Tag: Clarence Thomas

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.

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.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas got reminded of his own absurd judicial philosophy during oral arguments on a case dealing with federal and state election rules.

The case is Moore v. Harper, which CNN reports originated as the result of a law in North Carolina.

The North Carolina GOP legislature … argues that state constitutions and state courts have little or no authority to impose limits on how state legislatures craft their rules for federal elections.

The controversial “independent state legislature” theory is being used by Republican lawmakers to argue that state courts could not redraw the congressional map the legislature sought to enact in 2021.

A version of theory was promoted by allies of former President Donald Trump during their attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Arguing on behalf of Common Cause in opposition to the North Carolina legislature was former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who noted that the high court had once ruled “states rights” on the issue of abortion and then said such a standard didn’t apply to regulations on guns.

Thomas tried to argue against Katyal:

“You said this court normally doesn’t second-guess state court’s interpretation of their own Constitution. Would you say that in the case of Baker v. Carr?”

Katyal replied:

“I don’t think you declare it unconstitutional. Any number of things. To say they got their own Constitution wrong is just a matter of interpretation.”

That led Thomas to inquire:

“Let me ask you this. It may be a bit unfair. If the state legislature had been very, very generous to minority voters in their redistricting and the state supreme court said under their state constitution that this was — it violated their own state Constitution of North Carolina, would you be making the same argument?”

Katyal:

“Yes.”

Later, Katyal again used Thomas’ own flawed reasoning to prove that conservatives on the high court talk out of both sides of their mouths:

“The North Carolina court is interpreting the elections clauses and powers and the question is whether or not they have misread it or not and so I think that’s the source of the substantive — alleged substantive violation here. The spirit of your question, for 233 years, this court’s never gotten involved and said, hey, we’re going to, you know, say the North Carolina court got it wrong or their provision was too abstract for enforcement or anything like that. Rather, this court has always stayed on the sidelines, let the state process unfold subject to that other part of the trident check, Congress, in the second half of the elections cause.”

If the six conservative justices rule in favor of North Carolina, it will be the end of free and fair elections in the United States. Each state will be able to set their own election standards and disenfranchise anyone they want. They’ll even be able to overrule the will of the voters and choose the winners and losers in each election based solely on political party.

Clarence Thomas’ bullshit is finally starting to catch up with him.