Category Archives: Justice Clarence Thomas
Ex Monsanto Lawyer, Clarence Thomas To Hear Monsanto Case
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Clarence Thomas Assailed For Alleged Ethical Lapses By More House Dems
It’s about time that more than just liberal bloggers and Anthony Weiner are noticing Justice Clarence Thomas’ ethics issues…
The Huffington Post
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) is turning up the heat on Justice Clarence Thomas based on new information that builds upon previous reports of his alleged ethical lapses.
In late September, Slaughter had sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States to request official action on Thomas’ multiyear failure to disclose his wife’s income from various conservative think tanks and activist organizations. The Judicial Conference is the principal policy-making and administrative body for the federal court system.
On Friday, Slaughter submitted a new letter, this time addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts in his capacity as the presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, to update and clarify the September letter.
At issue is the fact that Thomas repeatedly checked a box titled “none” on annual financial disclosure forms in response to a question about the sources of spousal income. Yet during those years, his wife, Virginia Thomas, worked for the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and for the Tea Party lobbying group Liberty Central, which she helped found.
The first letter asserted that Thomas’ nondisclosures persisted “[t]hroughout his entire tenure of the Supreme Court,” which began in 1991. It was fair to infer from his “high level of legal training and experience,” Slaughter wrote, that the justice’s failure presented the type of “willful” behavior that federal law requires the Judicial Conference to refer to the Department of Justice for investigation.
Friday’s letter, however, states that Thomas actually did report the sources of his wife’s income until 1997, therefore heightening the inference that the justice had not “misunderstood the reporting instructions,” as he asserted in January when he filed seven pages of addenda correcting his omissions over a six-year period. Citing information obtained by the left-leaning watchdog groups Common Cause and Alliance for Justice, Slaughter wrote that “Justice Thomas accurately filed his financial disclosure forms, including his wife’s employment, for as many as 10 years beginning in 1987 when he was Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Related articles
- Rep. Slaughter Calls for ‘Retroactive Recusal’ of Justice Thomas to Overturn Citizens United (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- Investigat e Clarence Thomas & Restore Ethics on the Supreme Court (ynative77.wordpress.com)
- Dems ramp up attacks on Justice Thomas ahead of health law ruling – The Hill (blog) (thehill.com)
- Clarence Thomas assailed for alleged ethical lapses by more House Dems (thegrio.com)
- Senate GOP demands answers on Kagan (politico.com)
- Health Law Recusal? Groups Target Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas (abcnews.go.com)
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Filed under Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas' Ethics Issues
Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers as court takes case
The Supreme Court of the United States has decided to hear a challenge to the POTUS’ Health Care Law. Having said that, what the hell are Justices Scalia and Thomas doing dining with the probable attorney who will argue the case against the Health Care law?
They don’t seem to care about the appearance of impropriety anymore. When did we fall down the rabbit hole? Was it after Bush v Gore or was it after Citizens United?
The Los Angeles Times
The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.
The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.
The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released.
The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.
Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.
Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court’s conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.
The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.
It’s nothing new: The two justices have been attending Federalist Society events for years. And it’s nothing that runs afoul of ethics rules. In fact, justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct that governs the actions of lower federal justices.
If they were, they arguably fell under code’s Canon 4C, which states, “A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event.“
Nevertheless, the sheer proximity of Scalia and Thomas to two of the law firms in the case, as well as to a company with a massive financial interest, was enough to alarm ethics-in-government activists.
“This stunning breach of ethics and indifference to the code belies claims by several justices that the court abides by the same rules that apply to all other federal judges,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause. “The justices were wining and dining at a black-tie fundraiser with attorneys who have pending cases before the court. Their appearance and assistance in fundraising for this event undercuts any claims of impartiality, and is unacceptable.”
Scalia and Thomas have shown little regard for critics who say they too readily mix the business of the court with agenda-driven groups such as the Federalist Society. And Thomas’ wife, Ginni, is a high-profile conservative activist.
Moreover, conservatives argue that it’s Justice Elena Kagan who has an ethical issue, not Scalia and Thomas. Kagan served as solicitor general in the Obama administration when the first legal challenges to the law were brought at the trial court level. Her critics have pushed for Kagan to recuse herself from hearing the case, saying that she was too invested in defending the law then to be impartial now. Kagan has given no indication she will do so.
Related articles
- Will Raich bite Scalia? This has everything to do with Obamacare. (ricrx.wordpress.com)
- The Loyal Opposition: Scalia, Thomas, and the Federalist Society (loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Justices Scalia And Thomas To Attend Federalist Society Fundraisng Dinner, Demonstrating Ongoing Lack Of Respect For Judicial Ethics (yubanet.com)
- Nearly Everything You Need to Know About the Health Care Decision (blogs.wsj.com)
- Doug Kendall: A Disastrous Day for the Tea Party (huffingtonpost.com)
- Health Care Law Headed to U.S. Supreme Court for Review (inquisitr.com)
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Filed under Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Of The United States
Rep. Slaughter Calls for ‘Retroactive Recusal’ of Justice Thomas to Overturn Citizens United
This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time, regarding Justice Clarence Thomas’ tax evasion deception for several years.
Crooks & Liars
Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-NY) told Current TV’s Keith Olbermann Tuesday that a “retroactive recusal” of Justice Clarence Thomas could result in overturning the Citizens United case.
Earlier this year, the liberal group Common Cause argued that both Justices Thomas and Antonin Scaliashould have recused themselves from the Citizens United case because they attended events organized billionaire Charles Koch.
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
In addition, Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, may have received financial benefit from the Citizens United ruling, something that was never disclosed by the justice.
Twenty House Democrats Thursday called on the U.S. Judicial Conference to formally request that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Justice Clarence Thomas’s non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
Justice Thomas indicated on his annual financial disclosure forms that his wife had received no income since he joined the bench in 1991, despite the fact that his wife had in fact earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007.
“What I’m very interested here is the votes that he has cast that may be in conflict,” Slaughter explained to Olbermann. “Of course, his wife can work. But the fact is there are only nine justice on that Supreme Court and it certainly should be a given that a family member of any of those people lucky enough to be a Supreme Court justice should not in any way involve themselves in matters that will go before that court. Now, we all know that she worked very hard for the Citizens United case, which I think is one of the most egregious things that have ever happened in the United States Supreme Court.”
She added: “There is such a thing as a retroactive recusal. We’re looking into that. That case, if you remember, was decided 5-4. If we could take away his vote, we could wipe that out. It would lose. How ’bout that?”
“That’s only the future of the democracy there, isn’t it?” Olbermann asked.
“Yes, indeed. And we are — you know, the judiciary is the last place for all of us to go. We’re only as good — all of us — as the courts are, only as safe as the courts are good. Their interpretations are really what give us the freedoms when you come down to it. They have enormous power.”
Related articles
- Rep. Slaughter Calls for ‘Retroactive Recusal’ of Justice Thomas to Overturn Citizens United (crooksandliars.com)
- Dem Congresscritter Pushes Retroactive Recusal (theundergroundconservative.wordpress.com)
- House Democrats call for congressional hearings on Clarence Thomas (dailykos.com)
- Lawmakers Seek Federal Investigation Into Clarence Thomas’ Affairs (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- More Ethics Trouble for Clarence Thomas (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
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Filed under Justice Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Of The United States
Lawmakers Seek Federal Investigation Into Clarence Thomas’ Affairs
This guy’s a creep. He and his wife need to be investigated by the Feds as soon as possible.
The Huffington Post
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.
Led by House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 20 House Democrats sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States — the entity that frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts — requesting that the conference refer the matter of Thomas’ non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.
The letter outlines how, throughout his 20-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas routinely checked a box titled “none” on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income. But in reality, the letter states, she earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007 alone.
Slaughter called it “absurd” to suggest that Thomas may not have known how to fill out the forms.
“It is reasonable, in every sense of the word, to believe that a member of the highest court in the land should know how to properly disclose almost $700,000 worth of income,” Slaughter said in a statement. “To not be able to do so is suspicious, and according to law, requires further investigation. To accept Justice Thomas’s explanation without doing the required due diligence would be irresponsible.”
The letter also cites a June report in The New York Times indicating Thomas may have regularly benefited from the use of a private yacht and airplane owned by real estate magnate Harlan Crowe and failed to disclose the travel as a gift or travel reimbursement.
Continue reading here…
Filed under Justice Clarence Thomas
More Ethics Trouble for Clarence Thomas
Mother Jones
If Clarence Thomas was hoping that liberals might just forget about his cozy ties to a Dallas real estate developer, or his failure for a decade to disclose the hundreds of thousands of dollars his wife earned from a conservative think tank, well, he would be wrong. As President Obama’s health care reform bill gets closer and closer to a hearing before the high court, liberal groups are continuing to press for some sort of disciplinary action against Thomas, or at least to force him to recuse himself from hearing the health care case.
To that end, on Tuesday, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice and the good-government group Common Cause asked the Judicial Conference of the United States, which oversees the federal courts, to investigate whether Thomas violated the Ethics in Government Act. The groups allege that Thomas may have violated the act when he failed to disclose his wife Ginny Thomas’s compensation—upwards of $700,000—from the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
The groups also are asking the Judicial Conference to investigate whether Thomas may have failed to report travel paid for by the Texas real estate developer Harlan Crowe, as reported by the New York Times. The Judicial Conference was holding its semi-annual meeting in DC this week when the advocacy groups sent their letter. If the Conference concludes that the allegations have merit, federal law requires that if it “has reasonable cause to believe has willfully falsified or willfully failed to file information required to be reported” it must refer the case to the attorney general. Common Cause president Bob Edgar said in a statement Tuesday:
In America, no one is above the law, including Supreme Court justices. For more than a decade, Justice Thomas omitted information about his wife’s income, clearly required by the Ethics in Government Act, from his annual financial disclosure report. Surely such a repeated violation, by someone entrusted to apply laws far more complex than the Ethics Act, at least deserves a formal review by the Judicial Conference and the Attorney General.
Odds are slim that even the Judicial Conference is going to ask Eric Holder to investigate Thomas. But you can’t really fault them for trying. Thomas’s lapses seem egregious enough for some higher authority to take a second look.
Unfortunately, thanks the the separation of powers doctrine, there really isn’t a higher authority when it comes to the Supreme Court. Some members of Congress are trying to change that. Also this week, the Alliance for Justice has been trying to rally support for congressional hearings on a bill introduced earlier this year that would force Supreme Court justices to be covered by the code of conduct that applies to other federal judges and create new procedures for when a justice may have to recuse from hearing a case. Given that virtually no Republicans have signed on, this law, too, has no hope of going anywhere, at least not any time soon. But the Democrats behind it get points for trying anyway.
Related articles
- Clarence Thomas Must Go (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- Judicial Conference Urges Restraint In Sealing Civil Cases (legaltimes.typepad.com)
- It’s time for Clarence Thomas to resign. (followmehere.com)
- Clarence Thomas Is Not An Idiot [The Supremes] (jezebel.com)
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Clarence Thomas Must Go
The very first sentence in this article by William Rivers Pitt has made me a fan and for the exact same reason that Mr. Pitt mentions: Clarence Thomas forced Anita Hill to endure the most sexist and demeaning treatment in public by his fellow GOP idealogues that I have ever seen.
Then there was the bizarre act of Justice Thomas’ wife “Ginni” calling Ms. Hill in recent months to ask Ms. Hill about her testimony at the confirmation hearing some twenty years ago. That call forced Ms. Hill back into the spotlight for a brief moment after almost twenty years.
Thomas allowed Ms. Hill to be demonized in the process. He could have called off his attack dogs in the Senate at any time, but like the good little corrupt minded wimp that he is, he allowed it to happen.
I don’t like Clarence Thomas and I never will.
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.
- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart
For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do not like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In my opinion, he has no business sitting on the high court after the reprehensible treatment he forced Anita Hill to endure, and has been a disgrace to the bench lo these last twenty years. Anthony Weiner, one of Clarence Thomas’ most ardent critics, was just run out of Washington DC on a rail for behavior far less offensive; Mr. Thomas is lucky there was no such thing as Twitter when he was sexually harassing Hill, or he’d be chasing ambulances outside of muni court like the hack he is. He sits up there like a lump, never speaking or offering questions to petitioners, and has not had an original thought since his shameful Senate approval.
But his vapid intellectual presence on the bench is only a small part of the story. Mr. Thomas has, by all appearances, turned his position on the court into a license to print money for himself, his family, and a few choice friends.
Conservative corruption is nothing new in Washington, but Mr. Thomas has taken the practice to bold new heights, and finally, people are beginning to sit up and take notice. Thomas has been playing fast and loose with judicial ethics for a long time now, and though Supreme Court Justices are not technically beholden to judicial rules of ethics, his behavior has become so egregious as to warrant deep attention, and in my opinion, removal from the high court.
Justice Thomas is in possession of a gorgeous bust of Abraham Lincoln, which was cast in 1914 by the noted sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman. The bust was given as a gift to Thomas in 2001 by Christopher DeMuth, president of the notoriously right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The value of the bust was $15,000. In the intervening years, AEI has filed briefs on three separate occasions regarding cases before the high court, and on each occasion, Thomas has ruled in their favor, often going beyond the scope they were seeking.
Related articles
- It’s time for Clarence Thomas to resign. (indigenist.blogspot.com)
- Clarence Thomas Faces Ethics Questions (theroot.com)
- Thomas’s ongoing ethics problem, and Chris Murphy’s potential solution (dailykos.com)
- Is Clarence Thomas unfit to serve on the Supreme Court? (thegrio.com)
- We Should Have Listened To Anita Hill (lezgetreal.com)
- Justice Clarence Thomas should resign (mhasegawa.wordpress.com)
Filed under Judicial Ethics, Justice Clarence Thomas
Thomas’ ethical problems in the spotlight
I, for one, will continue to keep this issue in the spotlight on this blog. I still believe that it is the backstory of the Anthony Weiner fiasco that everyone including, nay, especially the main stream media, ignored.
As an Anthony Weiner advocate (I used to live in Queens, but not in his district, so there is an inherent affinity for Weiner, as a native son. Aside from the geographical connection, former Rep. Anthony Weiner and former Rep. Alan Grayson were the most outspoken and passionate supporters for their constituents and for the masses of people disenfranchised by GOP policies.
Can anyone see a correlation here or am I just wearing my tin-foil hat too tightly?
Daily Kos
The New York Times’ report this weekend highlighted just one of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s problems with ethics.
[Justice Clarence Thomas and real estate magnate Harlan Crow] met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow’s largess provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.
This is just one in a growing list of ethical problems for Thomas:
Unethical Fundraising: The Code of Conduct does not allow judges to “personally participate in fund-raising activities, solicit funds for any organization, or use or permit the use of the prestige of judicial office for that purpose,” except in very limited circumstances. Yet Justice Thomas attended a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser intended to fund the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks and media outlets. This attendance is technically legal, because of the justices exemption from the Code of Conduct, but the justices claim that they have long followed a policy of “look[ing] to the Code of Conduct for guidance” in determining when they may participate in fundraising activities.Failure to Disclose: Federal judges and justices are required by law to disclose their spouse’s income — thus preventing persons who wish to influence the judge or justice from funneling money to them through their husband or wife. Nevertheless, Thomas falsely claimed that his wife Ginni — a lobbyist and high-earning member of the professional right — earned no non-investment income whatsoever while she was working at the right-wing Heritage Foundation. When asked to explain this error, Thomas — who is one of the nine people responsible for issuing binding interpretations of the nation’s founding document — claimed that he “misunderst[ood] the filing instructions.”
Potential Conflict of Interest: Ginni Thomas used to lead an organization that vigorously opposes the Affordable Care Act, and she even briefly signed a memo calling that Act unconstitutional. Ginni also may be earning lobbying fees for working to have this Act repealed. A team of conservative lawyers recently argued that such activities by a judge’s spouse requires the judge to recuse from the lawsuits challenging the ACA, but a defiant speech Thomas gave to the conservative Federalist Society leaves little doubt that he will not recuse.
A Financial Stake in His Own Decisions?: Ginni Thomas may also be getting rich off of her husband’s vote in the infamous Citizens United decision — which freed corporations to spend billions of dollars to buy U.S. elections. Ginni’s new lobbying firm “offers advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes,” a line of work which has obviously become much more lucrative since Citizens United.
Related articles
- Attn @ClarenceThomas: This is just the beginning of Pandora’s Box opening. I suggest you step down now. (k1nsey6.com)
- Weiner’s a fool but there’s more here than meets the eye (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
- Don’t Be Distracted by Weinergate: The Scandalous “Judicial Insider Trading” of Justice Clarence Thomas, Wife “Ginni” (alternet.org)
- Friendship between Thomas and Crow Triggers Controversy — Again (legaltimes.typepad.com)
- We Should Have Listened To Anita Hill (lezgetreal.com)
- Clarence Thomas’ Ethics Problems (skydancingblog.com)
- Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Letter to Justice Thomas (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
Filed under Ginni Thomas, Judicial Ethics, Justice Clarence Thomas
Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Letter to Justice Thomas
When I wrote an article recently, which implied that Anthony Weiner’s trouble with the media may have started out due to his sharp focus on Justice Clarence Thomas’ ethics problems, many people seemed to scoff at the notion that Weiner’s problems may have been retaliation for him exposing Justice Thomas.
A Letter from Congressman Anthony Weiner
In February, 2011, armed with all these concerns, and anticipating the release of Thomas’ 2010 financial disclosure forms that would reveal Ginni Thomas’ Liberty Central income for the first time, a Congressman drafted a letter that was co-signed by 74 members of Congress, taking the issue of recusal and conflicts of interest directly to Clarence Thomas’ door.
Dear Justice Thomas:
As an Associate Justice, you are entrusted with the responsibility to exercise the highest degree of discretion and impartiality when deciding a case. As Members of Congress, we were surprised by recent revelations of your financial ties to leading organizations dedicated to lobbying against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We write today to respectfully ask that you maintain the integrity of this court and recuse yourself from any deliberations on the constitutionality of this act.
The appearance of a conflict of interest merits recusal under federal law. From what we have already seen, the line between your impartiality and you and your wife’s financial stake in the overturn of healthcare reform is blurred. Your spouse is advertising herself as a lobbyist who has “experience and connections” and appeals to clients who want a particular decision – they want to overturn health care reform. Moreover, your failure to disclose Ginny Thomas’s receipt of $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, a prominent opponent of healthcare reform, between 2003 and 2007 has raised great concern.
This is not the first case where your impartiality was in question. As Common Cause points out, you “participated in secretive political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the [5-4] decision” on the Citizens United case. Your spouse also received an undisclosed salary paid for by undisclosed donors as CEO of Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) organization that stood to benefit from the decision and played an active role in the 2010 elections.
Given these facts, there is a strong conflict between the Thomas household’s financial gain through your spouse’s activities and your role as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. We urge you to recuse yourself from this case. If the US Supreme Court’s decision is to be viewed as legitimate by the American people, this is the only correct path.
We appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this request.
Sincerely,
ANTHONY D. WEINER
Weiner followed this letter up with the Conflicted Clarence Thomas campaign, highlighting Thomas’ conflicts due to Ginni’s work and income, collecting signatures from citizens who shared his outrage, and making life very uncomfortable for Thomas and his die-hard supporters.
H/t: Angry Black Lady - Please read her extensive article on this topic entitled: Clarence Thomas – The Original #Weinergate
Related articles
- Is Weiner Scandal Retaliation From Clarence Thomas? (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- Weiner’s a fool but there’s more here than meets the eye (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
- Don’t Be Distracted by Weinergate: The Scandalous “Judicial Insider Trading” of Justice Clarence Thomas, Wife “Ginni” (alternet.org)
- Wonder Why Anthony Weiner Was Attacked? Wingnuts Needed A Diversion From His Clarence Thomas Recusal Campaign (crooksandliars.com)
- Is Weiner Scandal Retaliation From Clarence Thomas? (via The Fifth Column) (k1nsey6.wordpress.com)
- Why the Right is Attacking Rep. Weiner (littlegreenfootballs.com)
