Clarence Thomas: A Study in Arrogance and Corruption

With almost passing week - if not day - new revelations of Clarence Thomas' use of his position on the Supreme Court as an ATM for receiving payments and, yes, let's call them what they are, bribes, from right wing figures are made public.   From lavish trips, to sweetheart real estate deals, to now outright but hidden payments to Thomas' nutbag wife, the parade of corruption goes on and on.  Meanwhile, Thomas arrogantly claims he did nothing wrong and expects the American public to believe that gifts totaling in all likelihood ten times his salary as an associate justice had no influence on his reactionary, anti-democratic rulings on the Court.  The latest revelation while not the largest monetarily is perhaps the most damning because it shows an effort was made to hide payments to Thomas' wife even as the donor filed briefs in voting rights cases seeking to gut the Voting Rights Act, brief urging the Court to allow states to disenfranchise voters, especially other blacks. It is far past time that Thomas be removed from the Court by whatever means necessary and, if Thomas had any sense of shame, he'd resign.  Sadly, hehas no shame and seemingly wnts to continue his corrupt activities.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the latest damning bombshell to be made public.  Here are highlights:

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.”

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

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. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

Leo’s statement did not address questions about whether he had arranged other work for Ginni Thomas or how much money he directed to her in all from the nonprofit.

Conway, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. The court struck down a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules and procedures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5-to-4 majority.

Thomas issued a concurring opinion in the case, arguing that the preclearance requirement itself is unconstitutional. Thomas’s opinion, which was consistent with a previous opinion he wrote, favored the outcome the Judicial Education Project and several other conservative organizations had advocated in their amicus briefs. He did not cite the Judicial Education Project brief.

Legal ethics experts disagreed about whether the arrangement outlined by Leo and the payments from Conway should have led Thomas to recuse himself from the Shelby case.

Federal law requires justices to recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” a standard that has not been well-defined as applied to filers of amicus briefs, the experts said. Law professor Kathleen Clark of Washington University said that if the Judicial Education Project paid Ginni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and timing of the payments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impartiality and require his recusal.

[E]xperts said the arrangement shows that current ethics rules and disclosure requirements fail to protect public confidence in the independence of the courts.

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

The effort to keep Ginni Thomas’s name off paperwork makes the arrangement seem “more egregious,” said Clark.

Leo, 57, has for years been the behind-the-scenes leader of a network of interlocking nonprofits that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support conservative judges and causes. Marble Freedom Trust, one of the organizations Leo chairs, received a contribution worth $1.6 billion in 2020 from a Chicago businessman, Barre Seid.

Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny since ProPublica revealed in April that Texas billionaire Harlan Crow took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where Thomas’s mother lived; the transaction was not listed on the justice’s annual disclosure forms.

Senate Democrats this week held a hearing focused on Supreme Court ethics. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declined an invitation to testify, offering instead a statement signed by all the justices in which they reaffirmed their commitment to abide by “foundational ethics principles and practices.”

During the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) mentioned Leo, who The Post has reported used the nonprofit network during the Trump administration to conduct publicity campaigns in support of nominees he helped select. “This guy doesn’t have business before the court,” Whitehouse said. “His business is the court.”