SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States)

mrussel1

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/1687932402302427136?t=U653o6fediWUqcTYrKREmg&s=19

I don't have teh Times, but the article is headlined as "funded", not "paid".  Big difference.  Were you able to read if Thomas ever paid for the RV or was it a gift?

Lerxst1992

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/1687932402302427136?t=U653o6fediWUqcTYrKREmg&s=19

Shame that scotus is 100% untouchable.

mickeyrat

mrussel1 said:

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/1687932402302427136?t=U653o6fediWUqcTYrKREmg&s=19

I don't have teh Times, but the article is headlined as "funded", not "paid".  Big difference.  Were you able to read if Thomas ever paid for the RV or was it a gift?

THIS is a gift. Article that is

....

Clarence Thomas’s $267,230 R.V. and the Friend Who Financed It https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/us/clarence-thomas-rv-anthony-welters.html?unlocked_article_code=icWrnJH-e7nfKq5iKjynM19Zt7cD6o3YKZy-g-jvyTbJNDRLx8mvtOSINxKDPwh2PezOJNq0OfdldUmQ8nVt6xWvwMcqkQYIjYGu7geyxiIzchpidgBTmuV3YXOrWvlpMAt1ow1Fsf8q-x0LbPzKLT8tclP83tnT1JJgLEEXEXekl2IgE4XxjkAdTmG258CkKVz32EzoNwA7f3WttHRkLUlIPK-1QQKmw_HsLrylBGk6JY21JAGFhtMXQRVY69zQI-Ufhy3TYFz2LU4pek9aykDoFnWK0CuSgxz2GLgTAx2ki5vwr0VeLpvXhSV5j8d3KxUx7Ude3xquznzbDkNXPWH3FJ5AvDk&smid=nytcore-android-share

mickeyrat

Its reading as shady due to silence and lack of documentation  Given what we've seen recently, I'd go with further grift,  influence peddling.

mickeyrat

So Mr chief justice Roberts tell me again how provisions of the Voting Rights Act are no longer necessary?

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1689615136808394752?t=8Se34IRSwc4U6Gma2S23xw&s=19

Gern Blansten

mickeyrat said:

Its reading as shady due to silence and lack of documentation  Given what we've seen recently, I'd go with further grift,  influence peddling.

Yeah they appear to be informal bribes/payoffs to push an agenda. These aren't like "hey I'm going on vacation why don't you come with me" they are "here is a fucking $300K vacation...you want more of these?, you know what to do"

Halifax2TheMax

Because if he wasn’t a SCOTUS judge they’d be doing this, because you know, they just like him and Ginny.

Thomas’s friends and acquaintances “have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737,” Brett and Alex report.

The gifts include:

• “At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas”
• Twenty-six private jet flights and eight helicopter flights
• A “dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox”
• “Two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica”
• A “standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast”

“While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets,” ethics experts told ProPublica.

• “Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica.”
• “‘In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,‘ said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. ‘I think it’s unprecedented.’”

Halifax2TheMax

Bought and paid for, lock, stock and barrel.

Another benefactor

ProPublica’s latest reporting found that “Thomas had another benefactor, oil baron Paul ‘Tony’ Novelly, whose gifts to the justice have not previously been reported.”

Novelly and Crow — along with David Sokol, a former Berkshire Hathaway executive, and the billionaire H. Wayne Huizenga, both of whom Thomas met through the Horatio Alger Foundation — appear “to have first met Thomas after he ascended to the Supreme Court,” Brett and Alex report. “With the exception of Crow, their names are nowhere in Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required by law to publicly report most gifts.”

The total value of the undisclosed trips on which they’ve taken Thomas since 1991 is tough to measure but probably in the millions of dollars, according to ProPublica. A couple of examples:

• “Huizenga sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to John Wener, a former flight attendant and chef on board the plane. If he were picked up in D.C., the five-hour round trip would have cost at least $130,000 each time had Thomas chartered the jet himself, according to estimates from jet charter companies.”
• “In February 2016, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Washington to New Haven, Connecticut, before heading back on the jet just three hours later. ProPublica previously reported the flight, but newly obtained U.S. Marshals Service records reveal its purpose: Thomas met with several Yale Law School deans for a tour of the room where they planned to display a portrait of the justice. (Crow’s foundation also gave the school $105,000, earmarked for the ‘Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,’ tax filings show.)”

“It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire,” Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, told ProPublica.

• “Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others.”
• “Fox, who worked under both Democrat and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. ‘You don’t get to acquire any new ones,’ he told them.”

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1689620745649836032?t=0oikbVLrifZMqr92AQbrFQ&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1689620745649836032?t=0oikbVLrifZMqr92AQbrFQ&s=19

I’d like to know the dates of that largess compared to dates of oral arguments and penned decisions. People should be outraged and demanding his resignation but they’re not. Just goes to show you.

mickeyrat

dude sits on a couple billion dollars to begin in earnest culture war bullshit.....

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/22/d-c-attorney-general-is-probing-leonard-leos-network-00112331

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

dude sits on a couple billion dollars to begin in earnest culture war bullshit.....

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/22/d-c-attorney-general-is-probing-leonard-leos-network-00112331

Just more weaponization of the DOJ and IRS against repubs. Would love to know where $1B+ came from. Saudi? Putin on the ritz? Koch’s? Sceiff? And another Clarence connection.

Hey, but have you heard about Hunter’s laptop?

mickeyrat

gift article

https://wapo.st/3qN3tZp 

  Justice Thomas details jet travel, property deal with billionaire
By Ann E. Marimow and Emma Brown
August 31, 2023 at 16:23 ET
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported three 2022 trips on the private jet of a Texas billionaire in a financial disclosure form released Thursday, and for the first time detailed the businessman’s purchase of three properties from the justice’s family years earlier.
In his required annual report, Thomas said one of the trips on the private plane of his friend and benefactor, Harlan Crow, was recommended by his security detail. The justices faced heightened security risks, Thomas noted, after the May 2022 leak of the court’s majority opinion to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion and overturn Roe v. Wade.
Thomas, a justice since 1991, acknowledged and corrected mistakes and omissions in past reports that involved bank accounts, a life insurance policy and the name of his wife’s real estate company. He also defended his decision to omit private jet travel from his reports in recent years, even though he previously disclosed at least one similar personal trip with Crow in a report from the 1990s.
The 2022 filings from Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. were made public Thursday, months later than those of their colleagues at the high court, because the two justices had requested 90-day extensions. The annual reports have drawn increased attention amid pressure from congressional Democrats and outside legal experts for the justices to strengthen disclosure requirements for travel and gifts and adopt specific ethics guidelines.
The pressure comes in part from news reports by ProPublica and other outlets revealing that Thomas did not disclose years of luxury vacations and private jet travel funded by Crow, an influential Republican donor, and that Alito did not report a free trip to a fishing resort in Alaska in 2008. Alito flew to the resort on the private jet of a billionaire hedge fund manager who later had cases before the court; that trip was organized by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who had helped Alito win confirmation, according to ProPublica.

continues....

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1697427384947867932?t=zDKOhLztdWvjwlWmXgE50g&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/OpenSecretsDC/status/1697701833257406710?t=CjvVkZnKz-mqA38Vqf6soQ&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/RyanShead/status/1699179929496400034?t=0xVKmaLSVgyAjqR2XYB8vA&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/realTuckFrumper/status/1700688314121293856?t=L-qVe32Diz2VESUeCHYCjA&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/realTuckFrumper/status/1700688314121293856?t=L-qVe32Diz2VESUeCHYCjA&s=19

But did you hear about Hunter’s laptop? And lying on his federal firearm form? And his taxes? Gee, wonder if Ginny and Clarence claimed all that income and “gifts?”

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/HeidiReports/status/1700830234252087299?t=D_TIVrMQUu8USrjWwDzc1A&s=19

mickeyrat

https://projects.propublica.org/supreme-risk/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook