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John, how many corruption scandals can this illegitimate and stolen court churn out in a week?
While right-wing operative Samuel Alito’s solidarity with election deniers has rightfully taken the spotlight this week (not just once but twice), it’s hardly the only damning new detail that has come to light about the court’s ethically-challenged conservative justices.
Below, we’re highlighting some additional instances of potential misconduct from Alito and Thomas that you might’ve missed when you were reading up on their front-page corruption… |
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According to a report by Greg Sargent in The New Republic, several months after news broke that Clarence Thomas received a $267,000 loan from one of his wealthy benefactor friends to purchase a souped-up RV, we still don’t know if that money ever got paid back.
We also don’t know if some or all of the loan was forgiven by the lender. If it was, there’s a strong chance Thomas violated federal tax law by failing to report it on his tax returns. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden are pressing Thomas’ attorney for information, but unsurprisingly, his latest correspondence with the lawmakers “offered little additional clarity.”
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Meanwhile, during a transphobic right-wing effort last summer to boycott Anheuser-Busch after the company featured trans activist and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney in one of its ads, Justice Alito dropped at least some of his previously held stock in the company. The sale came after days of inflammatory posts from conservative extremists and right-wing media playing up a downturn in Anheuser-Busch stock value as a result of the boycott.
(By the way, if you had any lingering doubts that Alito gets all his news from Fox and its pundits, this should confirm it for you.)
Chris Geidner broke the story on his Substack, Law Dork, writing, “Whether Alito was participating in the boycott matters, moreover, for one of the several reasons it matters why there was an upside-down American flag flying at his house on Jan. 17, 2021, as The New York Times reported earlier this week, and what he knew about that. The answer to both sets of questions says something about whether his participation in related cases is ethical. As Alito agreed to when the justices announced their code of conduct, ‘A Justice should not engage in other political activity.’”
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Mitch McConnell, who colluded with Trump to steal two seats on the court and cement a right-wing supermajority, said this week that “We need to leave the Supreme Court alone” (🙄).
If anything, that comment proves just how essential it is that we don’t let up. Right-wing politicians on and off the Supreme Court are scared, because these stories illuminate what this broken institution really is: the legal arm of the Republican Party.
We can’t let this moment pass us by — if there was ever a time to get loud and stay indignant, it’s now.
Thank you for using your voice,
Sarah Lipton-Lubet |
