Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sarcastically thanked South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace after she read out a list of organisations that reached out about a hearing of the House Oversight Committee regarding “Third-Party Litigation Funding”.
“One last note of business. I’d like to say thank you to the many groups and organisations that reached out in anticipation of this hearing today with letters outlining their stances on the issue,” Ms Mace said. “I’d like to enter into the record letters to the committee from the American Tort Reform Association, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the Institute for Legal Reform, the International Legal Finance Association, National Association of Manufacturers, Jerry Theodorou at the R Street Institute.”
She then gave the floor to the New York Democrat.
“I thank you for the listing of all the special interests involved ... in this hearing,” she told Ms Mace.
“When I first heard that the Republican side was going to be calling a hearing on third-party influence in our courts, I was so excited because I thought, ‘Finally we are going to address the biggest scandal in American democracy that we are currently having right now, which is the extraordinary corruption and wholesale purchase of members of the Supreme Court’,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I also find it amusing that we just heard from the Republican side, ‘Why do we want to talk about this?’”
“Because women have lost the right to choose, because indigenous people have lost rights, because minorities have lost rights, because working people across the country have lost rights due to this level of corruption,” she added. “And if we’re going to talk about third parties, let’s talk about the Federalist Society, which not only had deep ties to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni, but has also helped choose judicial nominees for the Republican Party and directed multimillion-dollar media campaigns to confirm them, including a multimillion-dollar media campaign for Justice Alito, who seems to like using The Wall Street Journal as his personal press secretary.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez retweeted a video of the moment on Wednesday night, writing: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
“Mace is numbingly transparent without even the slightest trace of intentionality,” one account holder said.
“Lol straight up. Telling on themselves,” former New York State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou said.
“’This hearing, sponsored by...’ Why don’t Republicans get patches on their clothing, like they do in soccer, of all the ‘sponsors’ to this hearing?” one platform user said.
“Mace never met a new GOP bandwagon she wouldn’t immediately jump on,” Richard Donelan added.
“At least TouTubers have the courtesy to tell you when it’s an ad read,” another account holder said.
