Jim Jordan demands answers on why more Supreme Court protesters weren’t arrested
Ryan King
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) is demanding answers about alleged directives given to U.S. Marshals Service ahead of protests at the Supreme Court justices’ residences last year.
Jordan cited training material that was disseminated to the Marshals encouraging them to refrain from detaining protesters and voiced his astonishment over the lack of arrests when demonstrators converged on the justices’ homes last year over the leaked decision regarding Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
181 ARRESTED AT ABORTION PROTEST NEAR SUPREME COURT
“Among other things, the training slides instructed Marshals ‘to avoid, unless absolutely necessary, any criminal enforcement,’ stated that ‘making arrests and initiating prosecutions is not the goal,’ that arrests of protestors should be a ‘last resort” and would be ‘counter-productive,'” Jordan wrote in a letter to the marshals obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The chairman is demanding communication records between the marshals, various law enforcement groups such as the Department of Justice, and the Executive Office of the President from that time. His letter was dated Wednesday.
Jordan stipulated 5 p.m. on May 17 as the deadline to meet his request.
The request is part of Jordan’s broader inquiry into the alleged “politicization of federal law-enforcement agencies.” He emphasized that federal law restricts activities “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge” by those “with the intent of interfering” in judicial proceedings.
Jordan is also the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing back in March, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the marshals had the “full authority” to detain unruly demonstrators. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) pressed him over the training slides, which the Republicans have released to the public.
Garland noted that he didn’t see those slides, but he emphasized they didn’t prove the marshals were “any way precluded from bringing other kinds of arrests.”
“The training materials provided to the U.S. Marshals strongly suggest that the Biden Administration is continuing to weaponize federal law enforcement agencies for partisan purposes,” the House Judiciary Committee’s chairman said.
At the time, the country was on edge over the high court’s impending decision on abortion. One example Jordan cited was a man who allegedly brought a handgun and other materials near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Left unmentioned in the letter was the fact that the person was later arrested.
The Washington Examiner contacted the marshals for comment.
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Jordan’s letter comes in the wake of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing Tuesday on ethics in the Supreme Court. That hearing came in response to reports of Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch failing to disclose gifts or personal financial activities.
“Senate Democrats have launched an offensive against conservative justices under the pretext of judicial ethics reform. All of these tactics are meant to intimidate conservative justices and ultimately undermine judicial independence,” the Ohio Republican said of the hearing.