Tiberius Posted July 12 Posted July 12 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/11/clarence-thomas-special-counsel-senators-letter/ Fed up with the justice’s stonewalling, egregious violation of judicial ethics, inaccurate legal filings and gross money grubbing from right-wing billionaires with business before the Supreme Court, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland this week demanding a special counsel be appointed “to investigate possible violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas.” Well, it’s about time someone took Thomas’s inexcusable conduct seriously. The list of issues is gobsmacking. For example: forgiveness of the principal on a $267,000 loan that was never reported as income. (“Documents obtained by the Senate Finance Committee indicate that no principal was ever repaid on the loan and that Justice Thomas only made interest payments on the loan prior to all payments ceasing on the loan. Forgiven or discharged debt is taxable income, and the Ethics in Government Act requires justices to disclose any ‘income from discharge of indebtedness.’”) This was never included on Thomas’s financial disclosure reports. Thomas has refused to say whether he accounted for the loan forgiveness on his income taxes. Then there are the gifts — lots of gifts. The senators cite “undisclosed gifts from other wealthy donors … including private jet travel from Paul Anthony Novelly; private jet travel and country club membership from the late Wayne Huizenga; and private jet travel, luxury sports tickets, and lodging at a ranch from David Sokol.” The senator include an appendix detailing these lavish gratuities. The senators write, “Justice Thomas has claimed that some omissions were ‘inadvertent,’ and he has amended some past reports accordingly. However, Justice Thomas has not disclosed all of the gifts that have been uncovered, and there may well be more.” Therefore, they charge: “His long history of omissions indicates a pattern of willfulness meriting investigation under the Ethics in Government Act.” Then there are the gifts specifically from Leonard Leo — the right-wing legal impresario and former vice president of the Federalist Society who has helped pick Supreme Court justices and contrived to bring cases before the court to advance his dark money groups agenda, according to Whitehouse. The senators explain: Last year, the Washington Post reported that Leo directed payments of at least $25,000 to a consulting firm run by Justice Thomas’s spouse, with Leo specifying that the documents related to the payments should make “[n]o mention” of Mrs. Thomas. The furtive nature of the payments raises further questions about how many such payments were orchestrated, whether legitimate services were actually rendered, and whether such payments required additional reporting by Justice Thomas. We have not yet adequately been able to investigate the extent to which any or all these undisclosed gifts were part of a coordinated gifts program to reward recipient justices.
Tiberius Posted July 12 Author Posted July 12 GOP, the party of corruption They don't care! They care not for democracy, good government or anything except power
Tiberius Posted July 12 Author Posted July 12 Like the Russian oligarchs, the GOP has become an anti-democratic society, seeped in corruption, cronyism and against human progress.
BillsFanNC Posted July 12 Posted July 12 PPP must remain at useful idiot equilibrium. The 2nd Iron Law.
B-Man Posted July 12 Posted July 12 Tibs, there already is a Justice Thomas is a crook thread. Did you forget ? and there is this also.
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