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‘GoFundMe’: Experts Say Clarence Thomas Being ‘Sponsored by Billionaires’ Is ‘Bribery’
Legal experts are stunned once again after the latest ProPublica bombshell investigation into U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. That deep-dive into the Justice’s financial history includes the written remarks of a U.S. Congressman and the head of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, focusing on the Thomas’ secret complaint about his salary and his thinly-veiled request – or, “threat” – to that lawmaker for a pay raise. Shortly after his remarks about his salary, Thomas was showered, for years, with big ticket vacations and other major financial benefits from billionaire conservatives who happen to also want a like-minded jurist on the nation’s highest court.
“I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court,” a January, 2000 letter from former U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) to Justice Thomas reads. “As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.”
ProPublica senior editor Jesse Eisinger posted the letter to social media as well.
NEW: In 2000, Clarence Thomas was deep in debt.
He met w/ a GOP Congressman & complained about his salary.
The GOP started to fear he’d leave the court.
In the years that followed, billionaires lavished him w/ secret gifts.https://t.co/uLSfv8rmnp pic.twitter.com/d44z1OwxV7
— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) December 18, 2023
“In early January 2000,” Propublica’s report published Monday begins, “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.”
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“After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.”
“Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told [Congressman Stearns]. If lawmakers didn’t act, ‘one or more justices will leave soon’ — maybe in the next year.”
“At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money,” ProPublica reported. It added, “in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court.”
Professor of law and former Bush White House ethics chief Richard Painter on Monday declared, “Supreme Court justices make $285,400 a year, a large sum of money for a public official. If he needs more he can resign.”
Justice Thomas’ comments to Congressman Stearm “set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill,” reported ProPublica.
“’His importance as a conservative was paramount,’ Stearns said in a recent interview. ‘We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.’”
While ProPublica calls it “an open question” as to “what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts,” some are calling it something else: “bribery.”
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Writer and attorney Jay Willis, the editor-in-chief at the legal news and commentary website Balls & Strikes, writes: “The new Clarence Thomas story in ProPublica is like the stuff of bad Mafia movies. Just sidling up to a Republican congressman like ‘I love taking away civil rights on the Supreme Court, but I suuuuure wish I could get paid more for doing so.'”
Civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger, founder and executive director of Zealous, a nonprofit that trains public defenders, called for some cases Justice Thomas decided to be “relitigated” in response to the ProPublica news.
“Clarence Thomas being allowed to remain on the Supreme Court should rightfully destroy the institution. How we can allow any case where he was a deciding vote not to be relitigated? His votes weren’t just bought. He demanded payment for his votes under threats & duress,” wrote Hechinger.
“Clarence Thomas in quid pro quo bribery,” declared international relations professor Nicholas Grossman. “Not that he was going to vote X on a case and interested parties paid him to vote Y. Rather, as many suspected, it’s that they know he’ll vote Y, and have been paying him off to stay on the Court so he doesn’t resign to pursue wealth.”
“Is it ok for supreme court justices who are deeply in debt to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from political activists,” posited attorney Andrew Fleischman.
Award-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, a Syracuse Law lecturer, observed: “Justice Thomas wanted to get rich AND be a Supreme Court Justice. He found a way. He privatized his jurisprudence to the benefit of Harlan Crow & friends, which was neither ethical nor prudent.”
Constitutional attorney John Bonifaz, founder of the nonprofit Free Speech For People, called for Thomas’ impeachment: “Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached. He has abused his power and must be removed from the Supreme Court.”
Attorney Max Kennerly said, “if Thomas was a judge on any court except SCOTUS, this would be a no-brainer. It’s bribery. He and everyone involved, like Harlan Crow, would be indicted. But we’re supposed to pretend it’s okay because it’s SCOTUS.”
NYU professor of law and MSNBC contributor Melissa Murray wrote, “some of Justice Thomas’s colleagues come from similarly modest backgrounds and were also appointed at young ages . . . and they aren’t (to our knowledge) sponsored by billionaires.”
Professor Murray summed it all up as, “Justice Thomas’s GoFundMe campaign.”
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
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Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.
Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.
But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”
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“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.
SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “If the president … orders someone to assassinate [a rival], is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
Trump attorney D. John Sauer: “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.” pic.twitter.com/RddEEYIUrR
— The Recount (@therecount) April 25, 2024
Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.
“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.
“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.
“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”
Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.
“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”
The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”
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Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”
Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”
“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”
NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”
Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.
During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”
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Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”
But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.
“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”
Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward.
It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F3qXi47ZT6
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 25, 2024
NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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