years and the Pulling Company we did Public Opinion research and Data Analytics before we had no business with the court. These reports broke just days after the Senate Judiciary Committee Held a hearing on tuesday focusing on Supreme Court ethics responds. They have disclosed their gifts, including larrys vacations and private plane rides. Which both thomas and crow said that they would not think require disclosure since crowded not have business before the court. Here is Judiciary Committee chairman, dick durbin. Course of several decades, congress and the Judicial Branch has created a system of ethics, laws, and standards for federal judges. That lay out the clear rules of the road. We are here today because the Supreme Court of the United States does not consider itself found by these rules. Supreme Court Justices are the only judges not bound by the Code Of Conduct. And they impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. At what point does reverence for the courts economy those of into normalizing contacts of interest and improper outside influence. Here to discuss is democratic senator and Judiciary Committee member, sheldon right house of rhode island. It is so good to see you. Good to be with you. Absolutely. Youve been very vocal about the need for the Ethics Reform on the Supreme Court, including potential legislation from congress. What specifically are you interested in seeing getting done to fix what is clearly a problem on the court . It is actually astonishingly simple. The supreme should abide by the exact same code of judicial ethics that all other federal judges do. And should have a process for making sure that it is. At the moment, there is no process of any kind to make sure that they are abiding by the Code Of Ethics. They get to call their own fouls, they get to define the Code Of Ethics and in eccentric ways, and nobody calls them on it. All they have to do is aligned themselves with what the rest of the federal judiciary is already doing and least the ethics Filings Program goes away. It is interesting because you can say there isnt a problem because during the hearings, some of the republicans raised concerns over the conduct of the courts liberal justices. So does this indicate what aboutism or is it really a space for bipartisan reform . It is a huge problem, and anybody in Corporate America who operates under a Code Of Ethics, anybody in local, Municipal County State Government who operates under the Code Of Ethics, and every other federal judge knows the behavior that has been disclosed about the court is completely unacceptable. So there is going to be enormous pressure on the court to fix it and there is an easy path for them to fix it by simply modeling on what the rest of their fellow federal judges already do. So and if they wanted to do something legislatively, you know, it is that simple. And so on that point, the Committee Chair recently said that he wanted to press crow for answers about those gifts to Justice Thomas. How could that impact the work of the Judiciary Committee . The immediate issue here is whether or not Justice Thomas has been complying with the Code Of Ethics for judges. But if you look beyond his compliance, there is a whole apparatus of machinery, if you will, out there that is helping in facilitating these things. So when crow is giving these huge gifts, is he abiding by the law that requires you to report gifts of over 17,000 . When leonard leo is funneling money through to mrs. Thomas, is he complying with the laws that cover the corporations . Is it clear that there is actually work performed for that funding . So there is a great deal of investigations that still need to take place on the outer fringes of the immediate problem of why as Justice Thomas not disclosing these gifts and hospitality. What an interesting argument that we have been hearing is that youve accused groups of lobbying Supreme Court justices and even paying to get cases to the court. Do the reforms you are talking about address that type of influence . That will take a little bit more work. The traditional role of the recusal statute has been to separate people where their friend, or person they are working with actually has a case before the court. What we have seen in the last couple of decades has been a very, very robust billionaire funded effort to control and influence the court. And i think if somebody with a case before the court ought to be the subject of this kind of role than somebody whos actually out to directly influence the court as an institution is an even more important person to get proper disclosure about. Shes been absent from the Judiciary Committee for two months now. The senator said that there has been no slowdown in judicial nominees. Do you agree with that . Well, let me say this. The rule that the republicans have been applying to block Chuck Schumer putting a temporary replacement for her on the Judiciary Committee would also apply if she resigned from the committee completely, not just temporarily. And it would also apply if she resigned from the senate entirely. So if this really comes down to it, are the republicans in the senate going to block our ability to have a majority on the Senate Judiciary committee. And the only way around that without triggering that rule is to have senator return. Which i hope she does soon and healthy. I think to your point, senator, the committee was not able to advance a number of traditional nominees at your last markup on thursday. Was that due to attendance issues or could his presence have changed thin . I think that her attendance could have changed it. And as our statement said, there were others who will move forward in the future when she does return. But do remember that the fundamental problem here is obstruction by the republican senators who will not allow a replacement for her temporarily. It is not clear that they would allow a replacement for her permanently on the committee. Or even allow someone new on to the committee where she has the senate. That problem of republican obstruction persists across all of these different scenarios, except if the senator returns to the work scenario. Before i let you go i want to with President Joe Biden where he talks about the Debt Ceiling Standoff. Msnbc Stephanie Ruhle asked him whether he would use the 14th Amendment to declare the debt limit unconstitutional . Take a listen. There are members of congress that might be okay with us defaulting. They think that it could hurt your politically given that, are you prepared to vote the 14th Amendment and blew through the debt ceiling . Im not there yet. And here is the deal. I think that this is not your fathers republican party. This is a different group. I am prepared to negotiate and detail with the budget. How much should we spend, how much can we cut . So, we do support the president s effort to end the standoff by ending the 14th Amendment . I think whatever it takes to avoid the immense harm by default we had testimony in the Budget Committee just this week that the two options for the republicans proposed, one is the fault, the other is their terrible default bill. Both of them would cost hundreds of thousands, 700,000 versus 1 million american jobs. Both of them would cause a recession in one case, just recession and in the other case severe and immediate recession. That is not a choice at the American Public should have to face. I will support joe biden in facing down the attempts to shove those unnecessary choices down americas throats. Well, the states have gotten a little bit high on those absences there because 43 senators, republican senators including all of this leadership just signed on to a letter saying that they will not support debt ceiling increase without scent spending cuts. What does this look like Going Forward between the white house and Senate Democrats in particular . There is talk of the extension, they are meeting with congressional leaders next week. But what is the strategy here if republicans are saying, we are just not moving off of anything that does not involve spending, and the democrats still want a clean debt bill . Then it becomes a question of who blinks first and the price of default is extraordinary on American Families and american business, and the economy. And i think when you look at the two completely irresponsible choices that the republicans have represented it is not going to be long until their business and industry friends start calling up and saying you have had your fun, knock it off. Lets get back to work. The president s offered to negotiate, and if you disarm the hand grenade, do it, lets get on with this. Rhode island senator, you have been generous with your time. Thank you very much. Joining me now is gabe roth he is the Executive Director of fix the court, a group that advocates for Supreme Court reform on many fronts including establishing a Code Of Ethics, imagine that. Welcome. Still glad to have you here, and so timely. First off for you, why is the Supreme Court exempt from ethical accountability in the first place . I think a lot of people kind of scratch their head because every other federal judge in the system is liable to the rules. There is no good reason for them to be exempt. Theres certain idiosyncrasies of history in terms of when the lower courts Code Of Conduct was written down that it exempted the Supreme Court at the time because the Supreme Court had their own other and related issues that they were dealing with both internally and with congress. It is really just an accident of history that they are exempt of any code. And they could adopt the code tomorrow, and i think they should be fit up and include some serious accountability and complaint measures. There is no good reason that this exemption exists. It is interesting because when you step back, just looking at the ethics part of it, the responsibility to exempt yourself, the organization has noted 18 times a justice has not recused him or herself despite an alleged conflict of interest. It seems like it is a systemic problem. What constitutional remedies are there to fix that . Well if a constitutional the only tools we really have our there are two, sorry, impeachment and removal. Which is probably never going to happen for any of the current, or any justice into history. Because it is so hard to get 67 senators to agree on anything let alone removing a justice in the Supreme Court. However, under the constitution, under the article one power of congress, they have this necessary and proper clause that has broad implications for how they manage the other branches. To just give one example under that clause, that is how the Supreme Court is constituted. It doesnt say how many justices are in the Supreme Court. It doesnt say how much money they get each ear or where they said or even a lot of parameters on what kinds of cases they hear. So i think that constitutionally, under article, one congressional power the court sorry, the congress could reduce, for example, part of the justices known Security Budget until they came to the table and actually adopted unenforceable ethics code. Some of the rules, i should mention this, you just had the white house, behind them they said that Arizona State university, before the senator got flown out to arizona, he had the Mccain Institute had to file a Report Saying that they were flying him out to arizona. The senator how to get approval from the Senate Ethics committee to fly out to arizona. I assume that Arizona State university, that is where it is. None of that existed in judiciary. If you are judge smith and you are flying out to hawaii on anybodys time, federal society, aclu, what have you, there is no process by what you have to get approval internally or externally and you do not have to report about the trip until up to 18 months after the fact where senator whitehouse is going to have to file a report within 30 days of returning from arizona and i think that those are ways in which we could bring the judiciary into compliance with the ethics rules that are followed by lawmakers. Change is coming to the Supreme Court. All right, gabe roth we hope so as well. Gabe roth, we appreciate you, thank you very much. Coming up, it turns out donald trump under oath is a lot like donald trump all the other time. I would not, under any circumstances have any interest in you. 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