For the first time in seven years, Congress is asking Supreme Court justices to testify on their budget request, but the top Republican is warning against turning the appearances into a “circus.”

The Court wants an additional $14.6 million for security, and is slated to have a budget of $207 million — an increase of nearly $44 million, according to Punchbowl News. That comes on top of a last-minute $30 million appropriated in January for security, Bloomberg Law reported.

Punchbowl News’ Dave Clark reports that the hearings “used to be routine.” Citing “political tensions,” Clark says these are now “more intense.”

The request for justices to appear is bipartisan. Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), the House Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government panel chairman, is working to schedule appearances for the justices. The Committee’s Ranking Member, Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), has been calling for the justices to testify.

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Rep. DeLauro says that Justice Elena Kagan “told her the justices are open to appearing,” Punchbowl reported, but the Committee’s chairman, Tom Cole (R-OK), wants to ensure the justices are not put on the spot,” Punchbowl reported.

“It would be good for the American public, and I think it’d be good for the two parties, but not if one side or the other turned into some sort of circus,” Cole said.

In 2019, the last time justices testified on the Supreme Court’s budget, Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan appeared, SCOTUSblog reported, noting that “they also fielded questions about cameras in the courtroom, law clerk diversity, partisan attacks on the judiciary, and the #MeToo movement.”

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MS NOW producer Steve Benen says the FBI faces serious questions following the reported raid on the offices of Virginia Democratic Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, because “the hyperpartisan leaders of the Justice Department and the FBI have made it impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Benen finds multiple issues with the execution of what is reportedly a search warrant, including that Fox News was on the scene reporting almost immediately — an issue raised by online commentators as well.

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein quipped: “some pretty remarkable instincts by Fox News to have its London correspondent placed in Portsmouth, Virginia right in time for the FBI raid of Louise Lucas.”

The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol warned of an “awful lot of credulous quoting of ‘federal law enforcement’ sources in the coverage of the Louise Lucas matter. Given the manifest politicization of Trump’s DOJ and FBI, why should media agree to quote any of these sources on background?”

“Not to put too fine a point on this,” Benen continued, “but this is why we don’t politicize federal law enforcement. Because even if the underlying case is legitimate, it’s impossible to avoid the larger context and the degree to which this looks like a retaliatory investigation against a Democrat, launched by a weaponized department known for its retaliatory investigations against Democrats.“

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Benen slams both the FBI and DOJ, saying they “have, over the last 16 months, set their collective credibility on fire, corrupting federal law enforcement to a degree unseen in generations. There have simply been too many abuses, launched too often, against too many Trump targets.”

He notes that Senator Lucas is the face of the Democrats’ successful redistricting of Virginia. Benen calls it “something very different, although possibly related.”

Benen also points to an Associated Press report:

“Though the exact nature of the investigation was unclear, the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump.”

He adds that he has “not seen or heard a word about any of the evidence against Lucas, if such evidence exists,” but allows that it is “entirely possible that investigators have worked in good faith.”

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The Trump Department of Justice will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to allow it to intervene in President Donald Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, which Trump lost and was ordered by a jury to pay $83.3 million. The DOJ wants SCOTUS to allow it to substitute itself for Trump — which effectively would result in the defamation case being dismissed because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation under federal law.

The DOJ, Bloomberg News reports, will claim Trump was acting as a government employee when he denied Carroll’s sexual-assault claims.

“A panel of appeals court judges previously denied the government’s request to invoke the Westfall Act in the case,” Bloomberg notes. “Carroll alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and then defamed her by calling her a liar when she went public with the claim in 2019.”

Critics blasted the DOJ’s decision to go to the Supreme Court.

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“This is outrageous. This has nothing to do with Trump as a public official or president. More corruption in the Justice Department in service of the Cult Leader,” charged The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a prominent political scientist.

“Of course they have. They’re the president’s personal law firm at this point,” said MS NOW legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney.

“Most corrupt president ever,” alleged HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte.

“This is insane—the DOJ is not the president’s personal law firm,” noted Democratic strategist Mike Nellis.

“In case you have any doubt that the DOJ is just Trump’s personal lawyers now,” wrote journalist Franklin Harris.

“There really needs to be a lot more alarm about the level of fascism and corruption unfolding right now,” observed former Obama and Biden official Jesse Lee.

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