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Retired SCOTUS Justice Breyer Stands Up for Embattled Clarence Thomas – Critics Are Not Impressed

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Critics are responding to retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer‘s remarks voicing support for his embattled “friend,” Justice Clarence Thomas, who allegedly hid possibly millions of dollars of luxury gifts over the course of decades from a billionaire conservative megadonor.

Justice Thomas, according to investigations from ProPublica, wrongly and possibly unlawfully did not disclose at least hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel on private planes and a yacht, vacations at the billionaire’s homes, clothing, and food. He also failed to disclose that same billionaire, who reportedly has ties to organizations with business before the court, purchased Thomas’ mother’s home for an elevated price, allowing her to stay in the home rent free.

Breyer, at a federal circuit court conference in Boston, told attendees when asked that Justice Thomas is “a friend of mine” and a “man of integrity,” as he also denounced efforts to strengthen ethics standards for the nation’s top jurists, according to Bloomberg Law.

“As far as I’m concerned, I sat next to him on the bench for 28 years. I like him. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve never seen him do anything underhanded or say anything underhanded,” Breyer said.

READ MORE: ‘Clarence Thomas Should Be Subpoenaed’ Says Top Democrat as Senate Plans Hearing

“’My personal point of view is he’s a man of integrity,’ Breyer told attendees at the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit event.”

The event coincidentally was held the same day as U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin sent a strongly-worded invitation to Chief Justice John Roberts, urging him to formally testify before the Committee on the “decade-long” ethics challenges the Supreme Court justices have created.

PBS NewsHour Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle interviewed Breyer on stage, and asked about Supreme Court ethics.

“Breyer acknowledged that the justices can make mistakes, but pushed back on the criticism that the Supreme Court does nothing on ethics,” Bloomberg reports. “Breyer said if an issue comes up, he views it as ‘whatever applies to all the judges applies to me.’”

Breyer apparently pushed back against a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, noting that if a justice recuses themself, unlike lower courts, there is no justice who can take their place.

Critics are blasting Justice Breyer for playing defense for the challenged Thomas.

The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal asked, “what was Breyer gonna say?”

READ MORE: Clarence Thomas Claimed Up to $750k From Real Estate Firm That Shut Down in 2006: Report

Mockingly, he offered this sardonic response: “I sat next to him for 28 years and, man, the stories I could tell. Crazy stuff, man. We’d be hearing a case and he’d lean over and say ‘That litigant they’re paid for this watch. It’s nice. I can hook you up.’ Crazy stuff.”

“I thought about telling somebody, maybe the chief, about all the underhanded stuff I saw Thomas do while sitting in open court,” added Mystal, continuing to pretend to quote Breyer. “But I didn’t. Maybe that was wrong, I don’t know. But the truth of the matter is: the watch really was very nice.”

MSNBC columnist and editor James Downie offered this insight into Justice Breyer: “A reminder that, while on the court, Breyer was one of three justices to trade individual stocks. Even Thomas doesn’t do that, so far as we know. And Breyer failed to recuse himself in multiple cases where he owned stock in one of the parties,: he wrote, pointing to a report from the nonpartisan group Fix the Court.

“The problem with Supreme Court justices, both current and former, is that their prestige and power all flows from the false perception that the Supreme Court is a noble institution that isn’t run by partisan hacks,” said Vox’s Ian Millhiser, who has written two books on the Supreme Court.

“I’ll say this for Breyer: He’s really strengthened my suspicion that the rot is institutional and that we should be prepared to learn that other Justices have corrupt arrangements with the plutocratic class,” offered attorney and writer Luppe B. Lupin.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote: “I’d like to cross examine the witness to get his opinion on each item that has come to light: vacations, house sales, failures to disclosure, income claimed from closed businesses. Are these all okay? Still a man of integrity? Asking for a concerned country.”

Writer and editor Jay Willis blasted Breyer: “Even if condemnation of Thomas is too much to expect from Breyer, even a simple ‘the allegations are very serious and I hope my colleagues or the Senate take steps to protect the Court’s integrity’ would be a million times better than this treacly horseshit.”

 

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IDIOCY

GOP Rep Demands Biden’s Pardons to Be ‘Declared Null and Void’

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June 22, 2026

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Rep. James Comer (R-KY) appeared on Fox Business to demand that former President Joe Biden’s pardons made on the final day of his term be nullified.

Comer appeared on Mornings With Maria Monday, demanding that Biden’s last-day pardons be undone, particularly one granted to former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“There were never any meetings that Joe Biden had with his staff on these pardons,” Comer said, according to a clip surfaced by journalist Aaron Rupar, dismissing host Maria Bartiromo’s statement that it was merely that the pardons wouldn’t count because they were signed with an autopen rather than by hand.

READ MORE: Trump Is Promising Mass White House Pardons: Report

“The defense is: There were never any scheduled meetings on his calendar… There was not a single person involved in the pardon process, in the decision making on who authorized the auto-pen, that ever met with Joe Biden and discussed the individual pardon. So, there’s no evidence Joe Biden had any decision making in the pardon process. So, I think that alone is more than enough evidence to declare all the pardons issued by Joe Biden in the last day of his presidency null and void.”

Comer’s comments came after outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gabbard said the documents show a connection between the United States and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reigniting debunked claims that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak.

The autopen, a device that stores the motions of a person’s signature and can automatically recreate it, has been at the center of a number of right wing conspiracy theories. Though it is a fact that Biden often used an autopen to automate the document-signing process, he is far from the first president to use it, according to NPR. Moreover, there is no evidence that Biden did in fact use an autopen for these particular pardons.

But even if he did, it would not matter. Nothing in the legal code requires a pardon to have a hand-signed signature. The president is granted the power to issue pardons or grant clemency in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. There is no mechanism through which Congress or another president can revoke a completed pardon. A president can revoke a pardon before it has been accepted by the pardonee—as happened in 1869 and again in 2008 under President George W. Bush—but once the pardon has been completed, it is forever. The only person who can go against a presidential pardon is the pardonee themselves if they refuse to accept it.

Not to mention that while the Department of Justice or other officials can make recommendations on whether or not to grant a person clemency, there is no requirement that the president must meet with anyone to discuss a pardon. The president has full discretion on whom to pardon. A pardonee does not have to be convicted or even indicted—for example, President Gerald Ford preemptively pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, from being tried for any of the actions that led to his resignation.

Though he’s called for Biden’s pardons to be revoked in the past, President Donald Trump has also made a number of controversial pardons. Most famously, one of his first acts upon taking office for the second time was to pardon anyone involved with the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. If Biden’s pardons could be revoked, it stands to reason that a future president could revoke many of Trump’s pardons.

Image via Reuters

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BAD PRESIDENT

Large Majority of Americans Say Iran Conflict Should End, Hasn’t Met Any of Trump’s Goals

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2 hours ago

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June 22, 2026

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A large majority of Americans say that not only should the Iran conflict end immediately, but that President Donald Trump has not reached any of his stated goals for starting the conflict in the first place.

Over three-quarters of Americans, 78%, said in a new CBS News/YouGov poll the conflict in Iran should end “now.” Only 22% said it would be better to keep fighting until Iran agrees to “give up more” concessions to the United States.

Americans also felt that Trump’s stated goals for starting the conflict had not been met. When asked if Iran had been stopped from threatening other countries, only 32% said it had. A similar proportion, 31%, think that the conflict “permanently stopped” nuclear programs in the country. Even fewer think that the conflict has led to pro-U.S. leaders taking charge—only 21%—and slightly more, 26%, think that the U.S. has brought safety and freedom to the Iranian people. Overall, 69% say the Iran conflict was “not worth the cost.”

READ MORE: MAGA Revolt Erupts as Trump’s Own Hawks Turn Against His Iran Deal

The results remained relatively steady across demographics, with the exception of Americans who identified as conservative. But even then, the conservative responses were not as much in Trump’s favor as one might expect. When asked if the Iran conflict should end now, while liberals and moderates strongly agreed, at 95% and 80% respectively, a majority of conservatives, 61%, also agreed.

A slight majority of conservatives, 53%, thought Iran’s nuclear programs had been permanently stopped. They were split on the question of whether Iran would threaten other countries—48% of conservatives said Iran would stop, while 52% said they wouldn’t. When it came to replacing Iran’s leaders with pro-U.S. ones or bringing freedom to Iranian citizens, a majority of conservatives agreed that hadn’t happened.

The survey was conducted between June 17-19, and surveyed 2,519 adults. It has a 2.4% margin of error.

While the Iranian conflict has caused new leaders to take control of the country—former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in airstrikes in February—he was replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. The younger Khamenei is widely described as being more conservative than his father, and the Atlantic Council think tank said he has ties to clerics it described as the “most ideologically extremist,” according to Axios.

Though Trump has claimed Iran’s military is “totally destroyed,” he’s also warned that the country could have a nuclear bomb “within six months.” However, the first report from the International Atomic Energy Agency since the Iran conflict started says that there has been no major change to the country’s nuclear program, according to Reuters.

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Trump White House Turns on ‘Moron’ MAGA Loyalist ‘Begging for an Additional Brain Cell’

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3 days ago

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June 19, 2026

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The Trump White House is attacking one of its loyal media figures after she berated Vice President JD Vance over President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.

“The problem is, that it’s an absolutely disastrous deal that has brought us to our knees, weeks before our 250th birthday,” NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon said in a clip she posted to social media, which Mediaite reported.

“This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it,” she continued. “Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this. They are still calling us the enemy.”

“And while Iran celebrates this and sneers at us for totally capitulating when we had complete military superiority over them,” she said, “JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel’s fault, and Israel wants Iran to be a failed state. And if only Israel would lay down its arms and allow Hezbollah to keep attacking it, there would be peace in the Middle East.”

Ungar-Sargon called Vance’s remarks “disgusting,” “utterly deplorable,” and a “complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States.”

She warned, “if this was a dry run for Vance 2028,” for president, “we sure learned a lot.”

On social media, Ungar-Sargon added: “VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday and he has the audacity to blame … Israel! … for the terrible situation we’re in.”

The White House’s Rapid Response team blasted Ungar-Sargon.

“The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV … show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper,” the White House declared. “Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump’s leadership.”

In 2024, Ungar-Sargon wrote, “American Jews should vote for Trump because he is the candidate who stands most clearly for the things that have defined us for centuries.”

 

 

 

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