If you get an e-mail from an organization asking you to send them money to help force Clarence Thomas to be removed from the Supreme Court, you should unsubscribe. They’re preying on your (righteous) anger. There’s nothing they can do to force Thomas to resign or to get him impeached by a Republican-led House. Your contribution is probably going to paying the salaries of the people doing the work at the organization, which is fine… if they’d say that’s what the contribution is for.
Yesterday, Phil Bump wrote about an aspect of the Clarence Thomas problem— without asking for a contribution: Fox News isn’t talking about Clarence Thomas much, despite the Justice covering up at least a million dollars in bribes from right-wing (umm… Nazi) billionaire Harlan Crow. A national conversation has centered “on renewed questions about the standards of behavior to which members of the nation’s highest court are subjected. If you are a consumer of Fox News, though, you might not have heard about any of this.”
The little that Fox has covered the controversy has been to blame Democrats for attacking him. Bump: “Democrats are attacking him, wanting to impeach him, playing politics. The story isn’t about what Thomas is accused of, it’s about how Democrats are exploiting what he’s accused of— accusations that aren’t themselves robustly presented. As of writing, there have been no stories at Fox News about Crow’s buying property from Thomas. There have also been no stories about Crow’s predilection for buying and displaying Nazi artifacts. As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote this week, Republicans are much more likely to give Thomas a pass on the new revelations than are Americans overall. Republicans are also half as likely as Democrats to say they’ve heard a lot about the Thomas story.”
This is a classic stalemate situation we’re facing— and Thomas will just play possum ’til it goes away and the outrage dissipates or is displaced by the next example of American governmental dysfunction. Oh— and what I said about organizations asking you for money to help get rid of Thomas, that doesn’t count CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), which has actually filed a civil and criminal complaint against Thomas. I doubt anything will come of it, but it’s not a scam. CREW President Noah Bookbinder: “Justice Thomas’s acceptance of and failure to disclose these repeated, lavish gifts and shocking real estate sales not only undermines public trust in his ability to serve impartially on the Court, it undermines confidence in the Supreme Court as an institution.” You can read the complaint here.
Under the Ethics in Government Act, Thomas is required to disclose travel and other gifts, with the source and a brief description, including the value. The Guide to Judiciary Policy for Financial Disclosure in effect at the time the trips were taken makes it clear that these trips were covered by the reporting requirements. While Thomas claims a hospitality exemption, that exemption would not apply to a private plane or yacht. Under the EIGA and Guide to Judiciary Policy for Financial Transaction, Thomas was required to report the sale of the properties to Crow and could not claim a personal residence exemption on disclosing them, as they were always referred to as rental properties on his disclosures and never lost their investment nature even when the houses on two of the properties were later torn down.
The Judicial Conference Gift Regulations implement 5 USC §§ 7351 and 7353, which prohibit Thomas from accepting a gift from someone whose personal interests may be substantially affected by the Court or if it is being offered for Thomas’s private gain. The fact that Crow purchased Thomas’s childhood home for the purpose of preserving it as a potential museum site honoring Thomas only adds to the egregiousness of the apparent violation. Other gifts received from Crow or organizations he is affiliated with–such as a $19,000 Frederick Douglass bible and a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln–also need to be taken into consideration.
“Justice Thomas has accepted consistent and luxurious gifts to such an extent that they have subsidized his lifestyle in a way unimaginable for most judges, suggesting a use of his position for personal gain and a compromise of his objectivity,” Bookbinder said. “The Supreme Court has the final say on every legal case in America, so every justice must have the highest ethical standards to serve. Justice Thomas appears to have failed to uphold those standards and needs to be investigated immediately.”
The complaint was signed by Bookbinder and CREW Chief Ethics Counsel Virginia Canter. CREW was joined on the complaint by former chief White House ethics lawyers Norm Eisen and Richard Painter.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Theoretically there is: defeat every conservative running for Congress, especially the Senate. Defeating Ted Cruz (TX), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Rick Scott (FL) and Josh Hawley (MO) and replacing them with progressives— while protecting Democratic incumbents in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Montana, even Nevada— would put the fear of God in the Republicans like nothing we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes. My best guess is that Sinema is likely to be replaced by Ruben Gallego and that Lucas Kunce has a shot at replacing Hawley. Other than that… pray.