Clarence Thomas has accepted $4M in gifts during career: Watchdog
By: Lauren Irwin (The Hill)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Clarence Thomas has accepted $4M in gifts during career: Watchdog
Supreme Court justices have received nearly $5 million in gifts since the early 2000s, and one justice in particular, Justice Clarence Thomas, accounts for nearly all of it.
Data released Thursday by watchdog group Fix the Court unveils a list of gifts justices have received since January 2004. The dataset was released ahead of an expected release of the justices' financial disclosure reports Friday.
Thomas, nominated to the high court by former President George H.W. Bush, made headlines last year after an investigation found he had taken dozens of trips paid for by separate billionaire friends.
According to the data compiled by Fix the Court, since 2004, Thomas has accepted $4,042,286, or 193 gifts. The group reported that, for Thomas, there's an additional 126 "likely but not confirmed gifts."
Of the nearly 200 gifts, the group said Thomas only reported 27 of the gifts on his financial disclosures.
The dataset included current and former justices dating back to 2004, tallying their gift totals, including Thomas's, to be about $4.7 million.
"Supreme Court justices should not be accepting gifts, let alone the hundreds of freebies worth millions of dollars they've received over the years," Fix the Court's Gabe Roth said in a statement. "Public servants who make four times the median local salary, and who can make millions writing books on any topic they like, can afford to pay for their own vacations, vehicles, hunting excursions and club memberships."
Roth continued, arguing that there is influence in who gives the justices gifts and what they are buying with their "generosity."
"The ethics crisis at the court won't begin to abate until justices adopt stricter gift acceptance rules," he said.
The watchdog group acknowledged that the total gift calculations may be lower than what's actually true. For example, the group was unable to verify a hunting lodge that Justice Antonin Scalia stayed in, and Scalia, along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and William Rehnquist, died in office, so the numbers "might be undercounts."
Scalia received the second-highest total in gifts, with $210,164 from Jan. 2004 to his death in 2016.
The list of gifts comes after Democrats called for Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6 and former President Trump currently before the court in light of reports that a "Stop the Steal" flag was flown outside his house after the attack on the Capitol.
Last week, Alito rejected the calls to recuse himself in the cases.
Alito received the third-most gifts, with $170,095 from his first day on Jan. 31, 2006, to present day, the data said.
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I have no comment, other than to say that this made me think of something Marcellus said to Horatio in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Thomas' 'gifts' are a ridiculous breach of ethics. He should be removed from the bench and retired in disgrace.
Ethics? What ethics? It's just another word like "integrity".
Exactly.
Ethics & integrity means following the Constitution as written.
Liberals didn't do that
Thank you, Vic, but that's not what this article is about.
Or even remotely true.
As is now seen in a follow-up article posted by another NT member, he has even admitted failing to report it.
Although the SCOTUS has now indicated a code of ethics, there is no enforcement of its terms. The justices should, according to the code, admit their corrupt practices, but they are not required to do anything about it, like recuse themselves where there COULD be or even IS conflict, or resign.
Clearly, Thomas has no business being on the Supreme Court and should resign. Alito can go with him.
Is there any NT lawyer member who doesn't agree?
Many years ago, when I was the senior partner of a prominent Toronto law firm, a man who was very well connected asked me if I wanted to be a judge, because he was in a position to put my name up for it. I turned his offer down for more than one reason. Although I knew I was a fair-minded person without strong biases, I felt I was not sufficiently knowledgeable of the law generally, but more importantly I did not want to curtail my lifestyle to the extent of having to be super-careful of everything I did and everywhere I went. Canadian judges are very careful, they recuse themselves from cases where there is even a smell that might possibly attach itself to them. I knew some Canadian judges. I articled (apprenticed before call to the bar) for a brilliant lawyer who became an Ontario Supreme Court Justice, and they were all squeeky clean. I just shake my head when I read the kinds of stories like this one about American judges, or see what to me is such OBVIOUS bias.
It's hard to imagine any sane, rational lawyer disagreeing.
Almost $5,000,000.00 in GIFTS! Who gets $5,000,000.00 in GIFTS?
Clarence "On-the-Take" Thomas.
Thomas and ''Gold Bar'' Mendenez make the perfect pair of thieves. As they run through the halls of Congress and SCOTUS yelling, ''catch me if you can''.
Oh, my mistake. Thomas has only gotten $4,042,286.00 in gifts. That's much more reasonable.
As I've been saying for a long time, there is a word missing in the lexicon of a lot of American politicians and judges. That word is "integrity".
Don't worry about it. 4 million, 5 million, it doesn't make any difference - it is a hell of a lot ot money.
Ginni needs to go also and Alito's wife
They might already be in the only place that wants them.