Justice Thomas is globetrotting

Justice Clarence Thomas accepted several luxury trips paid for by GOP megadonor, ProP

This man has no business serving on the supreme court?!!

CNN —
Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by a GOP megadonor, according to a new bombshell ProPublica report published Thursday.

The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court, ProPublica said.

The report of the connection between Thomas and conservative businessman Harlan Crow is already adding to calls that Congress investigate potential ethical lapses. Key Senate Democrats were previously mulling using this year’s funding legislation for the Supreme Court to pressure the justices to adopt some sort of ethics code.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a statement the ProPublica report was “a call to action” and that “the Senate Judiciary Committee will act.

The new ProPublica report describes Thomas accepting travel hospitality from Crow that included lavish trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, California, Texas and Georgia. Some of these trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company. ProPublica also identified what appear to be several trips taken by Thomas on Crow’s private jet that went undisclosed on his public ethics filings, though one Thomas trip on Crow’s jet was disclosed in 1997.

In a statement to ProPublica, Crow said that he been friends with Thomas and his wife Ginni for more than 30 years, and that the hospitality he has extended the justice over the years was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality,” Crow said in the statement. He said that we “never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one.”

The Supreme Court and Crow did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment, and ProPublica says Thomas did not respond to a list of detailed questions.

Thomas, nominated by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the senior-most justice on the court and an intellectual leader of the current 6-3 conservative majority. The justice has also been the subject of scrutiny for the political activities of his wife, including for texts she exchanged with key players in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Crow, a Dallas businessman with deep connections to Republican politics, has contributed more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions, ProPublica reported.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/poli...lan-crow-supreme-court-pro-publica/index.html
 
"how do I announce to the world that I have no fundamental understanding of why a federal judge gets a lifetime appointment"
 
zymurgy said:
"how do I announce to the world that I have no fundamental understanding of why a federal judge gets a lifetime appointment"
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Maybe it needs to be for lifetime or until you get over $1,000,000 in gifts.


ProPublica cited a nine-day trip that Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, took to Indonesia in 2019, shortly after the court released its final opinions of the term. That trip, which included flights on Crow’s jet and island-hopping on a superyacht, would have cost the couple more than $500,000, if they had paid for it themselves, the publication said.
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According to ProPublica, Thomas’s trips funded by Crow do not appear on his financial disclosures.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas-trips-republican-donor/

Of course, that would require that judges actually report their gifts to the public and not hide them as it appears Thomas did.
 
zymurgy said:
he is not required to report his gifts
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Are you claiming the law and judicial regulations don't apply to Thomas?
§ 620.50 Disclosure Requirements
Judicial officers and employees subject to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the
instructions of the Financial Disclosure Committee of the Judicial Conference of the
United States must comply with the Act and the instructions in disclosing gifts
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https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vol02c-ch06.pdf
 
zymurgy said:
he is not required to report his gifts
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This is from 2004 when Thomas was accepting more gifts than other justices.
Thomas has reported accepting much more valuable gifts than his Supreme Court colleagues over the last six years, according to their disclosure forms on file at the court.
The Ethics in Government Act of 1989 prohibits all federal employees, including the justices, from accepting “anything of value” from a person with official business before them. However, under the rules that the federal judicial system adopted to implement that law, judges are free to accept gifts of unlimited value from people without official business before the court.
Representatives for the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court argue that requiring the disclosure of any gifts is sufficient to prevent corruption or the appearance of favoritism.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-dec-31-na-gifts31-story.html
 
zymurgy said:
"how do I announce to the world that I have no fundamental understanding of why a federal judge gets a lifetime appointment"
Click to expand...

To make them free of having their job threatened for political gain


This is payoff for political influence

It needs some boundaries to protect the nation
 
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