Trips on luxury yachts and private planes, nine days at full speed from island to island in Indonesia, getaways to a Texan ranch, vacations in a mansion in the mountains and a bible worth $19,000 (17,237 euros).
She belonged to the abolitionist politician and writer Frederick Douglass, hero of the country;
What better gift than that for a black, pious and ultra-conservative Supreme Court judge?
Harlan Crow, real estate magnate, GOP donor and family friend, paid those gifts to High Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia
Ginni
Thomas.
They are so many and so splendid that, after being revealed in a journalistic investigation by
ProPublica,
they have focused on something more than the ethical character of a judge who never declared those gifts: they have reopened the debate on who influences and who controls the members of the Supreme Court, nine untouchable men and women elected for life and whose decisions shape the society they serve.
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Clarence Thomas, the judge who leads the conservative reaction in the US
Following the early revelations, more came this week.
Crow also paid for the education of a great-nephew for whom the magistrate was legal guardian ($6,000 a month).
In addition, it was learned that a conservative activist named Leonard Leo agreed to remove Ginni's name from some compromising invoices from 2010 and 2011 in payment for some advisory work done by her, which other investigations placed a few months ago in the orbit of the instigators of the attack on the Capitol.
The marriage formed by Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, an ultra-conservative activist, and Clarence Thomas, a US Supreme Court justice, in October 2021. DREW ANGERER (AFP)
Clarence Thomas, who earns $285,000 a year (just over 254,000 euros), has defended himself by saying that this is what "close friends" do for one and that he was not obliged to communicate the gifts since Crow had no business of those who were to occupy the Supreme Court.
Beyond the fact that it was later revealed that the judicial paths of Thomas and Crow had briefly crossed in 2005 due to a dispute over copyright that involved one of the magnate's companies, the facts have aired the uncomfortable intimacy of a judge with a “politically connected” citizen, according to the description of Alicia Bannon, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
“Thomas did not comply with the obligation of transparency.
And the Supreme Court judges, in addition to being honest, have to appear so.
The size of the gifts is certainly worrying, especially since the friendship between the two began when he was already a magistrate.
If we cannot trust our magistrates, the quality of democracy worsens,” explains Bannon, who recalls that polls show that “trust in the institution is at historic lows.”
Only four out of 10 Americans approve, according to Gallup, the performance of an organ until not so long ago that was beyond doubt.
The Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing on Tuesday to discuss its ethical rules that ended in another bitter debate between the two parties for lack of something better to hold on to: the president of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, declined the invitation to appear citing his " concern” because of the negative impression that his presence to give explanations would have given.
He hid behind "separation of powers" and "the importance of preserving judicial independence."
Session of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss last Tuesday the scandal of the gifts to Clarence Thomas, who is seen in the background, on the screen, during his confirmation process. CHIP SOMODEVILLA (Getty Images via AFP)
Democrats called for tightening control of the institution.
Republicans, who view the Thomas indictments as a smear campaign by the left-wing press, blame it all on progressive dissatisfaction with recent decisions by a court with a conservative majority not seen since the 1930s.
They are rulings that affect the right to abortion, gun control or climate change.
In addition to another front on Capitol Hill, the Thomas case has suddenly opened the ban on scrutiny to his peers.
Liberal Sonia Sotomayor is accused of not recusing herself in two cases involving her publisher, Penguin Random House, from which she has collected $3.2 million over the years.
Conservative Neil Gorsuch, for placing a property he had been trying to sell in Colorado for years just days after he was elected to office.
The buyer?
The CEO of Greenberg Traurig, one of the largest law firms in the country and a frequent litigator before the Supreme Court.
The scandals have also served as a reminder that there is almost nothing new under the sun in Washington.
"Thomas's leniency is just the latest and most egregious example of a weakness demonstrated by nearly all of its members over the decades, both Republican and Democratic presidential appointees: a willingness to accept gifts from individuals and groups with an interest in snuggling up to nine one of the most powerful people in the United States", sentenced
The New York Times
in an editorial that provided evidence that invited to distinguish between what is illegal and what is morally reprehensible: if the conservative Antonin Scalia accepted 258 subsidized trips in the past, often to leave of hunting, the liberal Stephen Breyer, recently retired, did the same on at least 225 occasions.
“This is all happening because, unlike the rest of the judicial and political establishment, there are very few rules of conduct for the Supreme Court,” Paul Collins, a University of Massachusetts law professor and author of three books on the subject, said in an email. the progressive politicization of the high court.
“They lack an ethical code.
They say that they consult a series of experts when they have to make a problematic decision, but that advice they receive is not binding.
In his defense, Thomas argued that he had sought the "guidance" of "colleagues and members of the judiciary" and was told that "gifts from close personal friends with no pending issues in court are not reportable."
The responsibility of Judge Roberts
In the midst of the storm, all eyes have turned to Roberts.
"Clearly, he has lost control of the Supreme," says Collins.
“If he were a real leader as president, he would be willing to speak publicly with Congress about these problems to find a solution,” he adds.
Bannon, for his part, considers that Roberts “is doing what he usually does”: “Asking us to trust them, that they are capable of fixing their problems on their own.
But it seems clear that they have not earned that trust.”
To the image of a house in order that the president wants to project, it does not help that the greatest enigma in the recent history of the court remains unresolved: they have not yet found the culprit of the historic leak of the draft of the sentence that ended last June with federal protection of the right to abortion.
Samuel Alito, writer of that ruling, recently gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal
opinion editor ,
James Taranto, in which he stated that he "had a pretty good idea" of who did it.
Taranto has contributed his dissenting point of view over the past few weeks with a series of articles, including an interview with the Crow donor, denouncing a "concocted left-wing attack on Supreme Court ethics to tarnish his reputation."
Collins and Bannon coincide in the desire that the latest scandals serve to propose a profound reform of the court.
"There would have to be a more specific code of ethics and financial disclosure rules, something Roberts could do tomorrow if he was willing," says Bannon.
"It is also urgent to take them down from their pedestal and stop treating them like celebrities to consider them public officials subject to the same demands as the rest," adds Collins, who proposes as a long-term solution "institute a limit of 18 years for the mandates of the judges”, who can now only be removed by
impeachment
(an impeachment trial like the two Donald Trump faced when he was president).
It will not be easy: something like this would require a majority of votes in the House of Representatives, and, by virtue of the filibuster, 67 of the 100 senators agreeing for once.
Today, a complete chimera.
Defenders of this limitation believe that it would ease the appointment and confirmation process in the Senate.
There is so much at stake in the possibility of introducing a judge of a similar ideological current for life that "since the late eighties, these procedures, which used to be normal, honest and open, have become real pitched battles", clarifies Joshua Prager, author of
The Family Roe, a book on the
Roe vs. Wade
case
, perhaps the most famous in the history of the Supreme Court, which in 1973 set the precedent for abortion lying down last year.
The election of Thomas, during which Anita Hill, a former collaborator, accused him of sexual harassment before a hostile committee, in 1991 was a before and after in that escalation.
In 2005, it was the turn of Roberts, author at the time of a phrase for history: "Judges are not politicians who can promise to do certain things in exchange for votes."
It's one of those boomerang phrases;
Few things today are capable of bringing the two Americas to such agreement as the certainty that politics has long since slipped into the Supreme Court building in Washington.
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