Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case. Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/05/04/leonard-leo-clarence-ginni-thomas-conway/ While folks on the Right run around wringing their hands over George Soros financially supporting liberal causes, Leonard Leo is picking SC justices. Federalist Court How the Federalist Society became the de facto selector of Republican Supreme Court justices. https://slate.com/news-and-politics...tor-of-republican-supreme-court-justices.html And, as it turns out, arranging for payments to be made to the wife of a SC justice under false pretenses. "The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family." It seems Ginni and Clarence have more than one benefactor helping them live a comfortable life. I suggest Clarence do the right thing and resign. But of course he won't. Short of that, I suggest John Roberts participate in reforms to get members of the SC to comply with ethics rules established for other federal judges. But of course he won't. So it is incumbent on Congress to take action. To do what it can, given Repub indifference if not their outright refusal, to rein in members of the Court who have put themselves in a position of deciding what is best for themselves at the expense of the country.
Conservative corruption knows no bounds. They will destroy the country for power to lord over the remains.
Gone are the days when Repubs put integrity, self sacrifice, or just doing the right thing before the pursuit of power. The routine refusal to recuse themselves by conservative justices going back years was a forewarning of what was to come.
During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump offered an unprecedented guarantee regarding any potential Supreme Court nomination. The Republican nominee promised that, if he were elected president, his judicial nominees would “all [be] picked by the Federalist Society.” Trump likewise acknowledged he had turned to the “Federalist people” and the Heritage Foundation to assemble a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees. Meaning the guy funneling money to Ginni by nefarious means was put in a position to pick 3 SC justices. To which Repubs reply, "pass the salt."
Pro Publica takes aim at another senior Black office holder. Coincidence? Opinion The State James Clyburn’s betrayal leaves all of us more cynical | Opinion
This thread is about the continuing assault on the people's faith in the impartiality of the SC by Thomas.
If you have evidence any of them have received lavish financial benefits from parties with business before the Court please present it.
Nonsense. The serious problems exhibited by Thomas have been a well known issue from the time he was nominated through to today.
What's your point? Are you suggesting we should surrender on court ethics? Should we surrender on the behavior of all judges?
Surely you can appreciate the impropriety of a justice's wife getting unearned money from the guy who more than any other person has had a hand in selecting SC nominees. Someone who heads an organization whose members frequently argue SC and lower court cases. Then again I wouldn't be surprised if partisanship has blinded you.
More LW hysteria, I see. You lefties point at all these superfluous stories and still haven't made a single connection to a single case that Thomas's decision was in anyway altered or distorted, You smile and nod while Soros openly spreads millions to elect District Attorneys that follow his far left ideology, yet attack Thomas with vague innuendoes and silly nonsense. If a billionaire can throw billions to alter elections while can one use his money to benefit his friends. We've got dozens of examples of Soros DA putting dangerous criminal back on the street where they continue robbing, raping and murdering; and the only evidence we have against Thomas is he went on vacation, or sold a house.
Pro Publica has sweet f'all to do with it. This situation began with Harlan Crow spotting an opening and then leveraging that opening for an insignificant amount of his available time and money. Honestly, your defense of this isn't the position of a person that claims to have a conservative interest in the independence of the federal judiciary.
Clearly. You condone wealthy private interests forming these types of financial relationships with US federal judges at any level? Or you just give a pass at the highest level?
It's a personal relationship unrelated to SCOTUS business, and Thomas believed he reported it properly. There's no issue.
Repeating your position may have worked in a Federal Bureaucracy, but it isn't exactly supporting your argument here on a public forum.
I do not see it that way at all and I have a number of positions that are really neither left nor right but simply required standards for government service and this relationship is magnificently failing to pass the smell test. Let's debate a limit to what would be allowed, shall we? Supposing you had an opportunity to accept Idi Amin paying your nephew's tuition to Phillips Exeter, how would that have fared if it came out to your bosses?