conservative viewpoints an telling lies to the american public tonight, former fox anchor, gretchen carlson, on what need to happen for change at he former network plus, another shady real estat deal at the supreme court, a the chief justice dismisse calls for oversight. then, riveting testimony fro the woman accusing donald trum of rape. but we learn from each - date on the witness stand. and congresswoman katie porter on the maga vote to slas funding for medicaid, veterans childcare, and more. all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i m chris hayes. tonight, the supreme court o the united states is under a cloud of scandal it all started earlier thi month with republican feel tha conservative justice, clarence thomas, was acceptin undisclosed gifts from right wing billionaire thomas accepted gifts includin luxury vacations worth literally hundreds of thousand of dollars, and this really, truly special painting from man named harlan crow, who has well, inter
senator, perhaps i took more offense to this letter than should ve. maybe i got too worked up abou it how did you receive the letter from the chief justice replyin to your committee s invitation to testify well, two things stood out. the first was he felt oblige to attach a document to hi letter it was a five page, i would say, memorandum about judicia ethics that all nine justice and apparently had signed, a if that was going to solve the problem. and what was noticeable abou that, one, clearly they ar feeling some real pressure i they feel they have to put a addendum like that on to the letter, to tell the world, w take ethics seriously, and the unbelievably, the actual gap i their ethics is not that there is no ethics code. there is a judicial code o ethics not like there aren t statutes
there are many people who thin this is a bad situation, there have been calls on you colleague, senator feinstein to resign. to the extent that she i unable to carry out her duties do you understand why people are making that call is that affecting th committee s work well, i think it s slowin down some judges, where ther is a pure partisan vote, because you have to use device to discharge the judges vote from the senate, from the committee up to the senate it takes extra time. and then on other investigativ questions, whether or not we have enough votes for subpoena is a different question. that, to, and up in the senate if it s challenge, so it would be, i think, better and things would run more smoothly, and will run more smoothly, one da and returns. but in the meantime, we ar pushing forward. we are continuing to do th investigation into the court s
well, first of all, think about why it is the court need to be independent. a court needs to be independen so that it can be impartial. the real value here is impartial justice. and independents is a mechanis of shoring impartiality. now, they are using thei independence as a device t protect obvious partiality, to exempt themselves from ethics, rules, and statutes. so, there s kind of contortionist quality to tha argument let me ask you about th state of your committee. this was a voluntary invitation, but right now, one of th democratic senators on you committee, diane feinstein o california, has taken ill. she is unable to be in washington for committee votes it means the democrats don t have an outright majority on the judiciary committee.