Tag: ginni thomas
Ginni And Clarence

Growing Pressure On Thomas To Recuse From Trump Cases (VIDEO)

The Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot is almost certainly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. When it gets there, Justice Clarence Thomas should not be allowed to participate in the court’s deliberations. That’s the message from retired Judge LaDoris Cordell, discussing the issue on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes Tuesday night.

“There should be only eight justices on the Supreme Court hearing this case when it comes up,” Cordell told Hayes.

I say that because Clarence Thomas has no business hearing this case. Why? Because his wife was a major player in the whole insurrection. And he should, he should, if he had principles, recuse himself. But I will guarantee you this: Clarence Thomas will recuse himself when Ginni flies.

That’s where Chief Justice John Roberts comes in: If Thomas won’t recuse himself, Roberts has to make it happen. That’s the message Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent to the chief justice on Tuesday. It was sent before the Colorado court ruled, but it remains relevant. The Democratic Judiciary Committee member urged Roberts to “take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Clarence Thomas recuses himself” from one of the other pending cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“The federal recusal statute requires that any ‘justice, judge, or magistrate judge … shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’” Blumenthal writes. “In addition, recusal is required when a Justice ‘or his spouse … is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; [or i]s to the judge’s knowledge likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.’”

There’s precedent, as Blumenthal points out. Back in October, Thomas recused from deliberations as to whether the court should take an appeal from John Eastman, the architect of many of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election who was also a close contact of Ginni Thomas. That might be precisely why Thomas recused: The appeal was over the release of emails to the House Jan. 6 committee, and plenty of those emails would have been between Ginni Thomas and Eastman. With the Jan. 6 committee long disbanded, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal and Thomas didn’t explain why he didn’t participate in that decision.

Blumenthal cited that recusal in his letter to Robert, saying it was “proper” and should be repeated, in this case regarding the pending case concerning Trump’s presidential immunity from prosecution. He wrote that considering “Mrs. Thomas’s involvement in challenging the 2020 election results, Justice Thomas’s impartiality in a related case ‘might reasonably be questioned,’ giving rise, at a minimum, to an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

House Democrats have also weighed in, directly asking Thomas to recuse. As Cordell says, he’ll do that “when Ginni flies.” Roberts needs to make it happen. As Blumenthal points out in his letter, Roberts and the court just made a big point of releasing a code of conduct, which they insist has been informally guiding the justices all along. As Blumenthal points out, though, it “very unfortunately does not provide any enforcement mechanism,” but “it mirrors the statutory standard for recusal.” If Thomas won’t do it himself, Blumenthal tell Roberts, “it is incumbent upon you to assure that the Code is followed to ‘dispel the misunderstanding’ that ‘Justices … regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.’”

That’s true for the immunity question. It’s true for this Colorado case and for any case coming to the court involving Trump’s—and Ginni Thomas’—efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Ginni And Clarence

Why Is The Supreme Court Looking For Ways To Excuse A Violent Insurrectionist?

The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear an appeal by a January 6 defendant on the scope of the charge against him for obstructing an official government proceeding. Many if not most January 6 defendants were charged under the same law, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which makes it illegal to corruptly obstruct, delay, impede or influence any official proceeding. The charge against these defendants, nearly all of whom have been found guilty of violating the statute, relates to their attempts to delay or stop altogether the counting and certification of electoral ballots by the Congress on January 6.

The Congressional proceeding to accomplish its duties under the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution was delayed on January 6, as both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, were forced to go into recess during their separate certification of ballots due to the mob that threatened to overrun both chambers. The Senate chamber was occupied by Trump supporters, but the House chamber, protected by armed guards, was not successfully invaded and occupied.

Joseph Fischer isn’t just any January 6 defendant. According to the charges brought against him by the Department of Justice, he urged fellow rioters to “charge” and “hold the line” during the assault on the Capitol. He also entered the Capitol building, yet another illegal act on January 6. In texts he sent to other rioters, Fischer claimed he was going “to war” to send “democratic Congress to the gallows.” Members of Congress, Fischer texted, “Can’t vote if they can’t breathe ... lol.” Which sounds a lot like threatening the lives of members of Congress in the Democratic Party.

The fact that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal by Joseph Fischer, a former police officer who is also charged with having “a physical encounter” with a Capitol Police officer, is significant because the obstruction statute at issue is one of the four laws Donald Trump is charged with having broken on January 6 and before. Trump’s lawyers will no doubt seek a delay in his trial date while the Supreme Court hears arguments and decides the appeal by Fischer.

Trump faces charges under both 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) and 18 U.S.C § 1512 (k), which is a conspiracy charge related to the other 1512 count. Charges against Trump under both statutes could be affected if the Supreme Court decides that they do not apply to the actions taken on Jan. 6 that resulted in the disruption of the counting and certification of electoral ballots.

Trump faces two other charges that would not be affected by this Supreme Court challenge. He is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 371, which makes it illegal for any two people to conspire to commit an offense against the United States or defraud the United States. The Supreme Court has previously defined “defraud” as “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government.” The department of government in this case would be the Congress.

Trump also faces charges under 18 U.S.C. § 241, which makes it illegal for “two or more persons [to] conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” The right under the Constitution that Trump is charged with threatening under this statute was the right of all citizens to vote and have their votes accurately counted. Interfering with the counting and certification of electoral ballots, awarded to candidates voted for in an election, would apply in this statute.

Another reason cited by the Supreme Court to take the appeal is to determine whether the actions taken by Fischer were “corrupt.” Assaulting the Congress on January 6 may sound like it would be “corrupt” on its face, but there are variations in how the court has defined “corrupt” in the past. One definition requires only that an action be “wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil.” A second definition requires that an action be taken with “corrupt purpose or through independently corrupt means, or both.” Yet a third definition requires that the conduct must result in “financial gain or other benefit to oneself or a benefit of another person.” Again, the attack on the Capitol, or Trump’s actions would appear to “benefit” Trump in his goal to overturn the results of the 2024 election. But that’s the problem with the Supreme Court in general, and this Supreme Court in particular.

They could choose to define “benefit” or “actions” or even “corrupt purpose” any way they want, and one or more definitions might be used to exclude Fischer’s and Trump’s conduct.

The main question is, why did the Supreme Court take this case in the first place? The Justice Department has pointed out that the defendant making the appeal, and two others who signed on to the same appeal, have not gone to trial on the charges against them for obstruction. The Supreme Court could have taken up a case challenging the obstruction charge after the defendants are found guilty. That the court did not wait until this eventuality suggests that they were fishing for a case that might affect the charges against Trump. Or maybe not. Maybe they’re just so worried about the rights of Joseph Fischer, who advocated taking Democratic members of Congress to the “gallows,” that they just had to decide on his rights under the law right now.

Under the Supreme Court’s normal rules in this case, which was not filed under the expedited conditions as the Special Counsel’s filing for certiorari earlier this week, means that the court will schedule submissions of briefs and oral arguments for sometime early in 2024 and may not issue a decision until June.

Meanwhile, Trump will be campaigning on his lie that the entire case against him was ordered by Joe Biden – which it wasn’t – and that the case is election interference – which it is not.

So here we go, folks. Yet another instance in which the future of our democracy is in the hands of a very conservative Supreme Court, on which sits a Justice whose wife was intimately involved in trying to influence what happened on January 6, and who will no doubt refuse to recuse himself.

All of which means our votes next November will be more important than ever.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Ginni And Clarence

How Ginni Thomas And Leonard Leo Used Dark Money To Build The Far Right

Politico’s Heidi Pryzybyla has new reporting that delves deep into the dark money network judicial activist Leonard Leo has constructed, shining a light on the most pernicious corner of it: his collusion with Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas.

There’s a lot of meat in this new report, but the timeline Pryzybyla lays out is the most instructive—and damning—evidence of Leo’s scheme to remake the judiciary and overturn long-standing legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action, and many other issues. He shows how he used Thomas as his “in” to the Supreme Court, turning the court into his tool with the billions he has amassed from anonymous donors. It also demonstrates the extent to which the Thomases are funded by the conservative network.

The timeline is critical, opening up potential new avenues of investigation for Congress and law enforcement. In September 2009, the court’s conservative majority decided to expand the scope of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, from determining whether the anti-Hillary Clinton documentary created by the nonprofit Citizens United violated campaign finance laws to whether they should use it to overturn previous decisions approving campaign finance laws. In November 2009, Cleta Mitchell—yes, Big Lie lawyer Cleta Mitchell—filed paperwork with the IRS to create a new nonprofit: Liberty Central Inc.

Liberty Central was the prototype organization created by the eventual Supreme Court decision, which was handed down in January 2010. It declared that corporations and nonprofits can spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns, using unlimited funds from unnamed donors: dark money.

In preparation for that decision, in December 2009 Ginni Thomas filed the paperwork incorporating Liberty Central in Virginia, with Leo as co-director. They had $500,000 in seed money from Harlan Crow, the megadonor who has also provided Clarence and Ginni Thomas with lavish gifts. The group had all the pieces in place to hit the ground running the minute the decision was handed down.

“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” one of Politico’s sources said. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.” But Ginni Thomas proved to be a liability for the group, taking a far too public and political role. It came to a head in October, 2010 when Ginni Thomas made headlines with a telephone call to Anita Hill, demanding that Hill apologize for the sexual harassment allegations she raised against Clarence Thomas during his confirmation.

In November 2010, reports circulated that Ginni Thomas was going to step down from her leadership role, though Leo issued a denial. At the same time, Ginni Thomas sought and received expedited approval for incorporating a consulting business. That business was Liberty Consulting. Simultaneously, Leo reactivated one of his old organizations, the dormant Judicial Education Project. Leo then began using JEP to direct contracts to pay Ginni Thomas an amount similar to what she had earned at Liberty Central, which was as much as $100,000 between June 2011 and June 2012.

Earlier this year, the Washington Postreported that in January 2012, Leo ordered GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill the JEP $25,000 and then use the funds to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” emphasizing that the paperwork should have “[n]o mention of Ginni, of course.”

Since 2010, the JEP has spent “at least $25 million” on grants and contracts, Politico reports. The full amount, and where and to whom all that money has gone, is unclear. “Leo and Thomas did not respond to questions about when the arrangement to pay Thomas began, if it ended and how much she was paid or what type of work she did,” Politico reports.

Subsidizing the Thomases isn’t all the JEP has done. It is staffed and directed by former Thomas clerks, and since it was reactivated in 2010, it has been one of the forces behind challenges to the Affordable Care Act, voting rights, affirmative action, etc. It files amicus briefs for the challenges that are detailed and extensively researched, in essence doing the conservative justices’ homework for them when constructing their decisions, Przybyla reports.

In 2020 JEP became the 85 fund, with a subgroup, The Honest Elections Project. That organization used Trump’s Big Lie of a “stolen” election to amplify claims of voter fraud and state elections corruption, and to push for more voter suppression.

The story has many, many layers beyond the dark money that seems to fund Thomas' family. It delves into some of the offshoots in Leo’s network and its murky relationship with the Supreme Court beyond Thomas, including Justice Samuel Alito and the deceased Justice Antonin Scalia. All of it, though, coalesces on the corruption of the Supreme Court by Leo and his anonymous millionaires and billionaires. That provides even more fodder for the probes currently being conducted into Supreme Court ethics in the Senate and the D.C. attorney general’s inquiry into Leo’s dark money network.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Clarence Thomas

Billionaire's Weird Group Portrait Shows Who Bought Justice Thomas

The oddest thing to emerge in the whole Thomas-Crow affair—the sugar daddy relationship between Texas billionaire Harlan Crow and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—has to be that painting. You know the one:

Who are those guys, and why is the painting so weirdly realistic and yet idealized at the same time? Let’s start with the easy part: the identification, starting bottom left.

That “some law clerk who doesn’t matter” is indeed a former clerk of Thomas, and he actually matters. He’s Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, now serving as Dean and Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. He doesn’t just hang around with his former boss at the venue for this painting—Camp Topridge, the 105-acre compound in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, owned by Crow. He stays in touch regularly by briefs, amicus briefs, and petitions filed at the Supreme Court. Dozens of them over the years.

Of course he’s a “contributor” to the conservative Federalist Society, meaning he has “spoken or otherwise participated in Federalist Society events, publications, or multimedia presentations.” He is, in short, a cog in the conservative legal effort to undermine everything we care about.

Speaking of the Federalist Society, that’s who the next guy is—the actual founder (and former director) of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo isn’t just the guy who funneled lots of money to SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas through Kellyanne Conway, and who “stacked the GOP court,” he is the architect of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court and the guy responsible for reshaping select federal district and appeals courts since the George W. Bush administration. Basically, Republican presidents don’t nominate judges unless the Federalist Society approves them. Every terrible Supreme Court decision in the last quarter century can be laid at his feet.

Leo’s reach also extends deep into the U.S. Senate, as he needs those people to close the deal on his judges. That includes famed “moderate” Susan Collins, who got a nice financial boost from him during her last reelection campaign, perhaps as a “thank you” for her making Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh a reality. After a humongous dark money deal Leo secured last year—to the tune of $1.6 billion—Leo can buy and sell the entire Republican Party. Having a handful of pet Supreme Court justices at his disposal caps the deal. He doesn’t even hide it.

That next guy, the one sitting beneath that disturbing sculpture, is Mark Paoletta. He is indeed Ginni Thomas’s lawyer, though why he’d be hanging out in this group is a mystery since—as Ginni has vociferously argued—she has absolutely nothing to do with her husband’s work. They never even talk about it at home! That’s “an ironclad rule in our house,” she told the House Select Committee, where she was represented by Paoletta. But it’s all okay because he’s an official “friend of Justice Thomas” according to this tweet he made explaining how it’s okay for a billionaire to pay the private school tuition for his Supreme Court Justice friend’s adopted kid. Enough about him.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is next up, holding court with his acolytes, and pontificating with a cigar. Why he has a cigar prop we do not know. Maybe it makes him more of a regular guy? You know, the kind of guy who totally feels comfortable hanging out with the RV and WalMart crowd.

Those yachting trips all over the world he accepted as a gift from Crow? Pshaw. "I don't have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States," Thomas said in a 2020 documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.

"I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There's something normal to me about it," Thomas continued, adding, "I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that."

Wow, Crow could have saved himself a whole lot of money if he’d just given Clarence and Ginni an RV and gas money. Thomas already had a guy in Omaha to hook him up with tires, so it would have been a great deal. (Really. Tires. Clarence Thomas took tires from a guy in Omaha. Who is he?)

We don’t have a full accounting of all the money Crow has sunk into vacations, gifts, real estate deals, tuition assistance, and God knows what else for Thomas, but this timeline of the very long string of Thomas’ ethics problems is a good place to start. And at the heart of it is the guy who commissioned this painting, Thomas’ friend and patron, Harlan Crow. He’s a billionaire real estate magnate who seems to own most of Thomas’ home town (seriously), and he’s a Republican megadonor, and key funder of Tea Party (remember them?) astroturf—he gave Ginni $500,000 to create one of those groups, Liberty Central.

Collecting Supreme Court justices and their spouses isn’t his only hobby. He also collects historical memorabilia, particularly Hitler and Nazi artifacts and memorabilia. Lots of it, from two paintings by Hitler and a signed copy of Mein Kampf, to extremely banal things like linen napkins with embroidered swastikas. There’s something seriously disturbed in a person who wants to replicate the dinner services of the Third Reich. He also has a garden full of statues of despots—Lenin, Stalin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito, among others. That’s completely normal, right?

The photo-realtistic painting itself is odd enough that it’s gotten attention on its own. It’s the work of Sharif Tarabay, a Montreal illustrator. Slate was so intrigued by it, they asked an art historian, Heather Diack, associate professor of contemporary art and the history of photography at the University of Miami, what she sees in it. The whole interview is interesting, but this part kind of leaps out:

Some of us here were discussing the painting, and it reminded us of Jon McNaughton’s works. He’s painted countless portraits of Trump, including a version of Mount Rushmore that includes Trump’s face. What do you make of his paintings?It’s hard not to see it as a caricature, even though I realize that this artist is actually quite sincere about his message. It reminded me a lot of socialist realist propaganda paintings under Josef Stalin. It’s painted in a way that is hyperrealist, but also idealist, insofar as the realism they’re trying to portray is really about their ideology. So McNaughton’s ideology, I think, is very clear, him being quite a right-wing conservative. It’s really glaring. If you look back at paintings that were done under Stalin’s regime, they really imitate that style. [...]

I think there’s a conservative penchant towards realist painting. There’s been an aversion to abstract art, and they want to make artwork that they believe is more easily readable. Yet, even though it’s painted in a realist style, that’s not to say the scene pictures or the values conveyed by it are real or the truth. Even though I think that is partly what the artists want to be there.

You know who else had a strong aversion to abstract art, right?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.