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This late-come effort at “Clean-up on Aisle Three” won’t deter us from fully investigating the massive, secret, right-wing billionaire influence in which this Court is enmired.
— Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tweeted out this scathing response to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s latest financial disclosure. Whitehouse, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, has been a frequent critic of Thomas’s lack of disclosures.
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Whitehouse continued in a lengthy X thread (below) to dismantle the arguments of Elliot Berke, Thomas’s lawyer, that attempted to justify the disclosures.
Buried in Thomas’s lawyers’ overheated partisan rhetoric lie two key assertions: one, that “new guidance … revised reporting requirements”; and two, that his failures weren’t “willful.”
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
First, the assertion that reporting requirements were “revised” excuses prior misconduct. It’s more likely that the reporting requirements were explained, not revised, and were always thus. In fact, the Conference’s letter to me said that the new guidance “clarifies” the rules.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
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Bear in mind that “at the time,” the Judicial Conference had a Financial Disclosure Committee that Thomas could have asked, instead of hiding the ball, obliging all this after-the-fact clean-up when caught.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
Thomas now says that he *did* ask Judicial Conference employees – though not necessarily the CFD – early in his tenure. He originally said only that he consulted his colleagues and “others in the judiciary.”
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
Their heated denial that the omissions were “willful” is important because by law questions of willfulness are referred to the Attorney General, where a real and independent investigation could ensue.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
They are obviously desperate to avoid that, to keep this mess in the clubby precincts of the Court and the justices’ own private lawyers.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
Bear in mind too that these secret gifts would not be acceptable anywhere else in the federal government.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023
Last, don’t be misled by the “business before the Court” issue — billionaire donors to justices have had business before the Court; they appear also through amici; and they maintain a wholesale effort to capture and control the Court.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2023