The court of public opinion and common sense is unanimous in the matter of the personal ethics of public officials, a debacle that clearly escapes the lower, U.S. Supreme Court.
A recent thorough investigation and stories by ProPublica has revealed that at least two Supreme Court justices have grossly violated accepted and critical ethics standards, accepting lavish gifts from politically active and influential billionaires.
The indisputable graft was never reported, and the cases were potentially affected by corrupted members of the high court arguing and voting on critical issues. The scandal has indelibly tainted these justices, the cases affected and the court itself.
The debacle began when ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism group, revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than 20 years accepted gifts of luxury trips and vacations for himself and his wife, all paid for by billionaire and Republican mega donor Harlan Crow.
One 2019 trip to Indonesia, detailed in the ProPublica investigation, comprised private yachts and jets that would have cost more than $500,000 if booked by himself, according to the reports.
Not only did Thomas regularly and consistently take hundreds of thousands of dollars in graft from Crow, he never disclosed it. The investigation also revealed that Thomas sold three personal properties to Crow over 10 years, in deals worth more than $100,000, never disclosing the sale nor the details.
Finally, Thomas allowed Crow to also pay private school tuition for two years for a child raised by Thomas and his wife.
He argued that squishy ethics and reporting rules for the high court justices did not make reporting the gifts of “friendship” a requirement, and that he clearly did not feel compelled to reveal the graft.
The astounding revelations made clear two things: the Supreme Court ethics and disclosure rules are inadequate, and Thomas does not have the ethical temerity to sit on the high court, or any court.
The rules themselves, bent versions of federal court reporting requirements, need to be rewritten by Congress.
Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, told the Associated Press that a tepid ethics and finance reporting framework for the high court is only part of the problem. The Supreme Court also does not detail nor require justices to recuse themselves from cases tainted by their personal involvement with litigants.
“There is no room to debate that the Supreme Court has the weakest ethics rules in federal government,” Payne told the AP.
We agree.
The Supreme Court ethics scandal got worse last week when ProPublica continued its reporting and revealed that Justice Samuel Alito also was also thick in taking graft from two rich GOP donors.
The story revealed that Alito let Republican donor and businessman Paul Singer pay the justice’s way on an opulently expensive remote Alaska fishing trip in 2008.
The plane trip alone, on a private jet, was valued at more than $100,000.
Rich Republican donor Robin Arkley, II, paid for Alito’s luxury lodging for the trip, and the part of the junket was sewed together by Leonard Leo, then chief of the conservative Federalist Society legal group.
Alito did not disclose any of the graft on financial reporting forms.
Worse, he ruled on about a dozen cases brought before the high court involving his vacation benefactor, hedge-fund billionaire Singer.
Alito never once recused himself from any of the cases nor mentioned his generous friend during hearings.
In a final example of his clear lack of yielding to any kind of ethical compass, Alito refused to comment to ProPublica, or any legitimate media outlet, on the revelations. Instead, he wrote his own defense and opinion about the conundrum, publishing it in the Wall Street Journal.
The people need Congress to step in and make indisputable how vital transparency is among the justices by legislating rules of conduct justices cannot weasel out of.
Colorado’s own Amendment 41, spelling out the rules for accepting graft, even down to local school board members, could be a good starting framework.
Clearly, Justices Thomas and Alito should resign from the court. Both have exhibited, indisputably, not only their desire to take graft, but that they have both defended the practice, not understanding nor admitting that their lack of ethics impune their personal work and that of the court.
Neither justice understands that the appearance of impropriety in their jobs is just as corrupt as their actual disreputable deeds.
The court of public opinion gets it, and polls show that public trust in the court continues to slide.
Fix the rules and clear the corruption off the bench.
I so agree! I also do not think justices should serve for life. What are the chances Congress will clean up the court and public trust will return??
Perhaps consideration for AI replacing Supreme Court Justices would give the U.S. a court devoid of corruption, bias, political influence, and graft. It would also be an annual savings of tax payer dollars eliminating the annual salaries, benefits, pensions of 9 justices (approximately $2,480,300 of annual salary). Just a consideration.