Supreme Court Corruption (Formerly Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire) (2 Viewers)

[cuddlemonkey]

It seems that a billionaire GOP donor has spent a small fortune on vacations for Ginni and Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas Secretly Accepted Luxury Trips From Major GOP Donor

Island-hopping on a superyacht. Private jet rides around the world. The undisclosed gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the Supreme Court. “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” says one former judge.

www.propublica.org

 

[Taurus]

The Senate is attempting to subpoena the people who are corrupting the SC. GOP doesn’t want them to.

You know, we decry this when the GOP does it, but it's exactly the kind of "fight for you" that Democrats lack.

Like when Republicans walked out in Oregon and the entire legislature was paralyzed, but when Dems did the same thing in..Missouri, was it? The Republicans just went "Good! Don't come back" and passed laws anyway.

 

[MT15]

You know, we decry this when the GOP does it, but it's exactly the kind of "fight for you" that Democrats lack.

Like when Republicans walked out in Oregon and the entire legislature was paralyzed, but when Dems did the same thing in..Missouri, was it? The Republicans just went "Good! Don't come back" and passed laws anyway.

well, take heart, because the Dems on the committee went ahead and issued the subpoenas. Of course Crow has already said he won’t comply, so

 

[Optimus Prime]

In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.

Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.

At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches.

Thomas’ efforts were described in records from the time obtained by ProPublica, including a confidential memo to Chief Justice William Rehnquist from a top judiciary official seeking guidance on what he termed a “delicate matter.”

The documents, as well as interviews, offer insight into how Thomas was talking about his finances in a crucial period in his tenure, just as he was developing his relationships with a set of wealthy benefactors.

Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small — private school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a coterie of ultrarich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and superyacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow.

Precisely what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts remains an open question. There’s no evidence the justice ever raised the specter of resigning with Crow or his other wealthy benefactors.…….

Thomas’ comments in 2000 were to Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a vocal conservative who’d been in Congress for 11 years and occasionally socialized with the justice. They set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill. “His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

There’s an often-criticized dynamic surrounding most important jobs in the federal government: The posts pay far less than comparable jobs in the private sector, but officials can cash in once they leave. Ex-regulators sell advice to the regulated. Generals retire to join military contractors. Former senators get jobs lobbying Congress.

But there is no revolving-door payday waiting on the other side of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Justices generally stay on the bench past their 80th birthday, if not until death. In 2000, justices were paid more than cabinet secretaries or members of Congress, and far more than the average American.

Still, judges’ salaries were not keeping pace with inflation, a source of ire throughout the federal judiciary. Young associates at top law firms made more than Supreme Court justices, while partners at the firms could earn millions a year.…….

In early January 2000, Thomas took the trip to the Georgia beach resort. Thomas was there to deliver a keynote speech at Awakening, a “conservative thought weekend” featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials.

(A founder and organizer of the annual event, Ernest Taylor, told ProPublica that Thomas’ trip was paid for by the organization. Thomas reported 11 free trips that year on his annual financial disclosure, mostly to colleges and universities, but did not disclose attending the conservative conference, an apparent violation of federal disclosure law.)

On a commercial flight back from Awakening, Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Stearns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight promising “to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court.”

“As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted,” Stearns wrote. “We must have the proper incentives here, too.”

Stearns’ office soon sought help from a lobbying firm working on the issue, and he delivered a speech on the House floor about judges’ salaries getting eroded by inflation. Thomas’ warning about resignations was relayed at a meeting of the heads of several judges’ associations. L. Ralph Mecham, then the judiciary’s top administrative official, fired off the memo describing Thomas’ complaints to Rehnquist, his boss.

“I understand that Justice Thomas clearly told him that in his view departures would occur within the next year or so,” Mecham wrote of Thomas’ conversation with Stearns. Mecham worried that “from a tactical point of view,” congressional Democrats might oppose a raise if they sensed “the apparent purpose is to keep Justices [Antonin] Scalia and Thomas on the Court.” (Scalia had nine children and was also one of the less wealthy justices. Scalia, Mecham and Rehnquist have since died.)……….

Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign

Interviews and newly unearthed documents reveal that Thomas, facing financial strain, privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees.

www.propublica.org

 

[MT15]

That report is certainly damning. He should be impeached.

 

[Optimus Prime]

for what it's worth and we'll see if there is anything to this

At first blush it sounds like tit for tat

You impeach our president? we'll impeach your president!

You accuse our SCOTUS justice of corruption? We'll accuse your justice!
===============================================

A conservative think tank has filed an ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Center for Renewing America’s complaint, filed Monday and addressed to the Judicial Conference Secretary, accuses the justice of appearing to “have willfully failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade.”

It also states, “There is reason to believe that Justice Jackson may have failed to report the private funding sources of her massive investiture celebration at the Library of Congress in her most recent financial disclosure.”

“Given the need to ensure the equal application of the law and the tendency of these violations to create serious recusal issues and conflicts of interest, the Conference’s prompt attention is of paramount public importance,” the complaint reads.

The Center for Renewing America said Brown should be referred to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding its complaint on disclosure of her husband’s income.

The Hill has reached out to the Supreme Court for comment on the matter.

The center was founded in 2021 by Russ Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under former President Trump.

The complaint comes shortly after a letter by some House Democrats in which they asked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a case about whether former President Trump is immune from prosecution over charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election............

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

Could Clarence Thomas possibly be “the best and most incorruptible Supreme Court justice in U.S. history”?​

Let’s just say I have my doubts while others are sure of it.​

A piece recently published in the estimable Volokh Conspiracy blog calls Thomas “the very best justice out of 116 to have ever served on the U.S. Supreme Court” because he has “a clear body of rules, which he consistently follows in case after case.” Although “he almost never follows precedent, [Thomas] always follows the original public meaning of the text of the Constitution.”​

And that, the piece declares, makes Thomas both “quite simply a genius” and “incorruptible in every sense of that word.” Although inflexibility “in case after case” is not usually considered a desirable quality among judges, I do not question the assessment of Thomas’s exceptional intellect.​

The justice’s ethics, on the other hand, are quite another story.​

Regarding Thomas’s decades-long non-disclosure of lavish gifts, forgiven loans, favorable financial arrangements and luxury vacations, well, it argues that wasn’t the justice’s fault. Congress drove him to it.​

“Justice Thomas’s salary is $285,400 per year,” it explains. “If Congress had adjusted for inflation . . . Justice Thomas would be being paid $500,000 a year, and he would not need to rely as much as he has on gifts from wealthy friends.”​

In other words, it isn’t corruption if you could really use the money. Had Congress only ponied up an additional $215,000 every year, Thomas could have chartered his own private jet flights and Indonesian cruise.​

The piece also says that resentful Democrats, unhappy since the end of the Warren Court in 1969, have been “punishing Republican justices and judges by not raising their salaries to keep pace with inflation.” They have apparently been willing to subject even the Democratic justices to penurious $285,000 wages, made even worse because they lack billionaire friends to help ease the pain and deprivation.​

Republicans had more important priorities than raising judicial salaries during the years when they controlled both Congress and the presidency, such as cutting taxes for hospitable billionaires and attempting to deprive millions of low-income Americans of medical insurance.​

In any case, the very phrase “most incorruptible” implies that incorruptibility is relative, with some justices more open to temptation than others, and none as resistant as Thomas. If so, each of the other justices, now sitting, or ever in history, has been at least a little bit corruptible, which is something I would avoid telling the ever-petulant Justice Samuel Alito to his face...............​

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4384991-the-ballad-of-clarence-thomas-and-incorruptibility/

MSN

 

[MT15]

I got news for Thomas and everyone else involved with that insane take. My wages, my husband’s wages, everyone’s wages haven’t kept pace with inflation over the past 40 years. It was brought painfully home to us about 10 years ago when we visited our local social security office to get a quote on how much my husband should expect and to get some questions answered about how SS is calculated. When she ran his pay history, which automatically adjusts for inflation, she informed us that his best earning years were in his 20-30s because since then his wages have been steadily eroding even though getting modest increases.

And neither of us has ever earned even close to $285k in a year. Someone should have insulted us with that amount.

 

[coldseat]

I got news for Thomas and everyone else involved with that insane take. My wages, my husband’s wages, everyone’s wages haven’t kept pace with inflation over the past 40 years. It was brought painfully home to us about 10 years ago when we visited our local social security office to get a quote on how much my husband should expect and to get some questions answered about how SS is calculated. When she ran his pay history, which automatically adjusts for inflation, she informed us that his best earning years were in his 20-30s because since then his wages have been steadily eroding even though getting modest increases.

And neither of us has ever earned even close to $285k in a year. Someone should have insulted us with that amount.

Thomas could have also left the court and went and worked in private practice if money was his main concern. Not turned into a corrupt Peice of work accepting payouts from right wing billionaires.

It's such BS reasoning.

 

[Optimus Prime]

guess this can go here
==============
Publicly, the Trump-loving lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, has embraced the role of a zealous 2020 election denier.

In April 2021, for instance, Robinson told a crowd that President Joe Biden “stole the election.”

“Yeah, I said that,” Robinson added for effect.

Days before making that declaration, however, Robinson was privately meeting with one of the highest-profile election deniers in the country: Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Now, as Robinson ramps up his campaign for North Carolina’s governorship in 2024, documents obtained by The Daily Beast shed light on the extent of his private ties to the movement to contest, overturn, and delegitimize Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election—and it’s clear Robinson is an unabashed, unapologetic election denier running in the same circles as other Republicans showing no repentance for stirring up an insurrection.

In fact, Robinson met with Thomas weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Biden’s inauguration.

According to a copy of Robinson’s official schedule, which was produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, the lieutenant governor had a meeting with Thomas on March 30, 2021.

But Robinson didn’t just speak with Thomas that afternoon; the calendar note indicates he met with Thomas and a group she helped run called Frontliners for Liberty.

Initially a Facebook group that described itself as “a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies,” according to CNBC, Frontliners for Liberty morphed into a key organizing venue for far-right activists nationwide working desperately to keep Trump in power—even after Trump was out of office.

Ultimately, Thomas’ group was influential enough for it to draw the scrutiny of the House Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6. In December 2020, Trump attorney John Eastman spoke to the group, at Thomas’ invitation, to update them regarding his legal challenges to Biden’s victory. A court-obtained meeting agenda shows Eastman was slated to discuss “state legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.”


It’s unclear exactly what Robinson and Thomas discussed in their March 2021 meeting—or exactly who else joined. Since there was no location specified on Robinson’s schedule for the meeting, it may have taken place virtually. Spokespeople for Robinson and Thomas both did not return requests for comment from The Daily Beast.

Even after Biden was inaugurated and the MAGA legal challenges deflated, Thomas and allied far-right activists in her Frontliners group continued to work to undermine the election outcome, according to a Washington Post report—important context for her meeting with Robinson.

Robinson also continued to cast doubt on the election through his rhetoric, if not in any formal government action. (Trump narrowly beat Biden in North Carolina in 2020.) In addition to his April 2021 comments, Robinson used a major speech at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference to claim that Biden didn’t win the election...........

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

It’s safe to say the D.C. Federal Circuit Court doesn’t often generate plots that could work as movie thrillers. Glance at its docket and you’ll see an alphabet soup of cases involving the IRS, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission. 

So it was pretty striking earlier this month to hear judges and lawyers at the court dissect this wild scenario: a U.S. president orders SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Suspense hinges on whether that president faces criminal charges, or gets off scot-free because presidents are immune from prosecution.   

That’s the hypothetical situation Judge Florence Pan posed to a lawyer for Donald Trump, who is desperately claiming immunity from prosecution for the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.  The lawyer — incredibly — couldn’t give a straight answer.  And the Trump team’s claim of total presidential immunity was met with skepticism, even incredulity, from the three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit.  

Next stop: the Supreme Court — according to analysts who say the case is likely to land there no matter how the D.C. Circuit rules.      

If it does, Justice Clarence Thomas must recuse himself.   

It’s well known that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was deeply, demonstrably, committed to overturning the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to Jan. 6.  And there is no way that anything Clarence Thomas does or says about the insurrection will not appear tainted by that.   

It was tempting to wish that Thomas had set a precedent for himself when he recused himself in another case related to Jan. 6 last fall. That case involved Trump lawyer John Eastman’s complaint that the Jan. 6 committee’s review and release of his pro-insurrection emails hurt his reputation. (Sorry; not much sympathy here.)  

But everyone knew Eastman had clerked for Thomas, and the case was a minor one in the grand scheme of things.  

Since then, Thomas should have stepped back — but didn’t — in another case before the court now, which will decide whether Trump can be removed from state ballots. Among other things, that case hinges on whether Trump can be said to have engaged in the illegal effort to overturn the election: The exact thing that at least one of the Thomases was rooting for.     

And the sad fact is that there is little in Thomas’s record to make us think he would step aside now, in a case of such existential importance in Trump World...........

MSN

Clarence Thomas cannot be allowed to decide if Trump is above the law

Trust is the currency our justice system trades in, and Thomas already has very little in the bank.

thehill.com

 

[Taurus]

It’s safe to say the D.C. Federal Circuit Court doesn’t often generate plots that could work as movie thrillers. Glance at its docket and you’ll see an alphabet soup of cases involving the IRS, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission. 

So it was pretty striking earlier this month to hear judges and lawyers at the court dissect this wild scenario: a U.S. president orders SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Suspense hinges on whether that president faces criminal charges, or gets off scot-free because presidents are immune from prosecution.   

That’s the hypothetical situation Judge Florence Pan posed to a lawyer for Donald Trump, who is desperately claiming immunity from prosecution for the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.  The lawyer — incredibly — couldn’t give a straight answer.  And the Trump team’s claim of total presidential immunity was met with skepticism, even incredulity, from the three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit.  

Next stop: the Supreme Court — according to analysts who say the case is likely to land there no matter how the D.C. Circuit rules.      

If it does, Justice Clarence Thomas must recuse himself.   

It’s well known that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was deeply, demonstrably, committed to overturning the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to Jan. 6.  And there is no way that anything Clarence Thomas does or says about the insurrection will not appear tainted by that.   

It was tempting to wish that Thomas had set a precedent for himself when he recused himself in another case related to Jan. 6 last fall. That case involved Trump lawyer John Eastman’s complaint that the Jan. 6 committee’s review and release of his pro-insurrection emails hurt his reputation. (Sorry; not much sympathy here.)  

But everyone knew Eastman had clerked for Thomas, and the case was a minor one in the grand scheme of things.  

Since then, Thomas should have stepped back — but didn’t — in another case before the court now, which will decide whether Trump can be removed from state ballots. Among other things, that case hinges on whether Trump can be said to have engaged in the illegal effort to overturn the election: The exact thing that at least one of the Thomases was rooting for.     

And the sad fact is that there is little in Thomas’s record to make us think he would step aside now, in a case of such existential importance in Trump World...........

MSN

Clarence Thomas cannot be allowed to decide if Trump is above the law

Trust is the currency our justice system trades in, and Thomas already has very little in the bank.

thehill.com

And there's no mechanism to force him to.

We are running, like Wile E. Coyote, headlong into so many cases the Founders didn't, couldn't, foresee because their bedrock assumption was that everyone in government had, if not a sense of duty, some sense of shame. MAGAts do not.

Trump's entire political mantra could be summed up as "What if I do it anyway?"

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

It’s safe to say the D.C. Federal Circuit Court doesn’t often generate plots that could work as movie thrillers. Glance at its docket and you’ll see an alphabet soup of cases involving the IRS, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission. 

So it was pretty striking earlier this month to hear judges and lawyers at the court dissect this wild scenario: a U.S. president orders SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Suspense hinges on whether that president faces criminal charges, or gets off scot-free because presidents are immune from prosecution.   

That’s the hypothetical situation Judge Florence Pan posed to a lawyer for Donald Trump, who is desperately claiming immunity from prosecution for the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.  The lawyer — incredibly — couldn’t give a straight answer.  And the Trump team’s claim of total presidential immunity was met with skepticism, even incredulity, from the three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit.  

Next stop: the Supreme Court — according to analysts who say the case is likely to land there no matter how the D.C. Circuit rules.      

If it does, Justice Clarence Thomas must recuse himself.   

It’s well known that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was deeply, demonstrably, committed to overturning the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to Jan. 6.  And there is no way that anything Clarence Thomas does or says about the insurrection will not appear tainted by that.   

It was tempting to wish that Thomas had set a precedent for himself when he recused himself in another case related to Jan. 6 last fall. That case involved Trump lawyer John Eastman’s complaint that the Jan. 6 committee’s review and release of his pro-insurrection emails hurt his reputation. (Sorry; not much sympathy here.)  

But everyone knew Eastman had clerked for Thomas, and the case was a minor one in the grand scheme of things.  

Since then, Thomas should have stepped back — but didn’t — in another case before the court now, which will decide whether Trump can be removed from state ballots. Among other things, that case hinges on whether Trump can be said to have engaged in the illegal effort to overturn the election: The exact thing that at least one of the Thomases was rooting for.     

And the sad fact is that there is little in Thomas’s record to make us think he would step aside now, in a case of such existential importance in Trump World...........

MSN

Clarence Thomas cannot be allowed to decide if Trump is above the law

Trust is the currency our justice system trades in, and Thomas already has very little in the bank.

thehill.com

There's nothing that compels him to recuse himself and he has repeatedly demonstrated he lacks the integrity to recuse himself.

 

[Optimus Prime]

And there's no mechanism to force him to.

We are running, like Wile E. Coyote, headlong into so many cases the Founders didn't, couldn't, foresee because their bedrock assumption was that everyone in government had, if not a sense of duty, some sense of shame. MAGAts do not.

Trump's entire political mantra could be summed up as "What if I do it anyway?"

Not even an internal mechanism - where only the other justices say "you need to sit this one out"

 

[MT15]

Not even an internal mechanism - where only the other justices say "you need to sit this one out"

Theoretically that should be what Roberts is telling him. MAGA has no shame and cannot be shamed into doing the right thing though.

 

[MT15]

It looks like nobody is being left out of the corruption.

 

[LA - L.A.]

It looks like nobody is being left out of the corruption.

Gorsuch also has a personal grudge against government agencies. If he was sincerely guided by legal principals he would recuse himself from the case due to the appearance of a potential conflict of interests, if not for an actual conflict of interests.

Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. He holds their fate in his hands | CNN Politics

Business groups and conservative activists – including a network founded by Charles and David Koch helping to finance the challenge – say “Chevron deference” has led to an uncontrolled bureaucracy.

www.cnn.com

 

[MT15]

Clarence Thomas should NEVER be included in today’s hearing on whether Trump is disqualified from serving in Government. He’s conflicted and obviously so. We need real judicial reform. These GOP justices are corrupt.

 

[LovesMusic7360]

He didn’t report any of the trips, ProPublica thinks he violated the law by not reporting them. Also, could there be tax fraud ramifications if he didn’t report such expensive gifts?

“These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.”

thomas is being sued for his tax evasion.

MSN

www.msn.com