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Tag: center for security policy
Exposé Reveals Ginni Thomas' Financial And Political Ties To Court Litigants

Exposé Reveals Ginni Thomas' Financial And Political Ties To Court Litigants

A bombshell exposé by an award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep look into lobbyist and far right wing activist and conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas, and the ties she has to people, groups – and money – that have or may have business before the U.S. Supreme Court, on which her conservative husband sits.

“Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer asks point-blank. “Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.”

Mayer writes that “Ginni Thomas has declared that America is in existential danger because of the ‘deep state’ and the ‘fascist left,’ which includes ‘transsexual fascists.'”

But that’s just a small piece of her massive reporting.

“Ginni Thomas’s political activism has caused controversy for years. For the most part, it has been dismissed as the harmless action of an independent spouse. But now the Court appears likely to secure victories for her allies in a number of highly polarizing cases—on abortion, affirmative action, and gun rights,” Mayer reveals.

How bad and how close are these ties? Thomas, unbeknownst to almost anyone, was “an undisclosed paid consultant at the conservative pressure group the Center for Security Policy, when its founder, Frank Gaffney, submitted an amicus brief to the Court supporting Trump’s Muslim travel ban.”

Did Justice Clarence Thomas know? Did the couple discuss the case, or her financial and political ties? No one knows.

And that’s just one example. Mayer notes that Ginni Thomas “has held leadership positions at conservative pressure groups that have either been involved in cases before the [Supreme] Court or have had members engaged in such cases.”

“In 2019, she announced a political project called Crowdsourcers, and said that one of her four partners would be the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe. Project Veritas tries to embarrass progressives by making secret videos of them, and last year petitioned the Court to enjoin Massachusetts from enforcing a state law that bans the surreptitious taping of public officials.

Another partner in Crowdsourcers, Ginni Thomas said in her announcement, was Cleta Mitchell, the chairman of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election-law nonprofit. It, too, has had business before the Court, filing amicus briefs in cases centering on the democratic process. Thomas also currently serves on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars, a group promoting conservative values in academia, which has filed an amicus brief before the Court in a potentially groundbreaking affirmative-action lawsuit against Harvard.”

Should Americans be concerned? Should Justice Thomas? Should Chief Justice John Roberts?

“If Ginni Thomas is intimately involved—financially or ideologically tied to the litigant—that strikes me as slicing the baloney a little thin,” David Luban, a professor of law and philosophy at Georgetown, who specializes in legal ethics, tells Mayer.Surely Justice Thomas has the ability to separate his work and home life, right?

“Even before” Clarence Thomas’ controversial and contentious confirmation hearing, which included the accusations – labeled “credible” by many – from Anita Hill, “a friend told the WashingtonPost, the couple was so bonded that ‘the one person [Clarence] really listens to is Virginia.'”

In 2019 then-Congressman Mark Meadows, who because White House Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump and now appears to have been intimately involved in aspects of the January 6 insurrection, told members of a “nonprofit that mobilizes conservative evangelical voters” that “Ginni was talking about how we ‘team up,’ and we actually have teamed up. And I’m going to give you something you won’t hear anywhere else—we worked through the first five days of the impeachment hearings.”

Mayer adds, “Ginni Thomas has her own links to the January 6th insurrection.”

The nearly 7000 word deep dive can be read here.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Why did Bachmann Listen to A Right-Wing Extremist Who Wants to Criminalize Islam?

Congressional Republicans — including presidential candidate Michele Bachmann — are listening to a right-wing extremist who believes all Muslims must be deported because the United States is engaged in a “just war” against Muslims, according to a new report from watchdog group Right Wing Watch.

David Yerushalmi, founder of the Islamophobic organization SANE and general counsel for the neoconservative Center for Security Policy, believes that “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization” and the United States must treat Muslims as enemy soldiers. Among other things, Yerushalmi wants to make it a crime to practice Islam. Specifically, he wants the U.S. to pass the following laws:

– It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.

– The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.

– The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.

– No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the United States of America.

Yerushalmi’s organization includes a retired Air Force colonel who serves as “Director of Military Affairs” (it’s a war, remember?) and believes that “Americans must now accept that all weapons and targets are justly within” the scope of the war he wants to wage against Islam. Even neoconservatives like former President Bush took pains to explain that they were not engaged in a war against Muslims, just Muslim terrorists. Yerushalmi, on the other hand, believes the United States must start a War on Muslims.

If Yerushalmi’s fringe views remained out of the mainstream, they might not matter. But according to the American Prospect, Yerushalmi was consulted as an “expert” on Islamic law in a report presented to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), and Trent Franks (R-AZ), which attacked President Obama for making a distinction between Muslims and terrorists.

Of course, this does not mean that Bachmann, Hoekstra, and Franks fervently agree with all of Yerushalmi’s views. Bachmann, a female presidential candidate, probably does not agree with Yerushalmi’s argument that “there is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.” But she and other Republicans refuse to distance themselves from Yerushalmi and the other anti-Muslim bigots who advise them. Ironically, they prefer to hold hearings that (falsely) accuse Muslims of failing to distance themselves from Muslim extremists and cooperate in investigations of terrorists.