RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Conservative judges really get upset when we know to much

by KATELYNN RICHARDSON


Media reports on alleged scandals surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas reveal the Left’s desire to destroy his credibility, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

After the ProPublica report on Thomas’ acceptance of expense-paid trips from his friend, billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow, which Thomas said his colleagues assured him was not reportable, multiple other reports were released accusing Thomas of wrongdoing. Lawyers told the Daily Caller News Foundation the reports are incomplete, amounting to a smear campaign aimed at swaying public perception, joining two federal judges who also criticized the reports this week. (RELATED: ‘Big Breathless Nothingburger’: Conservative Legal Scholars, Lawmakers Blast ‘Partisan’ Justice Thomas Report )

“With each new hit piece, the Left is revealing its true motive: to impugn Justice Thomas by any means necessary, no matter how ridiculous the charge,” Carrie Severino, JCN President and former clerk to Justice Thomas, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.


The Washington Post published a story on Sunday on Justice Thomas reporting income from a “defunct real estate firm” on his financial disclosures. The “defunct” company that ceased to exist in 2006 — Ginger, Ltd., Partnership —changed its name that same year to operate as Ginger Holdings, LLC.

“The Washington Post should consider covering the Biden Administration with the vigor they put into investigating whether Justice Thomas wrote LLC or LLP,” Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted, reacting to the story.

Because critics of Thomas cannot argue his approach or decisions are legally incorrect, they “drop innuendos and incomplete information” to hope “uninformed people will assume the worst,” Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow for Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the DCNF [Daily Caller News Foundation].

“Justice Thomas’ critics cannot convince the public that his approach to judging or his individual decisions are legally incorrect, so they and their media enablers drop innuendos and incomplete information, hoping…that uninformed people will assume the worst,” he continued. “Falsely smearing a judge whose decisions left-wing groups and politicians don’t like will further erode the public’s confidence in the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.”

ProPublica published a story last week on Crow’s purchase of a single-story home where the justice’ mother lived, along with two empty lots on the same street in Savannah, Georgia, which Crow told the outlet he intended to turn into a public museum telling the justice’s story.

Thomas will amend his disclosure to include Crow’s purchase of the home, which he believed was not necessary to report because he lost money on the deal, a source close to Thomas told CNN on Monday.

Though the story prompted Democratic senators to request the DOJ launch an investigation, Jipping pointed out it, along with the others, doesn’t actually prove wrongdoing.

“Justice Thomas did not report personal hospitality from longtime friends that he was not required to report,” he said. “He reported rental income but failed to fill in the new name of the property owner. He reported his small financial interest in property he co-owned for years but apparently not when the property was sold.”

“It is beneath the media and our elected representatives to collude in suggesting that matters like these, and not the merits of Justice Thomas’ judging, are important to the [American] people,” he continued.

Crow himself told the Dallas Morning news he believed it was a “political hit job.”

Two federal judges have also criticized the reporting. Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho, who previously clerked for Thomas, defended him during Tuesday remarks to a Dallas Federalist Society chapter, according to Reason.

He noted there is a “big difference between actual corruption and the appearance of corruption,” pointing to a Wall Street Journal report from 2021 alleging over 100 judges failed to recuse themselves from cases where they had a financial interest.

“It showed that judges are imperfect human beings, like everyone else,” he said, referring to the story. “But I don’t recall anyone calling for all of these judges to be impeached or punished.”

Ho said he welcomed discussion about strengthening ethics and disclosure requirements, but rejected “hypocritical double standards.”

Third Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman also criticized ProPublica’s initial report, which alleged Thomas violated ethics rules by failing to disclose acceptance of expense-paid trips from Crow, dismissing the idea that it is a “scandal.”

“[T]here was no intimation at any time, ever, that his billionaire friend ever had any business before the Supreme Court. So, how’s he helping his friend?” he said at an April 12th event, according to the National Review. “He’s not even in a position to help his friend because his friend had exactly zero cases in the Supreme Court.”

Yeah the whole staying at a wealthy friends house wouldn’t be an issue but again more than that is going on so you can’t even acknowledge the extent of the gift giving we know Thomas received. Thomas has had decades at the court where it’s easy to understand why a wealthy billionaire would like to be buying houses and letting Thomas’s mom live in for free. Or paying expensive tuition for exclusive schools for a child Thomas had guardianship of. All that besides the paid for luxury vacations. Without giving Thomas a gift or money outright that he wouldn’t be able to accept, huge amounts of money is being used to help Thomas in other ways instead. That is unethical.

Indeed, Stern’s attack rests on the rickety notion that Alito is trying to conceal something from the public. When he claims, “you must dig through [Ailito’s] financial disclosures,” what he really means is opening the “Fix the Court” website (or just following the press release that likely gave him the idea for the piece in the first place) and looking at the justice’s publicly available disclosure. In this case, to “dig” means — generously speaking — five minutes of time.

And since this isn’t the first instance that Alito has recused himself in a case involving Phillips, the grounds for recusal are “obvious.” That doesn’t stop Stern from framing the lack of an explanation as some kind of major ethical lapse. To do so, he juxtaposes Alito’s recusal with Elena Kagan’s recent explanation of recusal in Holland v. Florida without any relevant context.

In Holland v. Florida, Kagan might have become the first justice to offer an official explanation for a recusal in history. Good for her. Alito conducted himself in the same manner that hundreds of justices have conducted themselves in thousands of other recusal cases. Since Roberts sent his ethics statement to Congress, there have been 11 recusals in the Supreme Court without any corresponding explanation — not something Alito’s accusers deem worthy of mentioning.

Instead, Stern claims that “Kagan was never the problem” (she’s even turned down free bagels from her high school friends, she’s so virtuous.) Her explanation for recusal was simply “(prior government employment),” which, explains Stern, is “a shorter way of saying that she participated in the proceedings while serving as solicitor general.”

Kagan should have eaten those bagels and recused herself from NFIB v. Sebelius and King v. Burwell, cases revolving around a national reform law and mandate for which her office had “mounted an early and aggressive effort to prepare for legal challenges to the individual insurance mandate,” according to The Hill. That was more than enough for her to sit those cases out. But since the Obama administration refused to turn over all emails related to the case, we can also strongly suspect Kagan had personally lent her expertise in anticipation of legal challenges.

As usual, it’s all just Calvinball. For instance, while Alito’s recusal over a disclosed stock is a big ethical problem, Sonia Sotomayor failing to recuse herself from multiple cases involving a publisher who paid her over $3 million while she was on the court is just fine.

For the record, justices shouldn’t be compelled to automatically bow out of cases involving companies or industries they’ve dealt with unless there is a genuine and clear conflict of interest. None of these attacks have ever produced a single case in which an originalist justice has strayed from their beliefs to help a company, person, or industry, much less themselves. Then again, the ugly irony of the Democrat’s attacks is that their anger is fueled by the principled judicial philosophy of certain justices.

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David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.