It’s important for us to understand how right-wing billionaires have regularly injected money into the Clarence and Ginni Thomas household. And we will investigate. More on that later.
It’s also important to remember that this is ‘The Court That Dark Money Built,’ by spending at least $580 million, and it wasn’t built for nothing. Getting Thomas a supermajority to do the billionaires’ bidding was the purpose of the scheme.
The current ethics scandal touches on both. Leo orchestrated $25K (and more) to the Thomas household through a Court-capture front group; Crow funded not just Thomas, but the Federalist Society, where Trump’s infamous “Supreme Court list” was hatched by the billionaires.
This was a big operation, and a secretive one. Much investigation is needed, but much is plain to see. In a nutshell, creepy billionaires ran an “op” to capture the Court, just like 19th century railroad barons would capture the railroad commission that set their rates.
So investigations need to look into the Court and its unethical (and likely unlawful) mischief and secrets; and also out at the apparatus behind the secretly dispensed funds, and examine the larger plot. They didn’t spend $580+ million for nuthin’!
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Justice Thomas is a repeat offender on disclosure issues. In 2011, Thomas’s undisclosed private jet/yacht trips from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow were forwarded to the Judicial Conference’s Financial Disclosure Cmte for review – same step taken recently re: new allegations.
This @nytimes story from 2011 lays out the billionaire-funded perks Justice Thomas was enjoying at that time:
This article supports my thesis that the Trump “Federalist Society list” was not the Federalist Society’s at all — there were no proceedings developing or approving the list. Which raises the question: whose list was it?
Sure would be nice if the Department of Justice did some due diligence about bringing its own, complementary suit rather than sitting this out. It’s somewhat important.
News: Unreported gifts to Clarence Thomas of private jet and yacht trips from Harlan Crow cause his disclosure failure to be sent for action to the Financial Disclosure Committee of the Judicial Conference!!
Same players, Crow & Thomas; similar gifts, jet & yacht travel; same response, sent to same Financial Disclosure Committee (plus, then, also undisclosed income to Mrs. Thomas from right-wing advocacy groups). Lots of similarities!!
Last week, news broke that Justice Thomas wasn’t disclosing free luxury vacations paid for by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor, because he considered it “personal hospitality.”
New reporting from @propublica found that Crow purchased several properties from Justice Thomas in 2014. Justice Thomas did not disclose the sales on his financial disclosure forms as *clearly* required by law.
The Supreme Court has an obvious ethics problem, which is why @RepHankJohnson and I sent a letter last week calling on the Chief Justice to investigate these and other allegations against Justice Thomas.
Here’s just one example. Leonard Leo, featured in the “cigar boys” painting in the story, runs this constellation of front groups:
The “fictitious name” organization Judicial Crisis Network raised anonymous money in checks as big as $17 million to fund political ads for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.