Justice Clarence Thomas, Republican Billionaire Harlan Crow's Paid Puppy Dog

And the Republican have the nerve to huff and puff and slander George Soros much as they like.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court. …

Lawmakers Call for Investigation and Ethics Reforms in Response to ProPublica Report on Clarence Thomas

Influential Democratic legislators are pushing for changes at the Supreme Court and a probe into Thomas’ undisclosed luxury trips provided by powerful conservative donor Harlan Crow.

by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex MierjeskiApril 6, 8 p.m. EDT

Which Clarance Thomas you may wonder?
This one:

It’s down right enraging that pigs like this, get away scot-free no matter how many lives they screw up and destroy. Will fate, and the dream of justice, finally catch up with this judicial criminal?

Just another sleeper issue? What’s it matter? Who care’s? Systems not perfect so let’s just forget about it altogether?

Apr 13, 2023 #msnbc #clarencethomas #supremecourt

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell reacts to new reporting from ProPublica revealing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose a real estate deal with billionaire Republican mega donor Harlan Crow valued at $133,363, despite the 1978 Ethics in Government Act requiring him to.

The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.

The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.

Some do have that attitude, quite openly. It’s going to be a long fight. From voting on up to backroom deals. Definitely not a sprint

Here’s another interesting take:

Justice Thomas’ real estate deal with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow sparks new ethic concerns

Apr 14, 2023 #msnbc #clarencethomas #harlancrow

The other key point – and I truly, truly cannot emphasize this enough – is that Clarence Thomas’ whole job is to use his judgment to make judgment calls while judging. He sits on the highest court in the land where he judges others and he makes rulings on the best thing to do is when the text or the law is ambiguous, unclear, or even absent,” says Chris Hayes.


04.06.23

04.07.23

Interesting angle, Justice Clarence Thomas the “High Courts” Anti-Disclosure Grifter.

4:42: “MERRICK GARLAND, THE NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU.”

Apr 14, 2023 #msnbc #clarencethomas #supremecourt

Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate and host of the “Amicus” podcast, talks with Alex Wagner about why the news that Republican activist billionaire Harlan Crow purchased real estate from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a scandal of a different magnitude on top of an already extremely compromised Supreme Court.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN

APRIL 14, 2023

When news broke last week, by way of dogged reporting in ProPublica, that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted decades’ worth of hospitality from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, that this same donor had funded his wife’s legal and political activities and in fact helped pay her salary, and that Thomas had disclosed none of this, our suggestion that the justice had clearly broken the law was dismissed as left-wing “smear.” ProPublica’s new reporting, dropped on Thursday, showed that the same billionaire donor, Harlan Crow, spent $133,363 purchasing several properties co-owned by Thomas, and that these sales were never disclosed. As our colleagues at Slate confirmed this week, Thomas’ mother actually still lives in the property owned by Crow, to which he has made valuable improvements (in addition to buying the house next door and dispensing with previously troublesome neighbors).

Unlike the rules around the undisclosed luxury travel reported last week, ProPublica could not find a single ethics expert willing to squint and hop on one foot in a way that would make the failure to report the real estate transaction seem arguably lawful.

The court has not responded in any way to the latest revelations. Defenders of Justice Thomas somehow continue to urge that this is a smear campaign by liberals.

What really scares me is how blatant this is. It tells me that the one conspiracy theory that I believe is correct; that there are people somewhere cranking out conspiracy theories to distract us from the actual problems going on. They used to work out of their mother’s basement, then they got offices in Eastern European countries, now they are in congress. They propose actual legislation about things that help no one and protect us from things that aren’t harming anyone.

Meanwhile, a Supreme Court justice signs his own name on the sale of a house to a guy who obviously wants access to his power. So, either Thomas doesn’t ever mention that he has a family or a mother or that he supports her and visits her, or he was hoping this deal would go unnoticed for a few years. He knew he only needed a few years, and then it would appear normal.

If he had put it on the disclosure form, then we’d know who knew what when. But, since it’s the mainstream/liberal news reporting it, the reporting of the facts becomes the conspiracy theory. Instead of a valid investigation, it’s a “witch hunt”. Or, as he said in his nomination hearings, a high tech lynching.

1 Like

Still evidence is evidence.

Then again Republicans have shown us that solid evidence means absolutely nothing to them, if they don’t like it.

Clarence Thomas’ Secret Life of Luxury

ProPublica

Apr 12, 2023
For over 20 years, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow without disclosing them, breaking long-standing norms for judges’ conduct. Thomas’ trips with Crow ranged from island-hopping through Indonesia on a superyacht to an annual summer stay at a private Adirondack resort. The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas has no known precedent in the modern history of the Supreme Court.

Kind of the definition of “conspiracy theory” isn’t it?

Clarence Thomas’ job is sitting in judgement on other Americans - talk about a bad joke.

Coming from a person who has been displaying zero respect for the laws he’s supposed to abide by. I share these news clips because they explain it better than I can. If only more American were interested . . .

Apr 17, 2023 #msnbc #clarencethomas #supremecourt

Former U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub and NBC News Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss discuss Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s failure to disclose a 2014 real estate deal and luxury travel with Republican billionaire Harlan Crow amid calls for his investigation.

How long will he be allowed to get away with it.

================
Looking towards the Supreme Court itself,

September 15, 2021 - * Nancy Gertner
How the Supreme Court handled the new Texas ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy paints a far, far different picture. Indeed, when the Supreme Court acts in a way that no legal expert could have predicted, according to no rules that can be identified in advance, much less applied in the next case, it ceases to work as a court at all, no matter how it is characterized.

… In fact, it had nothing to do with law at all. It was about power, a message delivered anonymously by five justices, literally, at midnight, without full briefing or oral argument. We did it, the five-member majority of the court was saying, because we can . We are, after all, the Supreme Court. …

It simply get’s weirder all the time. But will any of it matter? A recap:

by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski - April 13, 2023

Last month, ProPublica reported that **Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

But wait, there’s more:

by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski - May 4, 2023

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. …

… Grimwood, the administrator at Hidden Lake, told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin’s tuition fees. Grimwood had multiple roles on the campus, including overseeing an affiliated wilderness program. He said he was speaking about the payments because he felt the public should know about outside financial support for Supreme Court justices. Martin returned to Randolph-Macon his senior year. …

Gotta wonder, what else will be coming out, and will any of it ever make a difference?

The Republican accusation that the US has become corrupt is true. What they fail to see is that it is the Republican part of the US that is corrupt.

Isn’t it interesting that the current congressional investigations about corruption will find that they are investigating themselves?

It is worrying to know that Trump was able to deconstruct our democratic principles in just 4 years.

I think what people find difficult is, it’s hard to accept that if someone paid a bill, how does it become “buried?” I’ve taken these identity quizzes, the ones you do when you are doing something like a large bank transfer or getting access to some kind of financial information. They ask things like, “did you own a beige car in 1988?” or “was your home in the Brookfield neighborhood in 1997?” Or, when I do my taxes and I forget something, they already know, it’s like a test.

Anyway, there’s a belief that if there are forms to fill out, there is someone with the authority to review those forms, watch for blanks and incongruities, and report them when found. To me, it’s just obvious, because I hate Thomas anyway, I can see he’s living way beyond what he makes. Either he never talks about this kid that he says he loves, or his fellow Justices don’t raise an eyebrow when they find out he’s going to a fancy boarding school.

That it took this long for this stuff to come out does make me question the entire system. I can relate to people who don’t give this much thought until it’s in the news, and then they listen to whatever biased news outlet they’ve chosen. It’s easy to just say, well, of course, the whole system is corrupt, so I’ll just pick the corrupt guy who loves America in the way that I do, and point to the corrupt things the other guy is doing, because, that’s what everybody’s doing.

What really sucks is when the people I like actually do something crappy. It makes it really hard to defend the individual, and hard to maintain loyalty to the “team”. So, where was I going with this? I forgot. :slight_smile:

As they say, this is way beyond an ethics crisis, this is a hostile take over of our government.

How to buy a Supreme Court justice.
Talk about Banana Republic living.

May 4, 2023 #msnbc #supremecourt #clarencethomas

Tali Farhadian Weinstein, former federal and New York state prosecutor, and Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor for Slate, talk with Alex Wagner about the latest revelations about questionable payments to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, and what the recent spate of Supreme Court scandals means for the legitimacy of the court.

1 Like

The discussion of what congress can do went nowhere. They went with “witch hunt” defense.

“We can talk about ethics, and that’s great, but we’re also going to talk about today the concentrated effort by the left to delegitimize this court, and to cherry-pick examples to make a point,” said ranking Republican Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

And we were expecting what else out of that demagogues mouth? :thinking:

It’s not just Harlan Crow who pampers Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas.

Gotta pay to play.

New York Times, By Jo Becker and Julie Tate - Aug. 5, 2023

Clarence Thomas’s $267,230 R.V. and the Friend Who Financed It

. . . The vehicle is a key part of the justice’s just-folks persona. It’s also a luxury motor coach that was funded by someone else’s money.

But there is an untold, and far more complex, back story to Justice Thomas’s R.V. — one that not only undercuts the mythology but also leaves unanswered a host of questions about whether the justice received, and failed to disclose, a lavish gift from a wealthy friend.

His Prevost Marathon cost $267,230, according to title history records obtained by The New York Times. And Justice Thomas, who in the ensuing years would tell friends how he had scrimped and saved to afford the motor coach, did not buy it on his own. In fact, the purchase was underwritten, at least in part, by Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the health care industry.

He provided Justice Thomas with financing that experts said a bank would have been unlikely to extend — not only because Justice Thomas was already carrying a lot of debt, but because the Marathon brand’s high level of customization makes its used motor coaches difficult to value.

In an email to The Times, Mr. Welters wrote: “Here is what I can share. Twenty-five years ago, I loaned a friend money, as I have other friends and family. We’ve all been on one side or the other of that equation. He used it to buy a recreational vehicle, which is a passion of his.” Roughly nine years later, “the loan was satisfied,” Mr. Welters added. He subsequently sent The Times a photograph of the original title bearing his signature and a handwritten “lien release” date of Nov. 22, 2008. …

It appears, Justice Thomas “settled the debt”, though no one is admitting to any cash or whatnot changing hands. Guess it was just a transactional thing. The man who always put himself first, no matter how much of his soul he needed to sell to get there.


Anthony Welters Net Worth

The estimated Net Worth of Anthony Welters is at least $7.36 Million dollars as of 9 May 2023. Mr. Welters owns over 1,567 units of Carlyle Inc stock worth over $262,076 and over the last 16 years he sold CG stock worth over $6,831,580. In addition, he makes $265,406 as Independent Director at Carlyle Inc.

Who appear to be part of the Carlyle Group - hey, does that ring a bell?

Go figure. The war profiteers.

Overall, six private investment firms, including Carlyle, received nearly $14 billion in Pentagon deals between 1998 and 2003. (See related report, “The Sincerest Form of Flattery.”)

Guess they’re having hard times these days,

Carlyle profits hit by slowdown in dealmaking

Financial Times - Antoine Gara in New York
AUGUST 2 2023

Chief executive Harvey Schwartz vows to be ‘disciplined’ in plotting recovery for buyout group

. . . A prolonged slowdown in dealmaking curbed Carlyle’s ability to exit investments profitably and secure valuable performance fees, something it warned would continue to the year-end. Dealmaking remained subdued in the quarter despite a rebound in markets that has propelled the S&P 500 up by almost a fifth this year. . . .

Another leech. How many more surprises will the infamous oath shattering Justice Clarance Thomas Saga have to share with the rest of us 99.9 percenters (that is regular folks).

Lordie, lordie, the Clarence Thomas story just keeps getting more and more . . . . . . . .

  • the Republican state of mind and sense of entitlement is galling.

The latest update, but it’s rumored there’s more to come.

CNN

Justice Roberts wrote ‘condescending’ letter to Senate when asked to testify about ethics

The Other Billionaires Who Helped Clarence Thomas Live a Luxe Life — ProPublica

Courts

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

www.propublica.org
by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski - Aug. 10, 2023

An update:

September 5 | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joins MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. On Monday, Whitehouse wrote a letter Chief Justice John Roberts to lodge an ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for violating several canons of judicial ethics.

Whitehouse’s formal complaint follows revelations that Justice Alito accepted but did not disclose gifts of luxury travel and exclusive lodging from right-wing billionaires, one with business before the Court. Justice Alito then made public comments opining on the constitutionality of Whitehouse’s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency legislation to reform the Court’s lax ethics regime, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in July. Justice Alito’s comments also implicated ongoing Senate investigations into Justice Alito’s undisclosed gifts.

Dear Chief Justice/Chairman Roberts:

I write to lodge an ethics complaint regarding recent public comments by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which appear to violate several canons of judicial ethics, including standards the Supreme Court has long applied to itself. …

Background

Some of the background facts here were related by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who signed a letter to you dated August 3, 2023.1 As that letter explains, the Wall Street Journal on July 28, 2023, published an interview with Justice Alito conducted by David Rivkin and James Taranto. Justice Alito’s comments during that interview give rise this complaint.2 The interview had the effect, and seemed intended, to bear both on legislation I authored and on investigations in which I participate.

During the interview, …

Improper Opining on a Legal Issue that May Come Before the Court

On the Senate Judiciary Committee, we have heard in every recent confirmation hearing that it would be improper to express opinions on matters that might come before the Court. In this instance, Justice Alito expressed an opinion on a matter that could well come before the Court.

That conduct seems indisputably to violate the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Canon 1 emphasizes a judge’s obligation to “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary”; Canon 2(A) instructs judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary”; and Canon 3(A)(6) provides that judges “should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.” These canons help ensure “the integrity and independence of the judiciary” by requiring judges’ conduct to be at all times consistent with the preservation of judicial impartiality and the appearance thereof.5

The Court’s Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices, “to which all of the current members of the Supreme Court subscribe,”6 concurs. …

Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter

These principles apply broadly to any opining, on any issue that might perhaps come before the Court. But here it was worse; it was not just general opining, it was opining in relation to a specific ongoing dispute. The quote at issue in the article—“No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court”—directly follows a mention of my judicial ethics bill. Justice Alito’s decision to opine publicly on the constitutionality of that billmay well embolden legal challenges to the bill should it become law. Indeed, his comments encourage challenges to all manner of judicial ethics laws already on the books.

Justice Alito’s opining will also fuel obstruction of our Senate investigations into these matters. …

Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter at the Behest of Counsel in that Matter

Compounding the issues above, Attorney David Rivkin was one of the interviewers in the Wall Street Journal piece, and also a lawyer in the above dispute. This dual role suggests that Justice Alito may have opined on this matter at the behest of Mr. Rivkin himself. Bad enough that a justice opines on some general matter that may come before the Court; worse when the opining brings his influence to bear in a specific ongoing legal dispute; worse still when the influence of a justice appears to have been summoned by counsel to a party in that dispute.

The timeline of the Wall Street Journal interview suggests that its release was coordinated with Mr. Rivkin’s efforts to block our inquiry. Mr. Rivkin’s interview with Justice Alito …

Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter Involving an Undisclosed Personal Relationship

On top of all this, the dispute upon which Justice Alito opined involves an individual with whom Justice Alito has a longstanding personal and political relationship. As my colleagues and I pointed out in our August 3 letter, “Mr. Rivkin is counsel for Leonard Leo with regard to [the Judiciary] Committee’s investigation into Mr. Leo’s actions to facilitate gifts of free transportation and lodging that Justice Alito accepted from Paul Singer and Robin Arkley II in 2008.”25 Mr. Leo was Justice Alito’s companion on the luxurious Alaskan fishing trip in 2008 and facilitated the gifts to the justice of free transportation and lodging. Two years earlier, Mr. Leo’s political organization “had run an advertising campaign supporting Alito in his confirmation fight, and Leo was reportedly part of the team that prepared Alito for his Senate hearings.”26 …

Improper Use of Judicial Office for Personal Benefit

The final unpleasant fact in this affair is that Justice Alito’s opining, apparently at the behest of his friend and ally’s lawyer, props up an argument being used to block inquiry into undisclosed gifts and travel received by Justice Alito. At the end, Justice Alito is the beneficiary of his own improper opining. This implicates Canon 2(B) strictures against improperly using one’s office to further a personal interest: a justice obstructing a congressional investigation that implicates his own conduct. …

Conclusion


In the worst case facts may reveal, Justice Alito was involved in an organized campaign to block congressional action with regard to a matter in which he has a personal stake. Whether Justice Alito was unwittingly used to provide fodder for such interference, or intentionally participated, is a question whose answer requires additional facts. The heart of any due process is a fair determination of the facts. Uniquely in the whole of government, the Supreme Court has insulated its justices from any semblance of fair fact-finding. The obstructive campaign run by Mr. Rivkin and Mr. Leo, fueled by Justice Alito’s opining, appears intended to prevent Congress from gathering precisely those facts.

As you have repeatedly emphasized, the Supreme Court should not be helpless when it comes to policing its own members’ ethical obligations. But it is necessarily helpless if there is no process of fair fact-finding, nor independent decision-making. I request that you as Chief Justice, or through the Judicial Conference, take whatever steps are necessary to investigate this affair and provide the public with prompt and trustworthy answers.

Sincerely,

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE
Chairman
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights

Sep 19, 2023 #msnbc #supremecourt #clarencethomas

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell shares a “stunning” Senate floor speech given by Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and speaks to him about the potential illegal activity Whitehouse sees in the gifts from billionaires to Supreme Court justices.

09.05.23

WHITEHOUSE LODGES ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO

Complaint follows Justice Alito’s improper public criticism of Whitehouse’s comprehensive Supreme Court ethics reform legislation. Whitehouse wrote directly to Chief Justice Roberts due to SCOTUS’s lack of formal process for receiving or investigating ethics complaints.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, today wrote a letter Chief Justice John Roberts to lodge an ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for violating several canons of judicial ethics.

Whitehouse’s formal complaint follows revelations that Justice Alito accepted but did not disclose gifts of luxury travel and exclusive lodging from right-wing billionaires, one with business before the Court. Justice Alito then made public comments opining on the constitutionality of Whitehouse’s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency legislation to reform the Court’s lax ethics regime, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in July. Justice Alito’s comments also implicated ongoing Senate investigations into Justice Alito’s undisclosed gifts.

“In the worst case facts may reveal, Justice Alito was involved in an organized campaign to block congressional action with regard to a matter in which he has a personal stake. Whether Justice Alito was unwittingly used to provide fodder for such interference, or intentionally participated, is a question whose answer requires additional facts,” wrote Senator Whitehouse to Chief Justice Roberts.

“As you have repeatedly emphasized, the Supreme Court should not be helpless when it comes to policing its own members’ ethical obligations. But it is necessarily helpless if there is no process of fair fact-finding, nor independent decision-making,” continued Whitehouse.

**“I request that you as Chief Justice, or through the Judicial Conference, take whatever steps are necessary to investigate this affair and provide the public with prompt and trustworthy answers,”**concluded Whitehouse.

Whitehouse’s ethics complaint lays out five ways in which Justice Alito appears to have violated the canons of judicial ethics and the Supreme Court’s Statement of Ethics Principles and Practice, to which all sitting justices claimed to subscribe:

  1. Improper Opining on a Legal Issue that May Come Before the Court;
  2. Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter;
  3. Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter at the Behest of Counsel in that Matter;
  4. Improper Intrusion into a Specific Matter Involving an Undisclosed Personal Relationship; and
  5. Improper Use of Judicial Office for Personal Benefit.

Reporting from ProPublica in June found that Justice Alito accepted private jet travel to an all-expenses-paid Alaskan fishing vacation from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. Singer, who has contributed over $80 million to Republican political organizations, subsequently had business before the Court. Alito’s luxury vacation was organized by Leonard Leo, the engineer for a cadre of right-wing billionaires of the current right-wing Supreme Court supermajority. Alito’s lodging on the vacation was provided by the billionaire Robin Arkley II, who funded the launch of Leo’s primary advocacy group in the Court-capture effort, the “Judicial Crisis Network.” Alito did not disclose these gifts on his annual financial disclosure report, as required by federal law.

Justice Alito preemptively responded to ProPublica’s reporting in an unusual, defensive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal before ProPublica published its findings. In the op-ed, Alito argued that a private jet should be considered a “facility” and that a seat on a private plane that would otherwise be empty is fair to accept without reporting on financial disclosure filings.

Whitehouse and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote to Leo, Singer, and Arkley in July seeking to identify the full extent of payments or gifts of travel and lodging given to Supreme Court justices. Leo, through his lawyer David Rivkin, rejected the Committee’s request for information, arguing that “the inquiry exceeds the limits placed by the Constitution on the Committee’s investigative authority.”

Days after the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Whitehouse’s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, Justice Alito, in a bizarre interview with Leonard Leo’s lawyer David Rivkin, stated: “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” Justice Alito’s comments to Rivkin track closely to what Rivkin argued to the Committee on Leo’s behalf.

Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote a letter the following week asking the Chief Justice to take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Alito will recuse himself in any future cases concerning legislation that regulates the Court.

Whitehouse lodged today’s formal complaint as the author of the legislation at issue, and as the only Senator serving in the majority on both the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees which are investigating ethical mishaps by Supreme Court justices. Whitehouse lodged the complaint as a letter to the Chief Justice because, unlike every other federal court, the Supreme Court has no formal process for receiving or investigating such complaints. Whitehouse urged that this complaint be used to forge a proper complaint procedure meeting the due process fundamentals of fair fact-finding and independent decision-making.

Full text of the ethics complaint is below and a PDF can be found here.

Clarence Thomas Twice Attended Koch Network Donor Summits

In previously undisclosed appearances, the justice spoke to attendees at two annual meetings for conservative donors and strategists organized by the Koch network.

By Zach Montague

Sept. 22, 2023, Reporting from Washington, New York Times

Justice Clarence Thomas twice attended an annual donor summit organized by the conservative political network established by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, a spokeswoman for the group confirmed on Friday.

The justice’s presence at the events was earlier reported by ProPublica.

The spokeswoman, Gretchen Reiter, said that Justice Thomas had only attended on those two occasions. He was invited first in 2008 to promote his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” she said, and then to deliver remarks at a small dinner in 2018. She declined to comment on what Mr. Thomas discussed or who was in attendance.

The circumstances of Justice Thomas’s role at an elite donor event organized by a powerful right-wing organization renewed questions about his ethics practices, particularly given that the Koch network has brought several cases before the Supreme Court. One, in 2021, shielded charities in California from a requirement to report the identities of their major donors. In a dissenting opinion, members of the court’s liberal wing argued that the decision in the case had the potential to erode disclosure laws for political donations.

Sep 22, 2023
Another new investigation by Pro Publica raises serious questions over undisclosed connections between Justice Clarence Thomas and powerful people who have brought cases before the Supreme Court. William Brangham talks to ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan about Thomas’ attendance at a Koch Network fundraiser that attracts wealthy, conservative donors.