Category: Supreme Court

Categories
GOP Supreme Court WTF?!

Ted Cruz: Democrats Only Hate Clarence Thomas Because ‘He’s A Black Man’

If you thought you’d heard all of the absurd defenses that can possibly be offered up in the vain attempt to suggest that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas didn’t do anything unethical when he accepted free trips worth tens of thousands of dollars from a Republican megadonor, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested today that it’s all due to racism on the part of Democrats.

Appearing on “Sunday Futures” with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Cruz had this to say:

“We know what Justice Thomas did wrong. He’s been one of the greatest Supreme Court justices ever to serve on the court. He has been a principal constitutionalist,and the left despises him; Democrats hate Justice Thomas, and they have the special degree of hate for him because he’s a Black man.”

“And their view is that African-American is not allowed to be a conservative is not allowed to disagree with left-wing orthodoxy,” he added.

According to Cruz, some of the liberals on the high court had also accepted trips, but he conveniently neglected to mention any names, probably because he was lying.

“They’re not looking at any of the Democrat justice. They’re not looking at any other judges. This is a political smear job directed at Clarence Thomas because he is an extraordinary constitutionalist.”

Ted Cruz wants us to believe that questioning the ethics of a justice on the Supreme Court is racist. So if the question was about Amy Coney Barrett, would that mean it was sexism? Interesting to see how quickly Republicans play the race card when they have no actual defense for one of their right-wing heroes.

Categories
Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas’ Attempted Cover-Up Of His Ethical Lapses Is Likely To Lead To His Downfall – Here’s How 

There was a phrase that entered the political lexicon during the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon: It’s not the scandal, it’s the cover-up.

That may well be the case when applied to Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who is currently embroiled in a scandal of his own creation by accepting fancy trips and accommodations from a billionaire Republican donor, as was first reported by ProPublica earlier this month.

Thomas has attempted to downplay the entire matter, and it would appear that Chief Justice John Roberts has no interest in pursing the matter, even though not doing so threatens the integrity of the entire Supreme Court and its nine justices.

So while it may seem right now that Thomas is in the clear, Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics notes in an op-ed he wrote for MSNBC, that Thomas’ continued efforts to pull a screen down on his actions is a direct threat to him.

Thomas’ actions place him in potential legal jeopardy, and further undermine the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in the eyes of a public that has become increasingly skeptical of its ability to act as an apolitical arbiter of the law.

That’s where you can see the parallel to Nixon, Bookbinder continues:

That’s a lesson that the country learned from the Watergate scandal. The revelation that some Nixon campaign employees broke into the Democratic Party headquarters didn’t cause a generation of Americans to lose their faith in government. Time and again the cover-up is what ultimately causes the downfall.

If the Supreme Court is to have any legitimacy whatsoever (according to recent polls, public confidence in the high court is at an all-time low), it will have to try and police itself, and that means that Thomas’ days on the court of final appeal are numbered.

This is poison for the Supreme Court. It is an institution built on a foundation of public trust: It does not have the power of the purse or the authority to enforce the laws that it interprets. Credibility is its currency. And that foundation of credibility is already eroding. Thomas has an ethical duty, and he failed to live up to it. As a result, he has caused greater harm to himself, his legacy and the Supreme Court as an institution than disclosing his conduct would have done. And in doing so he learned the same lesson that many before him have been forced to learn: Honesty may be painful or uncomfortable, but the alternative is worse. And once again, our democracy may end up paying dearly for that lesson.

Justice Thomas needs to resign as soon as possible. Every day he remains on the court will only serve to further degrade our belief in the independence and integrity of the American judicial system.

Categories
Abuse of Power Justice Department Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas Is Now A Step Closer To Being Criminally Referred To The DOJ

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is a step closer to being criminally referred the U.S. Department of Justice for expensive trips and other perks he received from a top Republican donor, some of which were valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last week, ProPublica revealed the connections between Thomas and billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow.

One of the trips Thomas took was to Indonesia.

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

But there were many other jaunts around the globe for Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, who worked to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election so that Donald Trump could remain in office despite having lost in a landslide to President Joe Biden.

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has written a committee of federal judges who oversee matters related to members of the judiciary and is requesting a formal criminal referral of Thomas to the Justice Department, noting:

Campaign Legal Center respectfully requests that the Judicial Conference exercise its authority pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 13106(b) and refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Attorney General because there is “reasonable cause to believe” that he “willfully failed to file information required to be reported” under the Ethics in GovernmentAct (“EIGA”).

Specifically, Justice Thomas’ public statement on April 7, 2023, and recent news reporting, confirm that for over twenty years he did not file required gift disclosures of private plane and yacht travel from one individual. There is reasonable cause to believe that the omissions were willful because Justice Thomas (1) previously reported private plane travel from the same individual in compliance with the law, but stopped the disclosures after negative media attention; and (2) has a history of omitting significant information from his financial disclosure reports.

Thomas has served on the Supreme Court since 1991.

 

Categories
Supreme Court

Fellow Judges Say They’re ‘Livid’ With Clarence Thomas For Accepting Free Yacht Trips

On Thursday, ProPublica released an explosive report on the free trips Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted over the past 20 years from a billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

According to ProPublica:

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

Asked about the numerous free trips, Thomas issued a public statement which reads, “Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends who do not have business before the court was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”

However, other judges on the federal bench say it’s no wonder respect for the Supreme Court is at an all-time low, with CNN’s Ariane de Vogue reporting Friday on “The Lead” that many of the judges she spoke with were angry at Thomas.

“Really, they were livid about this, they said. One of the judges said, ‘This is precisely why the public respect for the Supreme Court has plummeted. This is far greater than mere ethics violations. It’s about the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court.'”

“I did talk to other judges who actually sided with them,” de Vogue added. “They’re like, these rules then were vague and he was following the rules. And I pressed and I said, yeah, but here we’re talking about luxury trips, right, private jets, yachts, not like the fancy car on Uber or something, really important ones. And he said, look they were the rules, he followed the rules. But it’s opened up a firestorm, and maybe now a lot of judges are wondering, with this fresh look at at their ethics disclosures, if that’s going to start a whole new story. The Court still does not have an official code of conduct, though, right and that is really that’s the next big story.”

Thomas is 74 years old and has long been a cancer on the high court. It’s time he resigned and made room for a justice who wouldn’t have the same stench of compromised integrity clinging to them.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Supreme Court

Trump Is Trying To Keep His Classified Documents Case From SCOTUS – Here’s Why

When failed former president Donald Trump and his legal team refused to try and stop one of his attorneys from testifying before a federal grand jury recently, many were left scratching their heads, wondering why the ruling of a lower court ordering the Trump lawyer to testify wasn’t appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin notes in an article she wrote for the network that the disgraced ex-president and his attorneys appear to be playing the long game, and that could come back to haunt them down the line.

Trump has made clear he believes this Supreme Court — controlled by conservative justices, three of whom he appointed — owes him one. My hunch is that Trump’s team let Corcoran’s testimony happen because of what’s likely involved in any request to pause, much less, review a crime-fraud-related ruling: the evidence.

Put another way, if Trump had petitioned the Supreme Court to stay Corcoran’s testimony and document production, the justices would have seen some, if not all, of what Judge Howell and the three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit have already reviewed: proof that Trump misled Corcoran and engaged in criminal conduct.

If Trump had used up his judicial lifeline, appealed to the high court and they ruled against him, it would be game over and he’d likely be on his way to a multi-count indictment on charges ranging from mishandling of classified information to violations of the Espionage Act. And if the former president is found guilty on those charges, he’ll likely spend the rest of his life in federal prison.

Rubin explained the reasonsing:

And for someone whose one last hope, if he is ultimately charged or tried by any of the multiple entities now investigating him, is that same Supreme Court, letting the justices see evidence of his alleged crimes now would be a bridge too far. Even if that means Corcoran’s notes and transcripts of “personal audio recordings” are now in the DOJ’s control, even if Corcoran had to return to the grand jury as a witness the day after arguing the application of Trump’s other privileges, Trump can’t afford to lose the Supreme Court yet.

But even if Trump’s documents case does wind up before the nine justices, there’s a good chance he won’t get any relief there, either. Because if the court allows him to get away with such a serious violation of law, it would be setting the sort of precedent that would, in years to come, turn future U.S. heads of state into absolute dictators who can rule by fiat And that would mean American democracy was dead.