A Special Counsel must be appointed to investigate Clarence Thomas

Plus it's time to expand the Supreme Court

Another day, another Justice Clarence Thomas scandal. Thomas is becoming a one-man scandal machine.

The latest incident in a pattern of ethical wrongs and potential crimes by Thomas came to light Sunday morning with new reporting by The Washington Post.  The facts of this scandal are straightforward: Over the last two decades, Justice Thomas has reported on required financial disclosure forms that his family received rental income totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a firm named, Ginger, Ltd., Partnership. The problem is that this company has “not existed since 2006.”

However, the Post adds that, “The previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error” given that Thomas is reporting income but appears to have just listed the incorrect name of the entity that is paying him.  If this were Thomas’s only questionable activity, perhaps we could chalk it up to a simple booking mistake. But we know Thomas and he is in a word: CORRUPT.

In the past two weeks, we have seen bombshell reporting by Pro Publica about Thomas previously undisclosed relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow—including what appears to be a violation of federal law.

First in early April, Pro Publica reported that Crow had been providing Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni with luxurious vacations for over two decades--including on the donor’s yacht and private jet to faraway places like Indonesia and New Zealand. That information was never revealed to the public before that. Who went on those trips? Did any of them have business before the Court? Did Crow—who has donated at least $10 million dollars to GOP candidates-- or anyone in his circles have business before the Court? If they did, we need to know the cases involved and the parties.

Then came a new explosive story on Thursday, again by way of Pro Publica. Justice Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal involving the sale of three properties he and his family owned in Savannah, Georgia. Who did Thomas sell the property to in what appears to be “potentially” above fair market deal? The same GOP megadonor who secretly paid for Thomas’s lavish vacations: Harlan Crow.

A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires Supreme Court justices to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000.  As Pro Publica detailed, the federal disclosure form Thomas filed for that year included a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. But Thomas left that space blank. Ethics law experts told Pro Publica that Thomas’ failure to report it “appears to be a violation of the law.”

Just as troublingly, after Crow bought the house, Thomas’s mother remained in it until at least 2020, however, there is no indication she paid rent.  Beyond that, Crow made “tens of thousands of dollars of improvements” to the house while Justice Thomas’s mother lived there. What did Crow get in return is the question?!

We also cannot trust Thomas given he was the lone vote in support of Donald Trump’s request to shield his presidential records from the Jan 6 committee when that issue came before the Supreme Court in January 2022.  At the time, Thomas provided no explanation for why he would have approved Trump's request. But we learned months later that his wife, Ginni, was actively involved in supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She exchanged at least 29 text messages with Trump’s then chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging Trump to overturn the election.

After the November 2020 election, she also contacted numerous GOP state officials in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Arizona trying to enlist them in Trump’s plot to overturn the election. That certainly raises questions of whether Thomas voted to support Trump’s request to keep records secret because he feared that his wife’s emails or text messages would have been discovered.  

In any event: We have never seen a Supreme Court Justice in our lifetimes this corrupt. Period.

The Senate Judiciary Committee—headed by Democrats--announced in response to the Pro Publica reporting on Thomas dealings with GOP megadonor Crow that they plan to hold a hearing “on the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.”

Of course, we know the House Judiciary Committee headed by GOP Rep. Jim Jordan will never investigate Thomas given that Jordan’s primary responsibility is using his committee to defend Trump. In fact, on Monday, Jordan is holding a field hearing of the committee in Manhattan designed to attack Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for charging Trump with 34 felonies.  (As I wrote about last week, Jordan should’ve been investigated for his role as a co-conspirator in Trump’s attempted coup--which was detailed in the Jan 6 committee report.)

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA), on Friday sent a letter calling for a referral of Justice Thomas “to the U.S. Attorney General for potential violations of the Ethics in Government Act 1978.”   In that letter, Whitehouse and Johnson noted, “Justice Thomas reported his interest in [the Savannah] properties when he was an official in the George H.W. Bush administration and continued to report his interest during his tenure on the Supreme Court.  However, when Crow bought those properties in 2014—potentially paying well over market value—Justice Thomas failed to report the sale, in an apparent direct violation of 5 U.S.C. § 13104(a)(5).” 

At this point a criminal investigation is merited but we know that Attorney General Merrick Garland will not order the DOJ to engage in one given his timidity when comes to people in power.  This is, of course, the same Garland who had to be shamed into investigating Trump for attempting a coup and inciting the Jan 6 attack by way of the Jan 6 committee’s work, specifically the testimony in July 2022 of former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchison. As the NY Times reported at the time, it was Cassidy’s testimony that pressured DOJ officials “to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s potential criminal culpability and whether he intended to break the law.”

That is why the most effective approach is to demand a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate.  

This is not about politics, this is about returning confidence to our Supreme Court. A June Gallup poll found that only 25 percent of Americans report they have “confidence” in the Supreme Court--a 50 year low. We can expect trust in the Court to drop further given Thomas’ misconduct.  This is not healthy for our democratic Republic—especially when the GOP is now at it’s core a fascist movement.

Beyond the investigation, Democrats need to make reforming—or expanding the Supreme Court—a key campaign issue in 2024. Given so few Americans trust the Supreme Court this is the perfect time to talk expanding the court so that it reflects the views of the American people—not the views of GOP megadonors.

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