The Clarence Thomas corruption scandal is the story that just never ends.
It's the gift that keeps on giving.
It turns out that Justice Thomas reversed one of his positions on one of
the country's most significant regulatory decisions.
After his wife, Ginni allegedly accepted secret payments from conservative donors.
And while he himself was receiving extravagant gifts and
luxury vacations from billionaire Harlan Crow.
Now to understand how corruption is at play here, we need context on this
legal doctrine in question, which is known as the Chevron doctrine.
According to the Lever,
the so-called Chevron deference doctrine stipulates that the executive branch.
Not the federal courts,
has the power to interpret laws passed by Congress in certain circumstances.
Conservatives for years have fought to overturn the doctrine.
A move that would empower legal challenges to federal agency regulations
on everything from climate policy to workplace safety to overtime pay.
So it was the result of the 1984 Supreme Court case,
Chevron USA v Natural Resources Defense Council.
Which was brought by environmental advocates to challenge
Reagan's weakening of air pollution regulations.
The Supreme Court deferred to the EPA and its interpretation of the Clean Air Act,
which at the time was seen as a win for the polluters.
But it was also a win for the administrative state or
federal government agencies, which is why conservatives hated it.
Now, Thomas wrote a landmark Supreme Court opinion upholding the doctrine in 2005.
But began questioning it a decade later before eventually renouncing his past
opinion in 2020 and claiming that the doctrine itself might be unconstitutional.
Now, Thomas could help overturn the doctrine in a new
case the high court just agreed to hear next term.
And what do you know?
Groups within the conservative legal movement,
which includes right-wing donors, Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow,
have orchestrated an effort in recent years to overturn the decision.
What a shocker.
They hate that the doctrine empowers federal agencies like the EPA or
even the education department to interpret and implement statutes.
Maybe Clarence just happened to change his mind out of nowhere.
Or maybe not.
I'm gonna go with the latter.
So in 2010, Harlan Crow bankrolled a dark money group led
by Thomas's wife Ginni that paid her $120,000.
Leo was on the group's board of directors.
In 2012, Leo's dark money network steered
undisclosed consulting payments to Thomas's wife.
I'm sure that that had no impact.
Not at all.
Now, the Leo network has also aggressively funded Republican politicians and several
nonprofits pressing the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine next term.
The Federalist Society, of course,
the conservative lawyers organization where Leonard Leo is co-chair.
Was at the center of these efforts, publishing articles and
touting theories undermining the Chevron doctrine and the administrative state.
The American Enterprise Institute, where Harlan Crow sits on the board of trustees,
was also agitating against the Chevron doctrine.
Harlan Crow cofounded the Club for Growth, which has a very funny name, but
nonetheless, it's a pro business group that also issued a memo calling for
the end of the Chevron doctrine.
Last year, Crow's wife joined the board of trustees at the Manhattan Institute,
a conservative think tank that pressed the Supreme Court to hear the new case
aimed at ending the Chevron doctrine.
This is the family that brought Clarence Thomas on vacations worth half
a million dollars and also paid for their relatives private school tuition.
But it's not just Clarence Thomas that was very likely corrupted by the gifts and
cash of powerful conservatives, which he didn't disclose and he was supposed to.
Like any good political donor, Harlan Crow also targeted members of Congress.
And it's paying off.
Now, in the midst of this ethics scandal,
the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
And sent a letter asking Harlan Crow to provide a full accounting
of his financial ties to Thomas and any other judges on the high court.
Now unsurprisingly,
none of the committee's Republican members signed onto the letter.
And we should maybe mention that those same Republicans have collectively
accepted nearly half a million dollars in campaign cash from Crow since
the year 2000.
Accountable.US calculated that the current Republican members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee received $453,300 from Crow between 2001 and 2022.
The group revised that figure up to $457,000 on Tuesday in light of,
look at that, another $3,700 donation Crow made to Senator John Cornyn,
a Republican from Texas, earlier this year.
So let's break that down a little further.
Okay, I love getting into the numbers.
Here's a look at Crow's total contributions to nine GOP
lawmakers on the panel.
You've got John Cornyn at $294,800.
You've got Senator Chuck Grassley, $46,600.
It's just a murderous row of insanely, corrupt Republican
lawmakers who are more than willing to do the bidding of Harlan Crow.
The Federalist Society, and anything that they want, basically, right?
And in this case, they want to take power away from federal government agencies and
essentially consolidate power within the Supreme Court.
And look, they've been pretty vocal,
all of those lawmakers who took those donations or bribes.
Let's keep it real.
They've been vocal in opposing reforms to the Supreme Court and
the ethics that they are supposed to be operating under.
Now, senator John Kennedy said the proposed Supreme Court ethics
rules were unnecessary.
Senator John Cornyn claimed Congress did not have the authority to regulate
the courts due to separation of powers.
Senator Ted Cruz claimed the hearing was not about judicial ethics, but
instead was an attempt to attack Justice Thomas for having rich friends.
Now, he could have all the rich friends in the world I don't care about that.
I do care when the rich friends are bribing him so
he rules in a particular way.
And that is what appears to be happening here.
And it's all coming full circle because that kind of political
corruption was legalized in this country.
In part thanks to Crow's buddy Clarence Thomas.
An Americans for Tax Fairness Analysis of campaign
finance data showed that after Thomas provided
a deciding vote in the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission case.
The Crow family's average annual campaign contributions soared by 862%,
from just $163,240 before 2010 to $1.57 million since.
Just let that sink in.
And we're supposed to believe that our system of government is sound,
that corruption isn't a problem.
We are supposed to sit here and accept whatever narrative comes from our
elected lawmakers in regard to the corruption in other countries.
When we know full well that not only is corruption a problem in our country,
but we've taken the extra step.
The Supreme Court has taken the extra step of legalizing the bribery and
baking it into our system.
Now, Justice Thomas failed to disclose the lavish gifts and
all the luxury travel that was provided to him from billionaire donor Harlan Crow.
And we should be asking ourselves, why is that?
Why did he have so much difficulty disclosing that information while
simultaneously disclosing the gifts and
money that he received from other individuals?
Little questionable now.