Clarence Thomas" Arrogant and Corrupt

Clarence Thomas - who I have never viewed as qualified to be a Supreme Court justice - has once again displayed his arrogance and seeming corruption in new disclures of Thomas' (and his lunatic wife) acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury trips around the globe for more than two decades, including travel on a superyacht, from a Republican mega donor.  None of these gifts were reported as required by the Court's flimsy ethical requirements.  Thomas - who in some ways is the Courts Donald Trump when it comes to arrogance and belief that he is above all rules - has long flouted the reporting rules and made no effort to appear unbiased in cases before the Court.  Worse yet, he has refused to recuse himself from cases before the Court involving many of his wife's political and far right ideological associates.   He - along with Samuel Alito - have made the Supreme Court appear to be little more than a kangaroo court with the result that public confidence and respect for the Court has plummeted.   It is long past time that (i) Thomas be removed from the Court and (ii) the Supreme Court justices be made subject to the ethical rules that bind the rest of the federal judiciary.  A piece and a column in the Washington Post look at Thomas' latest scandal and his unfitness for office.  First these highlights for the Post article:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury trips around the globe for more than two decades, including travel on a superyacht and private jet, from a prominent Republican donor without disclosing them, according to a new report.

ProPublica reported Thursday on an array of trips funded by Harlan Crow, a Dallas businessman. The publication said Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. It said the justice also has vacationed at Crow’s ranch in East Texas and has joined Crow at the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male retreat in California.

ProPublica cited a nine-day trip that Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, took to Indonesia in 2019, shortly after the court released its final opinions of the term. That trip, which included flights on Crow’s jet and island-hopping on a superyacht, would have cost the couple more than $500,000, if they had paid for it themselves, the publication said.

Federal law mandates that top officials from the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, file annual forms detailing their finances, outside income and spouses’ sources of income, with each branch determining its own reporting standards.

Judges are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone with business before the court. Until recently, however, the judicial branch had not clearly defined an exemption for gifts considered “personal hospitality.”

According to ProPublica, Thomas’s trips funded by Crow do not appear on his financial disclosures.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) vowed in a statement that his panel would take action in response to the ProPublica report, calling the behavior of Thomas “simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a Justice on the Supreme Court.”

Durbin and other Democrats renewed calls for the Supreme Court to adopt a strict ethics code that would include a process for investigating alleged misconduct, and some Democrats called on Thomas to resign.

“The Supreme Court should have a code of ethics to govern the conduct of its members, and its refusal to adopt such standards has contributed to eroding public confidence in the highest court in the land," Van Hollen said in a statement.

“Is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas corrupt? I don’t know,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House leadership team, said in a tweet. “But his secretive actions absolutely have the appearance of corruption. … For the good of the country, he should resign.”

The Post column looks at why Thomas needs to leave the Court to help save its legitimacy:

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy crisis just entered a new chapter in the form of a shocking report that Justice Clarence Thomas apparently violated ethics laws by accepting luxury trips for more than two decades without disclosing them. In response, Richard J. Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vowed that his panel “will act.”

But what would it look like if the Illinois Democrat and his committee actually do act to the full extent of their authority? Is there any hope for accountability — or, barring that, reforms that could place limits on such apparent misconduct and restore public faith in the high court?

The report from ProPublica details that Thomas enjoyed extensive luxury gifts from billionaire and GOP donor Harlan Crow, from vacations on Crow’s superyacht to flights on his private jet to sojourns at various exclusive retreats around the country.

This largesse did not appear on Thomas’s financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reports, which ethics experts say violates a post-Watergate law requiring various federal officials, including justices, to disclose many gifts. One retired federal judge called the moves “incomprehensible.” A former government ethics lawyer added: “When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust.”

ProPublica notes, failure to disclose the trips might violate a law requiring justices to divulge information on “anything of value,” with some exceptions. Durbin, for his part, blasted Thomas for the disclosure failure, labeling this “inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a justice on the Supreme Court.”

If so, that seems to demand an aggressive response from the Judiciary Committee. Legal experts say the committee could act to shed light on the situation in many ways that would fit squarely within its authorities.

“If the committee’s investigation of the facts that have been exposed by journalists warrants it, Justice Thomas should definitely be subpoenaed, as should any other witness relevant to patterns of unlawful or unethical activity,” Feldman told me.

Thomas recently failed to recuse himself in a case involving the plot to subvert the 2020 election outcome in Arizona, even though his wife, Virginia Thomas, advocated for such subversion. As a Post editorial noted at the time, the justices could set for themselves the same type of ethical standards that lower-court judges face, including disclosure and recusal guidelines. Congressional scrutiny of the new Thomas revelations might make that harder for them to resist.

Last fall, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. fretted aloud about critics questioning the legitimacy of the court. But the justices themselves could act to shore that up. And, if they don’t, that scrutiny could build pressure for Congress to create new ethical checks on the court.

Democrats sometimes seem uncomfortable with the core principle that Congress has a legitimate oversight role when it comes to the courts, including the highest in the land. As Stephen Vladeck, a law professor who writes a Substack about the high court, points out, Congress has historically embraced that role but badly abdicated on it only in recent decades.

“The result has been a court that isn’t looking over its shoulder — and justices who don’t seem to see any reason why this kind of behavior raises eyebrows,” Vladeck told me. The Thomas revelations, Vladeck added, are only the latest iteration of “the same basic problem — the lack of meaningful congressional oversight.”

This seems like as good a moment as any to begin setting that right.