Details emerge of Clarence Thomas' received gifts

August 10, 2023 6:20 PM

More revelations emerge about billionaires’ gifts to Clarence Thomas (ghostarchive link)
posted by buffy12 (76 comments total)

Propublica did the investigative reporting and broke the story so perhaps we should be linking to their article before linking to others' articles discussing the Propublica article. I don't think they use a paywall, either.
posted by ElKevbo at 6:25 PM on August 10, 2023 [91 favorites]

As always, the most embarrassing thing about corruption like this is how cheap the whole thing is. The man's letting himself and the legal system he ostensibly represents be bought off for pennies.

If I take my annual pay and multiply it up to a billion, I find out that dollar for dollar these motherfuckers are buying off SCOTUS justices for less than I tip the barista who poured me an OK coffee. If you've got a billion dollars this isn't even shake-out-the-couch money. It's nothing.

Low marginal tax rates are a national security problem. Low corporate tax rates are a national defence issue.
posted by mhoye at 6:36 PM on August 10, 2023 [111 favorites]

Yes, and to be clear, The Washington Post article opens, "The explosive revelations this year about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s relationships with wealthy benefactors have spurred calls for tougher ethics rules for the court — and ProPublica’s Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski are out with a new report this morning on how extensive those ties are."

WaPo's condensing for its audience, and links to the source in the first sentence. I appreciate ProPublica, and I also appreciate the crediting and signal-boosting of its important work. (And thanks, OP, for including an archived link.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:37 PM on August 10, 2023 [12 favorites]

i guess by now it's been pretty well established that one can run for the presidency from prison, but less clear is whether it's is possible to hear oral arguments and render judgments of law based on a deep understanding of the founders' original intent when one has been thrown into the fucking oubliette
posted by logicpunk at 6:38 PM on August 10, 2023 [19 favorites]

the fucking oubliette

Worst. Sex club. Ever.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:45 PM on August 10, 2023 [55 favorites]

Justice Thomas financed his 'really bougie' RV with a loan from a wealthy friend; did he pay it off?

Probably not, the fucking crook.

Biden needs to run in 2024 on expanding the court. The corruption in the Supreme Court is toxic and this shit is just killing our democracy by one more of a thousand paper cuts.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:46 PM on August 10, 2023 [13 favorites]

😡
posted by TedW at 6:47 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Clarence seems pretty happy to accept the largess of [checks] a lot of white people. I guess his disgust of having personally benefitted from affirmative action ends right after his college years.
posted by hippybear at 6:48 PM on August 10, 2023 [13 favorites]

So what's the options for fixing this?

Not being American here, what's the mechanism for Supreme Court judges to be removed? How bad does their behaviour need to be before that mechanism operates?
posted by happyinmotion at 6:53 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

How to Impeach a Supreme Court Justice. Impeachment and Removal of Judges: An Explainer. It's very rare; some 15 federal judges in the country's history, only one Supreme Court justice (who won the impeachment trial). Like we've learned from the Trump impeachments its wholly a political process, not really judicial. It takes a 1/2 majority in the House to bring the impeachment and a 2/3 majority in the Senate to actually impeach. No one thinks its likely with Thomas.

The more likely remedy a lot of folks are pushing for is to at least get the Supreme Court justices to commit to a code of conduct that says what Thomas is doing is not OK. Even that seems to be asking too much though. It's a major crisis in US government legitimacy (IMHO).
posted by Nelson at 6:55 PM on August 10, 2023 [34 favorites]

It's nice of ProPublica to release this on a Thursday so it get a full news cycle before the weekend. Also: ruins Clarence's weekend.
posted by hippybear at 6:58 PM on August 10, 2023 [11 favorites]

Clarence seems pretty happy to accept the largess of [checks] a lot of white people. I guess his disgust of having personally benefitted from affirmative action ends right after his college years.

You've got me wanting to bail this old pervert out because there's NO WAY the other conservative ones aren't getting those perks, too, and their names aren't being dragged out there. (I don't know about the liberal ones, I assume they get slimmed down versions, like a free ham? A condo?) Bribing and grifting should know no color!

The one I'm really suspicious of is Brett Kavanaugh because he comes from a well off background and we KNOW mysterious benefactors were paying everything off for him but he's supposedly still low net worth for a man of his station? He's either a brazen liar or he has some sort of addiction that should disqualify him from the post.
posted by kingdead at 7:11 PM on August 10, 2023 [21 favorites]

I took Thomas to St. Kitts for an andremachrome treatment.
posted by oldnumberseven at 7:17 PM on August 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

This sort of shit, including the non-disclosure, is certainly cause for removal. I didn't think that after the initial revelations. There's no way you'll get two-thirds to vote on it though.

You've got me wanting to bail this old pervert out because there's NO WAY the other conservative ones aren't getting those perks, too, and their names aren't being dragged out there. (I don't know about the liberal ones, I assume they get slimmed down versions, like a free ham? A condo?) Bribing and grifting should know no color!

Maybe, but I believe there can an inverse class relationship for this. People who grew up wealthy and/or connected understand the unspoken rules better, and can turn down things that cross the line more easily. People who grew up poor can think "Oh, people are giving me stuff, all my colleagues have stuff, I guess this is what happens when you ascend to this level!"

I would be really curious to see a deep dive into this, for both liberal and conservative justices. What are the five most embarrassing reveals for each of them?
posted by mark k at 7:19 PM on August 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

Thomas' behavior is utterly corrupt, but what's worse is that the Court itself is basically willing to set up a constitutional showdown by taking the position that there's nothing the other two branches can do about their behavior.
posted by Ickster at 7:26 PM on August 10, 2023 [35 favorites]

The PP story notes that Breyer and Ginsburg did accept trips paid for by wealthy individuals. Of course, we know that because Breyer and Ginsburg *disclosed* the gifts, as they're supposed to, unlike Thomas.

I suppose they could dig as deep on the other justices as they have on Thomas, but odds are, if Ginsburg disclosed a major trip to Israel, she probably disclosed everything else too.
posted by martin q blank at 7:27 PM on August 10, 2023 [13 favorites]

I do wonder if Clarence is going to declare the value of the schooling he's gotten from KBJ since she was appointed.
posted by hippybear at 7:29 PM on August 10, 2023 [21 favorites]

As always, the most embarrassing thing about corruption like this is how cheap the whole thing is. The man's letting himself and the legal system he ostensibly represents be bought off for pennies.

It is all so ridiculously low-budget. I'm a long way from being a billionaire, and even I could almost pay these kind of prices. I mean, buy an RV in exchange for a favorable ruling? That's an amazing deal.

the fucking oubliette

Worst. Sex club. Ever.

Hey now, no kink shaming here.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:30 PM on August 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

Howard Taft would be furious.
posted by clavdivs at 7:39 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's pretty gnarly. As pointed out though there are justices on the bench who are probably doing this too. What I am hoping is that after seeing Thomas get raked some people will come out of the woodwork and be like "yo, you think that's wild, check this out, with receipts" on someone else. I bet Propublica's tipline is jammed with these things, great reporting like this attracts others who wouldn't otherwise come forward.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:45 PM on August 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

I don't get it. I don't get how we're left with "gosh, rules is rules and I guess there's nothin' we can do" when a guy we laughingly call a "justice" has been taking bribes for years. People live or die based on what this guy decides, people have their rights taken away at his say-so. If a doctor was infecting people with fatal illnesses because somebody bribed him to do it, if a fireman was deliberately burning peoples' houses down, no one in their right mind would say "welp, rules is rules, nothing we can do, he IS a fireman after all." Democracy is supposed to be an alternative to having to burn everything down and put heads on pointy sticks once every generation or two, and yet these guys are just determined to get around democracy.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:56 PM on August 10, 2023 [46 favorites]

buy an RV in exchange for a favorable ruling

So far none of this reporting has shown a real quid pro quo where a specific ruling seems to have been influenced by a bribe. I'm not saying that makes Thomas' corruption OK. It's not. It still looks terrible, and he's clearly being influenced by a mindset of conservative billionaires, and he's not even doing the minimal required disclosures. But there's been no direct line drawn between one of these bribes and an actual court decision, at least not yet.

Doesn't matter to me; the standard is "appearance of conflict of interest" for a reason.

Meanwhile, Thomas' wife still works to overthrow the elected US government. That seems concerning too but an entirely different issue.
posted by Nelson at 7:59 PM on August 10, 2023 [22 favorites]

PBS NewsHour video segment on this story, interviewing reporter Brett Murphy and Slate journalist Joel Anderson (listen to his "Becoming Clarence Thomas" series for more engaging and enraging content).

The only check and balance on Thomas is his health, and decorum prevents me from suggesting my preferred outcome on that. I hate feeling that desire so much, and yet, what other recourse do I have?
posted by JDC8 at 8:00 PM on August 10, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm especially fond of Clarance's habit of writing dissents to opinions and then many years later quoting from that dissent that he wrote to affirm a new opinion, and rinse repeat until he's cited himself so many times it somehow becomes precedent.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on August 10, 2023 [12 favorites]

Not being American here, what's the mechanism for Supreme Court judges to be removed? How bad does their behaviour need to be before that mechanism operates?

I believe this is the list of possibilities (I have ordered them from most to least likely in my opinion for Justice Thomas specifically):

• Death.
• Resignation.
• Successful revolution.
• Aliens beaming up the Justice in question and releasing a virus that makes the rest of humanity forget that they ever existed and be completely unswayable by any contrary evidence.
• Some new or untried legal theory, e.g. enforcement of the Good Behavior clause via the courts rather than via the impeachment process.
• Some new law (e.g. reduction of the number of Justices to one, that being the constitutionally-mandated Chief Justice) that somehow passes judicial muster.
• Constitutional amendment.
• Conviction upon impeachment.

posted by Flunkie at 8:09 PM on August 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

Oh, and:

How bad does their behaviour need to be before that mechanism operates?

This is not well-defined. For example, in the words of Gerald Ford:

An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.

For context: He said this while he was Speaker of the House, during an actual real-life attempt to impeach a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court.
posted by Flunkie at 8:22 PM on August 10, 2023 [14 favorites]

Also, various things functionally similar (at least with respect to the removal of a Supreme Court Justice) to "successful revolution" should probably be added to my list. For example, something that leads to the dissolution of the United States, like a constitutional convention doing so, or being conquered by and absorbed into Canada or whatever.

Please note that at least in Justice Thomas's case, I personally still consider total conquest of the US by Canada to be more likely than conviction upon impeachment.
posted by Flunkie at 8:28 PM on August 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

But there's been no direct line drawn between one of these bribes and an actual court decision, at least not yet.

Yeah, there really has.
posted by mhoye at 8:33 PM on August 10, 2023 [19 favorites]

I'm pretty sure The Fucking Oubliette is an Oglaf comic.
posted by krisjohn at 8:56 PM on August 10, 2023 [38 favorites]

With the Senate at 51 D to 49 R and a 2/3 vote needed, literally the only offence that will lead to Thomas (or any conservative justice) being successfully impeached is if he murders 23 people. And they're all sitting Republican senators. And the trial occurs before any replacements are appointed/elected.
posted by Superilla at 9:08 PM on August 10, 2023 [16 favorites]

Since I’ve already made the mistake of reading this thread, I will just add I saw a Guardian headline today about Manchin “seriously considering” leaving the party. So there’s that. I mean, since we’re near the bottom of the fucking barrel in terms of infuriating, grotesque circumstances.
posted by Glinn at 9:30 PM on August 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

Crowd-fund a higher bribe.
posted by emf at 9:55 PM on August 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

Gaius Gracchus ripped out the expensive seats.
posted by clavdivs at 10:16 PM on August 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm trying to articulate something about how the process of his nomination and appointment was a forewarning of this, and thus that we can expect to see more of the same from the three last appointed judges. I don't know how to say other than when the appointment proces is corrupt, the judge will become corrupt wether they are or not from the outset. I don't know if that makes any sense to others here.
posted by mumimor at 10:33 PM on August 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

The one I'm really suspicious of is Brett Kavanaugh because he comes from a well off background and we KNOW mysterious benefactors were paying everything off for him but he's supposedly still low net worth for a man of his station? He's either a brazen liar or he has some sort of addiction that should disqualify him from the post.

Sometime earlier this year I read an investigation from some newsletter writer on the left side of things who concluded that while there was no firm evidence, the most likely way Kavanaugh got out of his debt was money from the First Bank of Mom and Dad. Which is a different kind of problematic in terms of what it says about the Supreme Court, but I guess not so bad as what Clarence Thomas is up to.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:00 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

The infinitesimally thin silver lining to this is how much every one of these revelations has to stoke Thomas’ smoldering victim-rage.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:32 PM on August 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

There is no way Trump appointed Kavanaugh or Barrett without having some kind of dirt on them that would allow him to compel their votes if he really needed to. I believe Bush I had something on Thomas, too.

If that's true and whatever that stuff is could be exposed, they would have no choice but to resign.

But if they did, and a Democrat happened to be President, we might well see a period of interregnum in the US in which red states would just start ignoring Supreme Court rulings they didn’t like — as both Ohio and Alabama are already doing.
posted by jamjam at 11:46 PM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

One more possibility that could remove Thomas from the court: a criminal conviction. Given his 30+ year history of corrupt practice, it seems very likely that he has broken serious criminal laws. Two possibilities come to mind: income tax evasion and insider trading.
Speculation on other law breaking behavior is left as an exercise to the reader.
posted by Metacircular at 1:47 AM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/12/clarence-thomas-aide-venmo-payments-lawyers-supreme-court

Some of the recent revelations were a result of Venmo making it too easy to share information about your transactions.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:58 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

One more possibility that could remove Thomas from the court: a criminal conviction. Given his 30+ year history of corrupt practice, it seems very likely that he has broken serious criminal laws.

Wouldn't he just appeal it to the Supreme Court? I can even see him not even recusing himself. The Supreme Court is already a joke that everyone - including the President - feels powerless to control. The republican party is an international organized crime cartel. Everyone knows it, that would be their opportunity to blatantly show the world how truly untouchable they are.
posted by any major dude at 4:52 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Since I’ve already made the mistake of reading this thread, I will just add I saw a Guardian headline today about Manchin “seriously considering” leaving the party.

Manchin might nominally leave the Democratic Party, but like fellow gadly Kristen Sinema, he'll continue to caucus with the Democrats to keep his committee assignments, so big deal. Functionally, little will change.
posted by Gelatin at 4:56 AM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's sort of hilarious that Thomas, who was pissed that people might think he only got into Yale just because he was Black, doesn't seem to think he's only getting all these great perks just because he's a Supreme Court Justice.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:24 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

There is no way Trump appointed Kavanaugh or Barrett without having some kind of dirt on them that would allow him to compel their votes if he really needed to.

I wouldn’t build him up to be smarter than we have evidence. I think he’s a product of the old school white collar corruption and really did believe that simply giving them jobs they weren’t qualified for would be enough to buy their loyalty. Thomas is in some ways more disappointing because he’s smarter than they are – it’s a lot harder to coast uphill – but willing to completely override that intelligence for ideological reasons.
posted by adamsc at 5:33 AM on August 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed. Let's avoid writing comments that display a joy about someone's potential death, per the Content Policy.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:49 AM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Dude accepted 38 vacations (that we know about) from billionaires, and it never crossed his mind one time to ever go anywhere outside of North America. 🙄
posted by newdaddy at 6:21 AM on August 11, 2023 [11 favorites]

Mod note: If folks have questions or concerns about the comment removal, they can email us via the Contact form at the bottom of any page or create a MetaTalk post. Please refrain from debating about it in this thread, thanks.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:22 AM on August 11, 2023

>Dude accepted 38 vacations (that we know about) from billionaires, and it never crossed his mind one time to ever go anywhere outside of North America.

Maybe in his head he's thinking that going outside the country would make it reportable. If a billionaire pays for your Greyhound bus ticket from Phoenix to Tucson, we want to know, Clarence Thomas!
posted by Catblack at 6:28 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Dude accepted 38 vacations (that we know about) from billionaires

****Who had active cases, or funded cases, or supported them directly as to a specific favorable ruling in their favor, in front of the court

this, this right here, this is the corrupt intent.

Not book tours (disclosed)
Not a disclosed trip to Israel (as a Jew)

ACTIVE CASES FUNDED FOR A SPECIFIC OUTCOME
posted by djseafood at 6:50 AM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm trying to articulate something about how the process of his nomination and appointment was a forewarning of this
posted by mumimor at 12:33 AM on August 11

This makes perfect sense to me. It's like how ignoring domestic violence victims allows their abusers to become spree killers - ignoring sexual harassment (Thomas)/assault (Kavanaugh) survivors allows their abusers to become corrupt Supreme Court justices. Ignoring victims at the outset allows the perpetrator to perpetrate more and bigger crimes. Barrett might also be implicated by this rubric, maybe (I think I remember something about her secretive religious group abusing its members but don't remember if she was supposed to be personally involved or not).
posted by joannemerriam at 7:26 AM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Perhaps he feels it's a bad look for a conservative justice from a modest background to get caught sunning himself on the Riviera, popping bottles in Dubai or going on safari in Kenya. He wants to establish himself as a nationalist elitist.
posted by Selena777 at 8:43 AM on August 11, 2023

Some of his billionaire yacht vacations were overseas - one of the prior ProPublica articles highlighted a trip through Indonesian islands on Harlan Crowe’s superyacht. There is a lot to criticize Thomas for — he certainly seems corrupt as hell! — but trying to make it seem like he is some unsophisticated rube has some pretty nasty classist/racist connotations.
posted by stowaway at 9:58 AM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bribe Clarence Thomas Foundation:

It is clear that bribery of SC justices are legal. This foundation will encourage Clarence Thomas (and his allies on the court) to flip his vote ideologically though public ads, and if it occurs reward him with bribe money for doing so.

Who is in?
posted by NotAYakk at 10:32 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I concede I was wrong and I withdraw my earlier comment.
posted by newdaddy at 10:49 AM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't want to paint Thomas as a rube but as we learned from the RV loan story he's totally happy to play the "I go to the heartland of the USA best country in the world" song when it suits him.

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” he told the filmmakers, adding: “There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer being around that.”

Glad to hear he's branched out with his corruption and enjoys taking money from patrons for trips to Europe and Indonesia too.
posted by Nelson at 10:49 AM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Justice Alito also traveled for free, and was on a sponsored vacation when he died in Texas in 2016. ProPublica delved into one specific undisclosed trip and ongoing relationship: In 2008, billionaire Paul Singer flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet, and paid the bill at a fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000/night. Afterward, Singer's hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times. "In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion." There's a helpful timeline alongside the article, including:

November 2009 - Singer introduces Alito at a Federalist Society dinner.
December 2009 - Singer's Argentina dispute spurs eight more Supreme Court appeals – seven of which are turned down.
October 2010 - Singer introduces Alito at a Manhattan Institute dinner.

Moreover, "Scalia had a pattern of disclosing trips to deliver lectures while not mentioning hunting excursions he took to nearby locales hosted by local attorneys and businessmen, according to a research paper published after his death."
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:15 AM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

You're conflating Samuel Alito and Anontin Scalia in the above comment. It's not hard to do, given they are/were bitter a-holes, but Alito is very much alive.
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:19 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Someone asked about other justices. Sondra Sotomayor had her staff pressure colleges and libraries to buy her book. Obviously nowhere near the scale of Thomas, Alito et. al. but shows that shady shenanigans are something many justices are participating in, and reinforces further the need for a code of ethics.
posted by rednikki at 11:23 AM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

mcstayinskool you are absolutely right, I was cutting and pasting from different articles about judicial non-disclosures. Sorry, and thanks.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:33 AM on August 11, 2023

There is no way Trump appointed Kavanaugh or Barrett without having some kind of dirt on them that would allow him to compel their votes if he really needed to.

IIRC they've both sided against Trump on some fairly important (to him) stuff, so I'm not sure that's true. My sense is that Trump doesn't give a shit about who serves on the Supreme Court— he just got his list of people to nominate from the Federalists, after somebody told him he'd get to stay king longer if he listened to them.

I believe Bush I had something on Thomas, too.

Bush was under to pressure to appear not-racist at the time, so he decided to find a token "diverse" SC nominee. They had to be as horrible a human being as he was, though, so naturally he eventually found Thomas.
posted by Rykey at 11:45 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

We definitely should call out Thomas for his hypocrisy of saying he likes being around “regular stock” when he’s actually touring around in the RV-equivalent of a fine yacht and regularly goes on billionaire vacations. But the problem is not the quality of the vacations, it’s that he (and other justices) seem to take as many freebies as they can get. There absolutely needs to be stricter rules for all of the justices around gifts and reimbursements. The shocking part is that the Supreme Court seems the least interested, out of all branches of government, in maintaining the appearance of impartiality. Your average member of congress might actually blush to have that much grift splashed across the newspapers.
posted by stowaway at 11:53 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sondra Sotomayor had her staff pressure colleges and libraries to buy her book.

How I ‘bribed’ a justice to take a no-expenses-paid trip to Mississippi (archive.today link)

And it's Sonia, not Sondra.
posted by Etrigan at 11:58 AM on August 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

It's particularly telling to remember that Presidents can receive ZERO gifts. Even those tokens exchanged with the Queen or whatever are property of the US and are not personal property even if they are given in a personal manner. They end up mostly in the National Archives.

Granted this is a head of state to head of state exchange. They are allowed to keep domestic gifts they pay the value for. It's complicated. Here's a list of rules for Employees of the Executive Branch accepting gifts. [PDF]
posted by hippybear at 11:58 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

common stock

Related cartoon.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:02 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It tickles me that a lot of ProPublica's reporting is documented by Ginni's habit of sending out braggy here's-what-we-did-on-our-vacation cards. She literally was taking notes on their corruption.

Also, yeah: somebody -- or several somebodies, given ProPublica's pointed pluralization of "from personal albums" -- who received those cards has had enough of that bullshit.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:26 PM on August 11, 2023 [9 favorites]

One more possibility that could remove Thomas from the court: a criminal conviction.

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think this is true. I mean, obviously if he were criminally convicted, Congress could in theory decide to remove him from office because of that, but they would do so via the impeachment process. He wouldn't automatically be removed from office as a direct result of a criminal conviction.

(except maybe via the Good Behavior clause, I guess, but that's also not "one more" possibility)
posted by Flunkie at 12:33 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

How I ‘bribed’ a justice to take a no-expenses-paid trip to Mississippi (archive.today link)

Not really addressing the charges from the AP article; the main factual offering there is to confirm she used a staff member to arrange this (all-expense paid) trip to sell books, something that would be illegal in other governmental branches.

It's penny-ante stuff compared to Thomas, but the justification is still that the Supreme Court is not bound by the same laws as other branches.
posted by mark k at 3:51 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's particularly telling to remember that Presidents can receive ZERO gifts.

Well, in theory. TFG was receiving gifts every single day of his presidency.
posted by Mitheral at 5:01 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think there's a direct quid pro quo going on here; everyone involve is smarter than to do that. I think it's something darker, something deeper.

It's a fact that the legal profession, being entirely composed of college-educated people, leans at least a little bit to the left. This is why conservative judges are just uniformly worse at their jobs; there are simpler fewer conservative lawyers and the best they can come up with isn't very good.

So you're a Supreme Court justice, you're hanging out with other elite lawyers because that's likely your preexisting social circle. Your elite lawyer friends are almost certainly to the left of the median American, possibly quite a bit so. People's political opinions will generally drift to be closer to those of their friends.

We saw this throughout the 80's and 90's, where "conservative" judges appointed by Republicans would drift leftward until they become moderate or even liberal judges. I think the reasonable explanation for this isn't that they were secret liberals who pulled the wool over the eyes on the presidents who appointed them, but rather that their political opinions shifted over time to match that of their social circle.

What should an aspiring conservative political activist with money to burn do about this? The answer is obvious: Get Supreme Court justices into your conservative social circle of rich people. This will be easy (it's fun to hang out with rich people, I imagine), fun for you (you get to brag about fishing with Clarence Thomas), and fun for your friends. You can talk shop with Thomas all day about how the right and good role of the government is to do nothing at all, keeping him on the straight and narrow not through corruption, but through isolation.

This is probably how Ginni Thomas got so far down the rabbit hole of conspiracies -- in simpler times, her college-educated left-leaning social circle would talk some sense into her, but when she's just rubbing elbows with the Harlan Crow-appointed crazies, there's no one around to do that.
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:48 PM on August 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's a fact that the legal profession, being entirely composed of college-educated people, leans at least a little bit to the left. This is why conservative judges are just uniformly worse at their jobs; there are simpler fewer conservative lawyers and the best they can come up with isn't very good.

I have no idea how lawyers as a whole tend to lean politically, but... are you sure it's to the left?

The reason that I ask is because you seem to be concluding it from "college-educated people tend to lean left" plus "lawyers are college-educated". That's not a logically valid conclusion. The result of drawing that conclusion may be true, but it's not necessarily so. If you have some direct evidence of the conclusion, I'd be interested in hearing it.

At any rate, a reason which seems more direct to me as to why conservative judges seem to suck at their jobs (at least in the current environment) is that they disagree with you (and me) when it comes to "their jobs" means.
posted by Flunkie at 5:50 PM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

It is particularly a suspect/laughable conclusion when one restricts to “elite” lawyers (which generally corresponds to Yale or Harvard educated, with a smattering of other top law schools, and having had the family resources and family and professional connections to get the high status clerkships, leading to high status lower level positions, etc.). Add the “possibly quote a bit so” in the mix and yeah, no.
posted by eviemath at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

We saw this throughout the 80's and 90's, where "conservative" judges appointed by Republicans would drift leftward until they become moderate or even liberal judges. I think the reasonable explanation for this isn't that they were secret liberals who pulled the wool over the eyes on the presidents who appointed them, but rather that their political opinions shifted over time to match that of their social circle.

I don’t think this is completely wrong but as others have pointed out, the elite law pipeline was heavily skewed to a handful of schools where rich white people are well represented. There are definitely areas where those elites are significantly out of sync with the mainstream conservative movement – gay rights is probably the best example – but there is another possibility I’d suggest you consider: the Republican Party moved dramatically to the religious right over that period, making someone whose views were basically the same eventually seem liberal.

That’s the period where having lost the civil rights era battles the conservatives refocused on guns and abortion as their rallying calls, trying to channel the evangelical movement into a path back to power. That took a while but it shifted power from the old patrician elites to the revanchists who were not committed to things like secularism, and we went from observing that they’d have rejected Richard Nixon (healthcare, the EPA, resigning when caught commuting high crimes) and even Ronald Reagan (immigrants, free trade). A judge didn’t have to change their beliefs to no longer fit with a party which had shifted so heavily into being the party of white Christian grievance.
posted by adamsc at 7:40 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yes, during my childhood and youth, mainstream, powerful conservatives believed in science, and government. They held family values, but also believed in religious freedom.

Todays conservatives are deeply irrational and cynical. The cynicism is essential: that is how they defend their immoral deeds to themselves (as well as to others). Judging from those I have met, many of them truly believe that "both sides do it", since they can't imagine how rational thought and trust in government works.

You might ask, how do they go through university and careers? But that is because they learn to do the motions, you can do that. (This is where my mind spins into thoughts about why AI is so interesting -- in brief it proves that what we are teaching our young it to a large degree things you can teach a machine, we aren't teaching them to think for themselves).
posted by mumimor at 2:02 AM on August 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Todays conservatives are deeply irrational and cynical. The cynicism is essential: that is how they defend their immoral deeds to themselves (as well as to others).

Agreed, and their many hypocrisies can be explained as simply bluffing the outsider with public relations about their wholesomeness, to get everyone to drop their guard and trust them. Those fooled by it believe they are safer around aggressive loyalty-based groups that scream their values rather than privacy-seeking individuals.
posted by Brian B. at 9:59 AM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yes, during my childhood and youth, mainstream, powerful conservatives believed in science, and government. They held family values, but also believed in religious freedom.

I don't know when your childhood and youth were, but if they were anywhere near mine, I respectfully suggest that this may be less a description of the typical powerful conservative and more a description of how a child might view them.
posted by Flunkie at 12:27 PM on August 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm old, Flunkie, but I do get what you are saying.
Still, I also feel there has been a mad escalation of irrational hypocrisy and conspiracy beliefs since I began following politics in the 1970s. Nixon was a turning point. But this was also the age of the union "machine" politics on the left, with their own issues.
posted by mumimor at 1:04 PM on August 13, 2023

0xCAF's comment above mentions the possibility of the legal elite being "quite a bit [to the left of the median American]", and I understand the urge to correct what one thinks is false, but the comment as a whole doesn't really depend on that being true. It only really depends on the wealthy right believing that

1. the legal elite is farther to the left than whatever social group they can construct for the justice instead
2. the constructed social group will have enough of an effect on the justice that it will be worth the effort.

posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 10:35 AM on August 28, 2023 [3 favorites]