six oil company executives about their business practices in the fossil fuel industry tool. watch live wednesday at 10:30 a.m. eastern on on c-span3, e at c-span.org or watch full coverage on c-span now, our free video app. >> there are a lot of places to get political information but only at c-span2 you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if that happens here or here, or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> joining us now gabe roth of

six the court executive director. tell the audience about your organization, what your mission is as you describe it, how you are financially backed. >> guest: six the court is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that advocates for greater accountability and transparency in all the federal courts but primarily the supreme court. we are funded by average usricans who have given funds that thinke we're doing a good job. >> host: do you take a certain point of view when it comes to issues with thee supreme court? is it a partisan take? >> guest: we are nonpartisan. we have always been nonpartisan going on seventi and half years we've been around and we don't believe ethics for transparency in the government has a partisan bent. certain parties, certain individuals from certain parties may think one way or another but we think republicans and democrats, conservatives and liberals everyday to try to

bring the supreme court and the otheran federal courts kicking d screaming into the 21st century. >> host: i would suspect with your title vi the court what's the part that needs to be fixed? >> guest: oh, man, d have have more than 30 minutes? we have six main fixes. one is meeting broadcast we think all supreme court hearing should be live streamed. we want life tenure on the supreme court. we think the supreme court have a code of conduct. we think i'll just as his public appearances should be livest streamed as well. we think their financial disclosures that they have to fill out aey beer should be posd online and we think they should be more forthcoming about what stock sion and when they reduce some cases. >> host: i suppose some of those bullet points would fall into the news or least destroys that been coming up between justice thomas, emails by our text by his wife. >> guest: yes. it's been a busy few weeks. we hope that it spurs both the

court and congress to action. >> host: with a specific story what's your organizations take on what transpired over the last couple of weeks since we found out about this? >> guest: it's a unique story in american history. january 6th and the coup attempt is unique to begin with butth the fact that a supreme court justice his wife was involved in planning the effort to subvertrt our democracy is vy concerning, given how close ginni and clarence we know our, very likely janey was referring to clearance in one of her text messages what you talked about her best friend as clarence. in the factor whole strategy, her and mark meadows and a lot of other election subversive nurse if that's even a word, were trying to reach the supreme court. the goal was to get to the supreme court so that also impugns the integrity of justice thomas for hearing election cases, many reach the supreme court. there's a case in texas brott,

one of pennsylvania and was a case about january 6. clarence thomas was the lone vote against allowing congress to subpoena former president trump's documents related to that investigation by the congressional committee. there are a lot of touch points, if you will, where the work of ginni and clarence has been intersected, and we want to separate out that diagram as much as possiblee and restore e integrity of the court. >> host: i suppose critics would say as far as the diagram illustration, if there are straight lines between the texts and clarence thomas is self decision-making that he makes, would you say those exist or would you say you have to look at those things as you look at them as far as curiosities or at least suspicions butas not necessarily something that ties the two together? >> guest: i just look at the federal law. federal law says all justices

shall disqualify themselves in any case in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. now, maybe some of the viewers other don't think i am being reasonable but i think if you talk to legal ethics scholars, read the editorialrs pages, i'm getting text messages are my friends that are never hear from about what is going on at the supreme court? i think a reasonable person believes that there is some sort of ethical issue that we are seeing. the fact i'm talking to you now about this clearly is a reasonable person thinks there's an ethical issue with clarence thomas due to these ginni thomas texts. i think he should step aside from any january 6th related cases at the supreme court, all 2020 election cases, the fact that there are. still some percolating is crazy but that's the case and i think the supreme court should proactively say okay these are going to be out at the guide rails. it's we were the only court in

america that doesn't have binding code of ethics, so let us take the leap and jointed one else to say this is what an ethics code is, this is what an ethics code should be and we are going to follow it to restore public faith in our institution. >> host: our guest with us until 9:30. if you want ask questions, -- one ofat those people were asked about this kind of things relates to the last question i asked you was senator josh hawley on the senate, walking in the senate corridors, , asked about the relationship between clarence thomas and his wife and the text here i want to play a little bit of his response and didn't teach you to respond to it. >> what's the implication that the justice is signed off on her text messages? >> could be. she was texting mark meadows to overturn the election.

>> i get that but, listen, she's an independent adult woman. it just seems a little strange to me all these calls for her husband to be what, like minding her better? i mean, frankly i think it's misogynistic. ginni thomas, she's out there saying stuff, you better y go gt her under control. responsible for what shearat sa. she is an independent person, you know? she's got her own political views. she's been doing this a long time. she's not on the bench. he's on the bench. i don't know, to me it seems like, wow. >> host: that is senator hawley. what do you think? >> guest: it doesn't hold water. this is a strategy that ginni thomas was a part of that would lead to some out the supreme court itself overturning the election results. if you can't see how the integrity of the justice would

be impugned there, i don't know what to tell you. i think that there is an unfortunate partisan makeup of some of these calls for recusal. there's a bill called the supreme court ethics act and its all democrats and no republicans who have supported it yet which would impose a code of conduct on the supreme court, nevermind that four years ago pretty soon, pretty recently or pretty soon after justice ginsburg mader comments calling trump a faker and a liar the was a bipartisan agreement in the house judiciary committee to impose a code of conduct on the supreme court. just like with so many things in washington these issues it's difficult for a lot of folks including senator hawley to take out, to step away from retreating to one's partisan corners. clarence thomas is under attack, it's got to be some democratic plot. and i'm saying respectfully, senator, this is not some plot.t

obviously ginni is been doing this a long time to quote what he said, but when you are working in circles that will lead directly to your husbands court, the recusal law is fairly clear, that it says if your wife hasys an interest that may becoe before -- sorry, if your spouse has an interest that could come before you as a federal judge it is your duty to not participate in that issue, to not participate in that case so i think that's really where i land and hopefully more republicans land as well. >> host: it was back to earlier you asked the chief or organization as the chief justice for development of a code of ethics for the supreme court. what came of that and what do you envision that would look like? >> guest: so two things. yeah, i was sitting behind justice kagan in 2019 when she told the housens appropriations committee that the chief justice was working on a code of conduct, and i i followed up and

have other folks have followed up with supreme courtrt sources and seems like there hasn't been any work done ont it since 2019 which is sad. i worked with some legal ethics scholars about two dozen of them that before all the text messages came out, this is back on february 3 they sent a letter to the chief justice saying we need a binding code of conduct and believe the justices should write it on themselves. and now we have moved to a point where congress is taking a serious look at this. there is going to be hearings ia the house, hearings and the senate. house and senate members have also written a letter to the supreme court. somehow in 2022, about two dozen house and senate democrats wrote a letter to the chief justice asking for a f binding code of conduct. so things are moving. i mean, i think the focus on the hill right now is, at least from the majorityjo side, is to get

judge jackson confirmed and then come back from easter recess and at some of these hearings. but these issues are not going away. we know more things are going to come out as a january 6th committee gets more documents. so i would expect a constant drumbeat and maybe even a subpoena for ginni thomas in the coming weeks. >> host: again gabe roth the fixed the court joining us for this discussion. mary starts us off in cleveland, ohio, democrat's line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. and hope gabe will continue to do what he's doing, start at the top which is the supreme court and maybe, down, come on down to all of government and get it all straightened out because all of it is a mess as far as i'm concerned. >> host: is at your comment or do you have a question? >> caller: no. i mean yes. husband and wife, no. i mean, the t things that they e doing is ridiculous. it really is.

and then he's going to dissent on whether or not they can get the january 6th thing? no. because he knows his wife was involved. comeno on. you heard of pillow talk? >> host: okay. that's mary in ohio. mr. roth. >> guest: again it just an unprecedented case. .. w, jane roberts was involved in the law and chief justice roberts's wife, and they were political. we knew marty was his wife accomplished journalist was in the gallery , went up to chief justice roberts wife during one of the impeachments that chief justice roberts presided over and she asked ms. roberts, how do you think things are going and what did jenny

roberts say back? there's a way to be ethical and he gave up his law practice when justice ginsburg became justice ginsburg . i think there are ways to be above suspicion and the thomases arts doing that >> host: tony asks this question, would enforce sanctions of violations against so-called code of ethics when the court is subordinate to the other branches? that's a great question, that's the $64 billion question is how would you enforce it? i have two answers. one is there's always the option of impeachment and removal. i don't think we been that far or close to that far in this case but there is, that's always an enforcement mechanism that the congress has in order to impeach, keep

justices and judges in line. there's a dozenfederal justices impeach in history, only one supreme court justice removed and that was several years ago but that's always an option .maybe not in this case that it has been in cases. things could always get worse. the second thing i'd say is there's value in having a vote. just whether it's been to the court of public opinion or even your pressure saying chief justice roberts or justice breyer saying look justice thomas, we're supposed to uphold this post, abide by its pictures and ul you're not doing that and imputing the integrity of the court. the court is at its lowest popular approval yet so it behooves the justices to make steps to improve that trust and that binding code of conduct would be one step. a10 point plan in the last e week . saying how we can fix this scandal and the code of conduct was only one of them. we want stronger recusal standards, we want it to be

easier to file a motion to recuse. we want the judicial conference to explain what political activities judges and justices can't participate in so there's a lot that can be done. the code of conduct sometimes is just an easy shorthand to saying there are a lot of ethical shortcomings and we definitely need that but it's really step one in a more comprehensive overhaul of how we look at the ethics and transparency of our highest court. >> this may not surprise you but we did a survey on the supreme court and one of the questions we rtasked about it is that the code of ethics for the court is needed 72 percent of those responding said yes, 15percent no, working percent not sure . >> that's consistent with what our organization has pulled often times using the same holster. we've gottensomewhere usually in the 70 to 85 percent range and its across-the-board . it's the same number of at

least an hour pulling we been tracking this for even before the court was createdback when it was called a coalition for court transparency in 2013 . democrats, independents and republicans they the same thing. it's not like any percent of democrats and 20 percent of republicans, it's consistent across the board across partisan lines i think it's important to say maybe in washington the josh hawley's of the world aren't onboard but in general when you explain to folks that the supreme court is theonly court in the country that does not have a binding code of ethics , it's really just inexcusable and doesn't really touch any of the partisan touch points that it does in washington. >> there's a lot more to that court survey we did if you want to check it out onour website . we have a special section if you want to read the responses. let's hear from john in washington, washington state republican line . >> caller: how are you this morning? i was just wondering what

gives you the right to n'even comment on somebody's free speech. you don't do anything. but that amounts to anything. that's all i got to say thank you for your assessment of my work. i think there is value to having nonpartisan watchdogs in any form of government . there's some for the president, when the president issues, says things which he can say via his right to free speech. lots of folks are just fine when members of congress go out and say certain things. folks have the right to respond. that's also part of their free speech and my free speech and i think i have a track record of being balanced and when justice so the mayor i'm just as critical of justice on the mayor when she flies first-class to rhode island to give a talk and doesn't record it on her financial disclosures as i am to justice scalia when he flies on a private plane on texas

and doesn't reported on his disclosures. so i think there are naturally organizations and where alien smaller organization and it's not like we're taking any tax money or anything. i think there are plenty of like-minded. the country that don't really want to be sure that we have this highest court in the land that by the way 20 years ago wasn't having such an impact on our lives. just in the last 20 years we had the supreme court's decide to presidential elections. they make all sorts of decisions of life or death. every abortion law, any major thing that's happened in the united states the final word comes from the supreme court. it used to be the court would say part of the law or all of unconstitutional and congress would go back and rewrite the law. the president would redo the executive order but the executive branch and congress itself are so gridlocked and

so dysfunctional the supreme court has an nature of more the vacuum washington abhors a power vacuum so the supreme court is going to be taking that power and if that's the case we want nonpartisan watchdogs insuring the nine justices are making those life-and-death decisions are above court board ethically and that's what we see our jobs to be you talk about the recusalstandards, you talked about the fact, what's the standard , what you change about that standard? >> right now it says any time for justice impartiality is impugned they have to step aside and it says if they have a financial stake in a case or if there self spouse has a financial stake or if they know facts of the case or if they worked on the case in a cprevious job, they have to recuse. i don't think that's good enough. i think that the federal judiciary and the federal judges to serve for life are sort of taking advantage a lot of times of that position and the wax enforcement and punishment standards and are

being flown around the country by political donors and are getting lavish gifts that are able to do all of that and sometimes they reported on their annual disclosures and sometimes they don't because of this personal hospitality exemption so i want to say anytime that just to use a so recent example , judge jackson is a member of the harvard board of overseers and there's a harvard judge jackson assuming she becomes justice jackson she be on the court when a harvard affirmative action case raises the supreme court. she's already said she's going to recuse because of b her time on the board but to me it's almost less about the fact that she was on some random harvard board that she needs to recuse and the fact that over the course of the last decade, judge jackson has been flown to boston and put in anice hotel and given nice meals like harvard university . something like 40 or 50 times similarly, justice scalia when she passed away in texas

he was flown out there by this guy john who had previously had a case before the supreme court so i don't know if that was the only time justice scalia had been been flown out to john's hunting ranch but there should be a little bit of a cooling-off period. if you're getting a free flight by whoever finds themselves before the supreme court there needs to be a little bit of a break between when you're allowed to hear' that case , similar to how he wasn't perfect when he did this but similar to how the judge, justice thurgood marshall refused from ncaa, ncaa he cases, naacp cases for the first 15 years he was on the court because he used to work on the naacp. there's been a few and double acp cases over the years that he did serve on but generally he recused from both cases.

there has to be some sort of standard that says you've given me this benefit or i used the work for you. let therebe a cooling-off period, much like there's supposed to be for congress . if you're in congress you're not supposed to lobby for a year. nobody really does that but i'd like to see a cooling-off period that stretches to the supreme court and the times in which they recuse. >> let's go to our independent line, north carolina . this is marcy, good morning. >> you started off with saying your nonpartisan but then you turn around and january 6, the coup attempt. that's not been proven. it's not a coup attempt. i'd like to know what cases should rpg have recused herself from. what cases should justice sotomayor have recused herself from? >> guest: justice sotomayor has a very lucrative

publishing contract with the merged so many times. i think it's now penguin random house, the time the case came to the supreme court it was called random house and that's where the contract was that there was a petition brought against random house in 2012 or 2013 and she did not refuse from that case. and to me it was clear that justice ginsburg had an animus towards president trump so i think that there's an argument to be made at any case in which president trump was a named litigant, a named party justice ginsburg should recuse herself . because some of those cases, most of those are official capacity cases like as president versus trump personally i have to double check to see which specific cases because when you're the president your suitable obviously andthere are a lot of cases that reach the port

. but it's not republican or democrat or conservative or liberal to call january 6 a coup attempt. somebody won the election, that somebody was president biden and it's unfortunate people are still not over it. >> when it comes to the femalejenny thomas the court has filed a freedom of information act for those . >> we want to see who else she was emailing . we do this for a lot of different instances, so just to use the soda mayor example. she gave a speech at the university of rhode e island which is a public university and she didn't report it. she didn't report her travel on her financial disclosure report we sent a freedom of information request to the state of rhode island did you all pay for justice sotomayor's trip to a hotel and it turned out they did . that's something you need to put on your financial disclosure report so she's working on fixing it . similarly for all the supreme courtnominees, both

republican and democrat . they filed a freedom of information report for kavanaugh font, for dorset. chief baron was on the obama shortlist, we're still waiting on freedom of information requests for her but jenny thomas, not only is likely that she sent text messages and emails to the white house but it's possible she sent text messages and emails to doj officials and we know that the department of justice officials jeff clark is the guys name. specifically was also involved in this attempt to overturn the election. so we want to see how deep that conspiracy ran and if she sees her husband on that. i think it's just due diligence to see to what extent jenny was in touch with members of the trump administration and it's just unprecedented attempt to overturn the election. >> boston massachusetts republican line go ahead.

>> i have a question, just saying that justice thomas should recuse himself from the january 6 thing. so with that mean that the new justice that may be confirmed should recuse himself from anything that happens to donald trump because of some of her writings that shewrote about donald trump . i i think that she should also recuse iherself from everything that has to do with donald trump. >> i'm not familiar with those writings. i think that you potentially are referring to the don began case that she wrote as a, that opinion that she wrote as a judge and yes, if that opinion were appealed i think that the timing is off

but let's presume that case were appealed to the supreme court. there is a rule if you rule on the case as a lower court judge and then you become a justice you have to recuse from the case if it shows up on your docket as on the supreme court docket and that happens all the time. that still happens, justice alito hasn't been a lower court judge in 15, 16years and he's still refusing from cases . that were wending their way through the third circuit when he was a lower court judge. it still refusing that from the supreme court cases 16 years later somehow showing up. similarly john roberts still does that. all of them will do that. it was ,for such and cavanaugh and derek there the newer justices so of course it's more likely that cases they heard on lower courts will be headed up but justice kennedy recused from the case three years ago that he participated in and 1985 so yes, to the extent that anything that judge jackson wrote about trump as a federal judge in that

official capacity she is required to recuse should that same case be headed to scotus and i'm confident she will becauseeveryone else on this court has and they don't have exact same thing . >> you talked about the elements of what a code of ethics would look like, what else would you like to see as part of that? >> if you look at the code of conduct for us justice which applies to every federal judge in our systembesides the supreme court , it's fairly good. they're in terms of what it would cover for the supreme court justice it would say currently says judges should uphold the integrity of the office. should maintain impartiality, treat alllitigants and parties and lawyers with respect . these are good ethical canons to follow. there's a few things i would add is that recently a lot of justices have been speaking at events. there was one briar spoke at texas. there was one dorset spoke at in florida. that were pretty expensive.

i think the briar one was like 500 ahead and justices shouldn't be lending their names or anything like that to fundraisers. i would like to see it a little bit more clear that not only are we referring as justices from political activity but were also refraining from partisan activity. if to use the briar example i think it was at the university of texas at arlington. there's no way that it cost 500 bucks for the meal. number two, it's like three years from now you see arlington wants to be like a, we're a great university, we got justice breyer to come and come to this event that's fine but it should be $500 ahead to listen to a talk from the supreme court justice. the board such as thomas once were both under 200 bucks so those are less likely to be fundraising events, we all know how expensive anyone who's recently planned the wedding knows how expensive party planning can be but you know, i think overall just

being a little bit careful about not letting the it proceed to the office of fundraising is something i'd answer as a code but overall i think the headline here is that the current code of conduct for us judges is very well written and it would take a lot to move that's from the lower court. >> this is from roseann in wisconsin, the line. >> first of all i'd like to say thank you mister ross for what you do because i feel that your job is relevant, especially in this political climate and this day and age. i think that's what's going on here is a complete sour grapes that mister trump lost the election and now they're going to go after the integrity of how we vote. never in the history of our country have i seen anything like this to spin things like mail in an absentee voting are different and you can go

back to when president bush won against al gore. that went all the way to the supreme court when rehnquist was in charge.they threw it back down to florida and it ended up being katherine harris's decision to shut the whole thing down.so we never got to know the exact total vote in thatsituation . but you can't go after the integrity of the voters and the voting system that we have just because you lost the election. and your sour grapes about it. >> thank you. mister roth anything from that? >> guest: i'm good. >> host: go to dean then, finish it off oklahoma republican line. >> caller: from what i understand you wanted him to recuse himself or something his wife says. >> that's not why. but i'llexplain. continue your question .

>> i thought it was about a tax that his wife made and that's why you wanted him to recuse himself. so my point was that any married couple out there knows that just because your wife or your husband has a point of view doesn't mean that that's necessarily your point of view. and also, it's a matter of freedom of speech. you go out she cansay whatever she wants and express her opinions . and why should that affect how he makes a judgment, he's been fevery, he's been a great justice. he doesn't make his decisions based on what someone else says. he makes it based on the facts that are presented and the constitution. >> host: we will have to leave it there, sorry mister ross, go ahead. >> guest: there's three reasons why he should recuse. one is that there's a

reasonable belief that jenny and clarence spoke about what was going on as this to effort was unraveling. the reference to her best friend in the text message is not good, does not bode well. that's probably justice thomas. the second reason is the recusal and we didn't talk about this but no recusal statutes, there's one last section that says if you're spouse interests can be implicated in the case, what does interest me? it means financial interest. jenny was being paid by the coupdoers this implicates this part of the law but she was clearly interested in getting this election overturned and it would have been in her interest generally and in her financial interest.

if you all have these interests that are being implicated, you as a justice or your spouse's interests are implicated, per federal law you're required to recuse . that's the second thing and the third thing is we're talking about reasonable people here.or you've been i've been doing this for years and i can't think of a single supreme court ethics scandal that has been this big in my time doing this . maybe not even sense a fortus was taking side payments in the 60s so this has broken through and a reasonable person would believe for all the reasons we discussed, the best friend, the interest, the fact that isa said earlier this attempt would reach the supreme court where a spouse would be asked to rule. for all these reasons are reasonable person could think the justices integrity was impugned. that he was not partial, that he has a bias in this case and that's what the standard is.

maybe it's not the best t standard, i'll grant you it's a little vague but the current standard in federal law as has been for 50 years is the justice shall disqualify, his impartiality as reasonably question and i think most of us here try and be reasonable people and we believe that and again, we're not seeing recuse from all 5000petitions that come before the supreme court . because justice thomas is compromised, i've seen editorials like that, that's ridiculous . to me it's very finite, discreet and honest cases, bow out and let the other eight justices say their case . >> a website for the court.com, gabe roth as their executive director. thanks for your time. >>. >> keep up with live

proceedings and floor screenings, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics. all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and live billing information for tv networks and c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play . download for free today. your proceed to washington. anytime, anywhere. >> with increased gas prices house energy and commerce committee your testimony from six well company executives about their business practices and the possible fuel industry's role. watch live wednesday at 10:30 a.m. eastern. online at c-span.org or watchful coverage on a c-span now. >> c-span has a coverage of

the us response to russia's invasion of ukraine bringing the latest from the president and other white house officials, the pentagon and state department as well as congress. we also have international perspectives from the united nations and statements from foreign leaders on the c-span network. the free mobile and c-span.org/ukraine, our web resource page where you can watch the latest videos on demand and follow tweets from journalists on the ground . go to c-span.org/ukraine. >> our first guest is representative glenn broth from the republic of wisconsin, a member of the oversight and reform subcommittee . he's a writing member of the subcommittee on national security. also a member of the budget committee. thank you for joining us . >> b on your show as always. >> one of those things going on as a recent date was the president's decision on may 23 two and title 42