What is this court “buckling” of which you speak? What legislature is pressuring the court to do anything regarding Thomas?
The reporting failures are the corruption.
If only there were a Democrat in the White House … oh wait.
Except the lack of a House majority. Can the Senate do this? Seriously asking.
SCOTUS gets to decide what justices are :“supposed to do” and it’s not about appearances. None of the liberal justice have gotten bent out of shape about these reporting omissions. I think some of them are a little troubled by his refusal to recuse himself in a case where his wife’s name will come up, and I am too. But this, this seems like a tempest in a teapot, people trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
People are calling for impeachment and legislating the ethical conduct of the judiciary.
I don’t think anyone that knows me would accuse me of being a partisan. Certainly not of being a right leaning partisan.
I think most of the people getting upset about these disclosure failures are somewhat partisan as well. I think the “appearance of impropriety” is a pretty weak foundation for impeachment, but impeachment is political as well.
I’ve never complained about Soros and while I think this should be dealt with but not at the expense of separation of powers or the independence of the judiciary.
I think he might very well understand how bad it looks and maybe that is why he didn’t report but I wouldn’t impeach someone on that or undermine the independence of the judiciary. if his fellow justices don’t see fit to admonish him, I think that’s the end of it.
Everyone seems to have trouble imagining how anyone could actually be shown to be corrupt. I will give an example.
Lets say you are president of the United States and we are about to ship a ton of weapons to Ukraine and right before you ship the weapons, you put a hold on it, call the president of Ukraine and say "gee, it would be a lot cooler if you could open and investigation into my political opponents son. That is corruption.
Lets say you are the president of Ukraine an you wanted the US president to authorize military aid that was within his power to give and you call the president and say, hey Mr USA President, I just opened a federal investigation into your political opponent’s son, on an unrelated note, it sure would be cool if you could send me the military aid that I requested last week.
That is corruption.
Very rich friend gives his moderately rich judge friend lavish gifts but never has a case in his court.
I can’t see the corruption.
I mean the ACLU and federalist society is in front of the court all the time and they routinely provide travel, meals accommodation to probably every justice on the court and noone thinks that is corruption. I think you need more than “gee that guy is suspiciously generous for a ‘friend’” to reach some of the conclusions being reached or call for the sort of actions that are being proposed.
I think this is a separation of powers, independence of the judiciary issue.
You can impeach for whatever reason you want but you will have to face the political consequences of that impeachment if the majority of people think its a bullshit excuse to override the scotus appointment process.
Until Trump was elected, that was not true. I voted for Obama but I am not sure the the country would have disintegrated if Romney or McCain had won. I mean it was true the last election and will be true if Trump is the nominee this election, but if Romney was the nominee, it would be within normal parameters. IMHO.
Frequently the outrage is real. The issue is fantasy but people are actually outraged. People were going to pizzerias without basements to liberate the young children being sex trafficked in the basement by Hillary Clinton.
What about checks and balances. You keep talking only about separation of powers, but checks and balances is just as important in our system of governance. Unchecked power is unconsitutional.
I do not believe you, but if you like, I can ask you again. If Clarence Thomas disagreed with Harlan Crow more, but delivered 90% of the time the result you have determined Harlan Crow wanted, could you see it then? If a few times he didn’t give Harlan Crow a result, then he went on the yacht, then he did?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed the ongoing conversation about whether SCOTUS is bad and needs to suffer consequences?
…so far.
As others have, repeatedly, pointed out upthread, in response to you, there are (at least) two situations in which Crow could be “investing” in influence over Thomas, without having that very literal and narrow definition of “corruption.”
-
Crow is using Thomas as an advocate, within the walls of the Court, for his political and social agenda, and having Thomas work to influence other members of the Court. These may or may not ever directly benefit Crow’s business empire, but could well benefit Crow’s agenda.
-
Crow has been cultivating Thomas as an advocate, in case a case ever comes before the Court that would more directly affect Crow or his business. (Someone upthread gave a quote from The Godfather as an example of this.)
The “corruption” that is already in place is that Crow has given a metric crap-ton of money and gifts to Thomas, which Thomas did not report, leaving Thomas in a position in which a reasonable person could infer that he is indebted to Crow.
If you insist that all of those gifts are only because of their friendship, because there is no obvious smoking gun at this moment, then there’s no use continuing to have this conversation.
It looks bad because it is bad. He didn’t report it because he thought he could get away with it.
Other posters have repeatedly pointed out examples of people with far lesser responsibility going to far greater lengths to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. A SCOTUS justice should have higher standards, not lower (or non-existent) ones. Your assertion that Thomas has done nothing corrupt is bordering on the absurd.
Harlan Crow apparently ‘appreciates being asked,’ but won’t be turning over an accounting of the gifts he’s given to Clarence Thomas:
“Total Cost of Ownership” of a judge is NOT an obscure metric.
They are straight up telling us that they are unaccountable to anyone or anything.
And he did get away with it for an alarmingly long time. All props to ProPublica for doing the work here but this shows the alarming lack of oversight the media should be giving to the government and the people in it.
It’s also horseshit that he’s never had business before the court anyway, incidentally. Believe this has been addressed in this thread.
Note the date stamp on this first one.
It sure seems like you’re absolutely fine with the appearance of corruption as long as there’s no actual proof of a quid pro quo. Many of us feel very, very differently.
I think the emphasis on Russia-gate turned out to be a big nothing burger, he became teflon coated and the Ukraine thing which was pretty damn close to treason just slid off of him.
I bet a lot of things become more likely if you are a supreme court justice.
We all realize that Clarence Thomas and Ginny Thomas are worth over 100 million dollars between them, right? At least according to their financial disclosure. I don’t think they would spend $500K for a private plane flight but they can afford a luxury lifestyle.
Depending on your perspective, different groups are “the assholes”
I am absolutely concerned with and disapprove of the failure to report and frankly the gifts are too generous to be overlooked but there is a lot of hysteria surrounding this issue.
The senate is holding hearings and talking about legislating ethics for the judiciary.
That is not corruption in the ordinary sense. I usually involves the sale of official action or at least abuse of power.
They did it last week. You can probably find the hearings in CSPAN archives.
The check on the judiciary is:
- the executive and legislative branches nominate and confirm federal judges.
- The legislature can impeach judges.
That’s it. The independence of the judiciary is THAT important.
Almost every country in the world has a constitution that looks a lot like ours but very few have the independent judiciary that we do. Losing even a little bit of that would be a bad idea in my opinion.
I think this might be the result of a difference in definition of corruption. I think we can both agree that corruption is more than “shady stuff my political opponents do” I don’t think a guy with $100 million is going to become a puppet for the sake of $133K or a free trip on a nice yacht. I can buy the subconscious influence argument maybe but I don’t believe that Thomas is making these decisions because he wants to ride on big yachts.
I don’t think this is a discussion about SCOTUS being bad and needing to suffer consequences. I think this is mostly a discussion about a particular justice being bad and needing to suffer consequences.
And when that time comes he should recuse, just as he should recuse in cases involving his wife. You’re allowed to have friends and your wife is allowed to have a career and political views of her own. But you should not sit in a case involving your close personal friends or your wife.
If you are conceding there is no evidence of actual corruption, and only a hypothetical conflict that might occur at some point in the future then, I’m not sure what your argument was other than
“well he has wealthy friends that have been very generous to him and those friends might one day have business before the court and if he sat in those cases, he would have a conflict and so he might be corrupt one day”
I mean if that’s your argument then, I don’t think its very persuasive.
I think this has a lot to do with your expansive definition of corrupt.
OK, so then what is the apparent corruption?
That he’s been hiding hundreds of thousands, if not more, in personal gifts from a billionaire Republican donor.
I wanted to respond to this one separately.
The fact that Harlan Crow is associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the American Enterprise institute files amicus briefs where they are not a party and do not have any direct interest in the outcome of the case; does not mean Harlan Crow has business before the court any more than people associated with the ACLU or NARAL have business before the court. I think every justice of the supreme court has taken money, meals and accommodations from the ACLU or the federalist society or some organization like that and they consistently file amicus brief.
Also I don’t think you can recuse yourself from NOT granting certiorari, I mean you can’t do it mechanically. I believe it takes 4 affirmative votes to grant certiorari, unless you are saying that Thomas has an obligation to affirmatively grant certiorari to anyone suing a friend, then I don’t know what he was expected to do.
No, I meant that there is no evidence of a direct quid pro quo, which seems to be the only thing you’ll accept as evidence of corruption.
Accepting lavish gifts from a person who is a well-known political contributor, and a well-known supporter of political groups, while willfully not reporting any of them, is also corruption – in my opinion, and in the opinion of many here.
And, we don’t know (and will probably never learn) if Thomas did take actions at Crow’s behest, such as attempting to influence other members of the Court on particular cases.
This may be a definitional issue.
Corruption usually involves an abuse of power or the sale of official acts.
Failure to report is not what I normally think of as corruption. Unethical behavior is not always corruption.
Even if that failure to report is systemic, willful, ongoing, and involves hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts?
I don’t see where you get that, and I think it matters.
I’m looking at his 2022 Disclosure (CY2021) (PDF)
and get an asset total of between $865,009.00 and $1,875,000, with no clear liabilities. I’m sure there’s equity in their house. What am I missing?
The bribes…