After yet another bombshell story, it appears that Justice Clarence Thomas will surpass George Santos as the nation’s most corrupt public official.
More troubling than breaking Santos’ record is the devastating impact Justice Thomas’ corruption has had on the rights and freedoms of everyday Americans. He has consistently ruled against progress, from restricting voting access and denying reproductive rights to attacking workers, healthcare, and the environment. Justice Thomas has aligned himself with corporations, dark money groups, and special interests such as the NRA.
In addition to accepting lavish vacations, home improvements, and his grandnewphew’s tuition paid for (in cash) – Thomas’ wife was paid tens of thousands of dollars—with her name intentionally left off the billing paperwork—for her work with a non-profit holding an interest in the Court. That interest? Gutting the Voting Rights Act.
These seemingly daily revelations raise serious questions and concerns about Thomas’ tenure on the Court. It’s clear that it’s time for Justice Thomas to resign. And Congress and the Department of Justice must investigate this corruption.
Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O’Connell
05/04/23
Key Points:
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Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
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In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show.
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The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.
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He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”
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The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family.
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And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.
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“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”
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Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny since ProPublica revealed in April that Texas billionaire Harlan Crow took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where Thomas’s mother lived; the transaction was not listed on the justice’s annual disclosure forms.
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