Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is acknowledging that he took three trips last year aboard a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
It’s the first time in years that Thomas has reported receiving hospitality from Crow. In a report made public Thursday, the 75-year-old justice said he was complying with new guidelines from the federal judiciary for reporting travel.
The filing comes amid a heightened focus on ethics at the high court that stems from a series of reports revealing that Thomas has for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow, a wealthy businessman and benefactor of conservative causes. Crow also purchased the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/04/24/supreme-court-did-review-case-involving-harlan-crow-contradicting-clarence-thomass-claim/?sh=6218ac166c74
Harlan Crow, the owner of Justice Thomas, has had cases before the court that Thomas failed to recuse himself from even after accepting these extraordinarily lavish gifts from Crow and after he denied ever sitting for a case Crow was involved in. The criminal Thomas defended himself by saying that it wasn’t Crow’s company on the case, it was a company owned by Crow’s company. This is after he denied receiving gifts from Crow at all, but eventually changed his stance on that and admitted to being bathed in money by the person he is meant to regulate impartially.
Dissolve the court. Arrest Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Alito. Investigate every other sitting justice and if they so much as took a piece of chewing gum from someone who had business before the court arrest them too. You want your word to be law and the only oversight to be literal Death? Then you have to be fucking flawless.
I don’t know if dissolving the court is the right answer, but there are a lot of “traditions” or “gentlemen’s agreements” associated with high level government positions that need be to discussed and codified as law, to prevent abuse.
A lot of the things Trump was doing are not prosecutable because there are no specific laws for the ass-hattery he was parading about doing. Fortunately, he was so prolific in his unrivaled disrespect for the country and the position that he did actually break a bunch of laws. We will see what sticks.
It should not be this difficult to hold members of the government accountable for their actions. Unfortunately, nothing changes when the people voting bills into laws are the ones benefitting from there not being a law. Hell, even when there are laws (like on congressional insider-trading), you have to find someone with the integrity to investigate and prosecute.
The Senate will probably never have 66 votes to impeach him before he dies of old age, but there is no reason he cannot be prosecuted and jailed for bribery and corruption. There are actual laws against that.
When the majority of the members are provably corrupt, how do you just say “Okay but from now on don’t be corrupt anymore or there will actually be consequences.” I’m not saying eliminate the concept of a supreme court, but this one needs to be redone from scratch