The latest skirmish in the campaign by Democrats and their liberal allies to simultaneously demonize and politicize the Supreme Court took place yesterday in a House Judiciary subcommittee. I witnessed some misleading hearings in my 15 years as a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer, but this was one of the worst.

Here’s the backstory. Democrats and their liberal allies will never forgive Republicans for two recent confirmation sins. In 2016, Republicans prevented President Barack Obama from flipping the Court’s 5-4 Republican majority by refusing to consider his nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Four years later, Republicans bumped that margin to 6-3 by confirming Justice Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Never mind that Democrats would have done the same in both instances had the partisan roles been reversed. Those two actions made more elusive the thoroughly politicized, interest-driven Supreme Court that the Left needs to implement much of its political agenda.

Liberals might have, say, tried convincing Americans and the legislators they elect that the liberal agenda is a good thing after all. Or they might have made the case that certain Supreme Court decisions were wrong on the merits. But they didn’t. Instead, liberals figured if they can’t have the politicized Supreme Court they want, they will demonize and undermine the non-politicized Supreme Court they don’t.

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Which brings us to yesterday’s hearing. Consistent with the strategy, it was titled “Building Confidence in the Supreme Court Through Ethics and Recusal Reforms.” The title furthers the spin that confidence must be rebuilt because it has crumbled in the face of unethical behavior by Supreme Court justices or, more precisely, by Republican-appointed justices (Democrat appointees are apparently ethically pure as the driven snow).

The Supreme Court should have an ethics code, the spin goes, because lower-court judges as well as the legislative and executive branches have one. That, however, is an observation, not an argument, and it wrongly implies that the lower courts and Supreme Court are equals and that the three branches are simply interchangeable. Subcommittee chairman Hank Johnson (D., Ga.), for example, has introduced legislation to require the Judicial Conference of the United States to “issue a code of conduct, which applies to each justice and judge of the courts of the United States.”

This hearing was seriously misleading on multiple levels. First, the Constitution created the Supreme Court, while Congress created the lower courts. Simply observing that the lowers courts follow a particular policy, therefore, does not automatically mean that the Supreme Court should do so or that Congress has authority to make it happen.

Neither side seemed to notice when one of the Democrats’ own witnesses made this crucial point during the hearing yesterday. Professor Stephen Gillers, a well-known expert in judicial ethics, testified that “there are serious separation-of-powers questions over whether or not Congress can adopt an ethics code for the Court which is, like Congress, created by the Constitution.” He’s right.

Second, the Judicial Conference is the policy-making body for the lower federal courts. It has no authority over the Supreme Court. Johnson’s bill, therefore, would task the Judicial Conference with doing something it really has no authority to do.

Third, despite all the huffing and posturing, the Johnson bill would not require that the Supreme Court pay any attention to, let alone follow, any code of conduct from whatever source.

Fourth, the separation of powers also means that observing that the legislative and executive branches have their own ethics codes or policies is just that—an observation and nothing more. It is no argument at all, therefore, that the judicial branch in general, or the Supreme Court in particular, should have one.

Fifth, Democrats observed yesterday that general public approval of the Supreme Court reached a low of 40 percent in Gallup polls, but here’s some of what they failed to mention. Since most Americans know next to nothing about our system of government in general, and the judiciary in particular, they give the Supreme Court a thumbs-up-or-down based on whether they like the result of its latest high-profile decision. Or worse, the public’s perception of the Supreme Court might mirror how the mainstream media portray it. If that’s the case, it’s a wonder that its approval rating is not still lower.

The fact that Congress has ethics rules has not helped bolster public confidence in that branch of government. The website pollingreport.com aggregates polls on many issues by more than a dozen major pollsters. Congress failed to reach 40 percent (the Supreme Court’s lowest) approval in any of the 341 listed polls over the last decade. Congress’ average approval of 18 percent over that period is a mere shadow of the Supreme Court’s 47 percent average. It turns out that the House of Representatives is made of glass, and Democrats may not have thought through offering themselves as the standard for ethical virtue.

That much of the hearing was misleading, but it also had a darker side. In addition to demonizing a Supreme Court they do not control, the Democrat/liberal cabal also wants to exploit the controversy over the events of January 6, 2021. To that end, they seized on the news that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, sent text messages regarding the outcome of the 2020 election to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Ah, thought the Left, the chum is in the water, and all we have to do is stir.

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Justice Thomas was a specific target of vitriol at yesterday’s hearing because he had not recused himself from a case titled Trump v. Thompson. The House January 6 Committee requested presidential records from the archivist of the United States regarding the events of that day, and Trump sought to block disclosure by claiming executive privilege over some of them. President Joe Biden, however, declined to do so. The U.S. Court of Appeals (with an all-Democrat panel) refused to issue an injunction, and Trump appealed. The Supreme Court voted 8–1 against blocking the disclosure while its merits were being litigated. A single sentence read: “Justice Thomas would grant the application.” That’s it. Nothing about the merits or the issues, nothing about the election or Trump’s claims about it, nothing about the House investigation. In fact, Thomas did not actually write anything at all, but simply voted to put the disclosure temporarily on hold until the legal issues could be fully resolved.

That became a wild tale about the Thomases plotting and scheming to take over America, or Justice Thomas using his Supreme Court position to promote his wife’s political interests, or a few other flights of fancy. That became accusations that Justice Thomas was unethical, flouting federal law in declining to recuse, and calls for him to resign or be impeached. Make no mistake, once the fictional account of Ginni Thomas’s actions is replaced with the truth (see here, here, and here), nothing required Justice Thomas to recuse himself from that case. The Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm participated in a panel discussion (watch it here) that made this clear. And suggesting that his wife’s views or activities somehow amount to him having committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” justifying impeachment is beyond delusional. It is a lie—a deliberate attempt to smear a justice by capitalizing on the public’s ignorance.

Two recent polls (here and here) found that more than 60 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court decides cases primarily by politics rather than the law. That’s perhaps not surprising, given the steady stream of propaganda from Democrats and their liberal co-conspirators that Supreme Court decisions you don’t like are “political” while the ones you like are impartial.

The Left, therefore, is not responding to a crisis of confidence that already exists, but one of its own making. Claiming to now have the solution is a little like the guy who murdered his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.