Two senators are requesting the travel records of Supreme Court justices as part of an ethics review considering disclosure transparency for gifts, travel, and financial gains of senior government officials.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, and John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, sent the request to the Justice Department on Friday. Both lawmakers are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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“To help us assess how disclosures by members of the court accord with the judicial branch’s disclosure standards, and to improve the consistency of disclosure standards across the three branches, we write to request information about Marshals Service travel accompanying members of the court over the last ten years,” the senators wrote.
Congress is reexamining the financial disclosure standards for the receipts of expenses for senior officials, which the senators say should be extended to include members of the high court.
The senators said there are requirements for officials in the executive and legislative branches to disclose gifts, travel, and other emoluments that don’t extend to the judicial branch.
“The Judicial Branch’s comparable guidelines are significantly less stringent,” the members said. “Even those requirements, however, do not formally apply to the justices of the Supreme Court. As a result, the justices of our highest court are subject to the lowest standards of transparency of any senior officials across the federal government.”
Among the requested information includes all documents from Jan. 1, 2011, to the present day regarding trips taken outside of Washington, D.C., where the United States Marshals Service accompanied justices. The information they seek includes the names of the justices who traveled, the dates of each trip, and the airport locations.
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The lawmakers are also requesting the total cost of the USMS services for accompanying the justices in their travels.
A deadline for the requests was not listed in the letter.
