More evidence for the need of an ethics board to govern the SC.

It will be interesting to see how well this assertion ages.

 

McConnell says Trump fueled 'candidate quality' problems ...
https://www.nbcnews.com › politics › 2022-election

Dec 13, 2022 — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump's endorsements in important 2022 primaries ...

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s endorsements in important 2022 primaries contributed to the nominations of poor candidates who fell short in swing states.

He made the remarks at his weekly news conference, responding to a question from NBC News about whether he intends to play a more active role in selecting candidates in the 2024 election cycle, when Republicans have a friendlier map.

“We ended up having a candidate quality test,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters about the 2022 election. “Look at Arizona. Look at New Hampshire. And the challenging situation in Georgia, as well,” he said, mentioning states where Trump-endorsed candidates won their primaries and lost to Democrats in the general election.

In a rare move, McConnell explicitly identified Trump’s influence as being problematic in the key Senate races.

“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in ’22 because the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries. So my view was do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt. Now, hopefully, in the next cycle we’ll have quality candidates everywhere and a better outcome.”. . . .

 

We shall see, but if PF members comments here are any indication, such as those contesting your endorsement of Hutchinson, of the general mood of Trump’s still hungry support, then perhaps you and Mitch will be unpleasantly, surprised?

 

We shall see.

 

The only chance for the POT to put up higher quality candidates is to get a broader swatch of the Repub electorate to participate in the primaries. Otherwise, the Crazy will keep its grip on who makes it to the general elections. A collection of climate change denying, authoritarian leaning, anti-abortion extremists who continue to support positions that are unpopular with the majority of voters.

 

We shall see.

 

Ethics Watchdog Urges Justice Department Investigation Into Clarence Thomas’ Trips

A Washington ethics watchdog is calling for the Department of Justice to investigate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for failing to disclose luxury trips he received from a billionaire GOP megadonor.

“This high-profile ethics matter has historic implications far beyond one Supreme Court justice,” attorneys for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center wrote in a detailed letter on Tuesday to the Judicial Conference, the principal policymaking body for federal courts. The Judicial Conference could trigger an investigation by referring the case to the Justice Department.

The financial disclosure law that covers justices and other federal officials states that “knowingly and willfully” failing to make required disclosures can result in fines. If someone intentionally falsifies their disclosure reports, they can face criminal penalties — a warning printed below the signature line of the reports themselves. But such prosecutions are rare.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ment-investigation-into-clarence-thomas-trips

Something in between impeachment and nothing must be established.

 

Under the circumstances, those being both the illegal and unethical acts of Thomas coming further to light, do you care to amend your uninformed response?

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.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/clarence-thomas-disclosure-history-jurisprudence.html

 

Not a bit.

 

Roy Cohn would be proud.

 

Sorry, but irrelevant name-dropping has no effect.

 

Not my fault if you are unaware of quotes attributed to Cohn.

 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly has been claiming thousands of dollars annually from a shuttered real estate firm

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported on financial disclosure forms that his family has earned thousands of dollars in rental income from a Nebraska real estate firm that has been shuttered since 2006, according to a report by the Washington Post Sunday.

Thomas has reported income from a firm called Ginger, Ltd., Partnership over the last two decades, but in 2006 it was shut down and replaced by a new firm, the report said. The new firm, Ginger Holdings, LLC, is similarly named, but there is no mention of it in Thomas’ records.

In recent years, Thomas reportedly continued to disclose between $50,000 and $100,000 in income from the old firm annually.

Even if the misstatement can be reduced to a paperwork error, it marks the latest question around the justice’s financial practices after a recent ProPublica report revealed Thomas has accepted secret luxury trips from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow for more than two decades in apparent violation of a financial disclosure law.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/16/cla...nually-from-a-shuttered-real-estate-firm.html

If the reporting is accurate it's more reason for an investigation.

 

Not someone worth my time or interest.

 

No, it is not.

 

Uh, oh, Thomas is going to amend his disclosure statement, including the non-disclosed real estate deal with Crow:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/politics/clarence-thomas-amend-disclosure-gop-megadonor/index.html

Now, the questions are: If it didn't need to be disclosed, why the amendment? Why didn't he disclose in the first place? Looks to me that he was caught with the hand in the cookie jar and now is trying to make it go away.

Have fun, conservatives, with your defense of this.

 

As I suspected, the claims about Thomas have more to do with slipshod reporting than they do with anything Thomas did.
The Truth About Clarence Thomas’ Disclosures
James Taranto, Wall St. Journal




He reported carefully on his inherited real estate. ProPublica’s reporting was slipshod and incurious. Read More

". . . The reporters’ error involves a confusion about what Justice Thomas did disclose. “By the early 2000s,” ProPublica reports, “he had stopped listing specific addresses of property he owned in his disclosures. But he continued to report holding a one-third interest in what he described as ‘rental property at ## 1, 2, & 3’ in Savannah.” It’s worth noting—ProPublica doesn’t—that the filing instructions (on page 32) prescribe disclosing rental properties in precisely this manner. . . . "

 

Please see #167.

 

Clarence Thomas to amend financial disclosure forms to reflect sale to GOP megadonor

Justice Clarence Thomas intends to amend his financial disclosure forms to reflect a 2014 real estate deal he made with a GOP megadonor – an acknowledgment that the transaction should have been disclosed almost a decade ago, a source close to Thomas tells CNN.

The deal between Thomas and Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and long-time friend of Thomas, involves the sale of three Georgia properties, including the home where Thomas’ mother, Leola Williams, 94, currently lives.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/politics/clarence-thomas-amend-disclosure-gop-megadonor/index.html

GOP megadonor Harlan Crow isn't charging Clarence Thomas' mother rent. Zillow estimates suggest that would have saved her $155,000 since 2014.

Clarence Thomas' mother is living rent-free in the home GOP megadonor Harlan Crow bought from the family, according to CNN.

And that deal may have saved her more than $150,000 in rent for the property, according to Zillow estimates.

Last week, ProPublica revealed Crow's undisclosed 2014 purchase of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' childhood home in Savannah, Georgia — part of a widening scandal around Thomas and Crow's close relationship.

An occupancy agreement allows Thomas' 94-year-old mother, Leola Williams, to stay in the home without paying rent for the rest of her life, CNN reported. While Williams doesn't pay rent, she's responsible for other expenses such as property taxes and insurance, CNN added.
https://www.businessinsider.com/harlan-crow-clarence-thomas-mother-isnt-being-charged-rent-2023-4

I'd ask if these revelations give you pause that your "nothing to see here" approach might be in error but like Roy Cohn, who famously thought one should "Deflect and distract, never give in, never admit fault," my guess is they won't.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/19/roy-cohn-donald-trump-documentary-228144/

 

Yes. All covered in the link at #167. No harm, no foul.

 

And yet, he is amending his financial disclosure. A do over so he won't be in violation of..... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5a/compiledact-95-521/title-I/section-104

But, you know, him being a conservative and all.........no harm no foul is the mantra.

 

I believe this might be the defense. But, it's still pretty shady even if it may be technically within the rules. Why is a donor letting his mother live rent-free on the property Thomas sold him? I understand the argument that Thomas says he sold the property for a loss therefore he didn't have to report income from the sale. But, this is definitely shady and I don't like it.

 

From the link at #167:
". . . Some facts are known and undisputed. Mr. Crow, a Dallas developer and friend of the justice, confirmed in a written statement to ProPublica that Savannah Historic Development LLC, a company he established, bought “the childhood home of Justice Thomas,” which Mr. Crow plans to convert into a museum “telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice.” Public documents show that the company paid Anderson’s heirs a total of $133,363 for the Savannah house and two adjacent empty lots. According to ProPublica, Justice Thomas’s mother, 94-year-old Leola Williams, lived in the house at least until 2020 and possibly still does.

Assuming Justice Thomas received one-third of the sale price (or any amount more than $1,000), the text of the federal financial-disclosure statute would require him to have reported the transaction in Part VII (“Investments and Trusts”) of his annual AO-10 form for 2014. He didn’t do so and may need to file an amended form.

But my review of Justice Thomas’s disclosures and other documents convinces me that any failure to disclose was an honest mistake. On all other matters involving his scanty real-estate inheritance, he followed the Filing Instructions for Judicial Officers and Employees, prepared by the Committee on Financial Disclosures of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Those instructions don’t make clear the statutory obligation to disclose the 2014 transaction.

Further, the ProPublica troika made a sloppy reporting error, the effect of which is to cast Justice Thomas’s disclosures in a falsely unfavorable light—to make them look shambolic or perhaps even dishonest when in fact they followed the filing instructions without fail.

The reporters’ error involves a confusion about what Justice Thomas did disclose. “By the early 2000s,” ProPublica reports, “he had stopped listing specific addresses of property he owned in his disclosures. But he continued to report holding a one-third interest in what he described as ‘rental property at ## 1, 2, & 3’ in Savannah.” It’s worth noting—ProPublica doesn’t—that the filing instructions (on page 32) prescribe disclosing rental properties in precisely this manner.

The story continues: “Two of the houses were torn down around 2010, according to property records and a footnote in Thomas’ annual disclosure archived by Free Law Project.” That footnote in Justice Thomas’s 2010 disclosure states in full: “Part VII, Line 2 - Two of the Georgia rental properties have been torn down. The only remaining property is an old house in Liberty County.”. . . ."

 

Please see #167 and #173.

 

It's not like Harlan Crow is some apolitical pal of Thomas. He CONSTANTLY has cases before the court. He funds groups that argue for outcomes that benefit him. One group, CCI, filed 8 briefs before the Court. Thomas sided with Crow in all 8 cases.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1644007271096102913?s=20