Last week, Senators Whitehouse and Wyden begged Merrick Garland to do the bare minimum requirement of his job and appoint an independent prosecutor to at least inquire about Clarence Thomas accumulating upwards of SIX MILLION DOLLARS in actual or probable gifts from wealthy activists. Garland, exhibiting the same overactive sense of “propriety” that doomed Jim Comey in 2016, will do nothing even though handing the case to a special counsel is the actual solution to a feared conflict of interest.
In the meantime, the letter attached the findings the senators made when Harlan Crow finally turned over his documents after flirting with contempt of Congress for months. We knew the documents revealed even more trips than those Thomas belatedly disclosed, but one trip seems super fun:
Back in 2003, the Russians weren’t the geopolitical threat they are today. George W. Bush was busy explaining that he’d looked deep into Putin’s eyes and formed a bromance. “I was able to get a sense of his soul,” Bush the Younger said, apparently missing the part of Putin’s soul that blows up children’s hospitals.
But most everyone else already pegged Putin as a threat by 2003, which is what Bush was trying to push back against when he uttered the quote that spawned some of the worst slash fic since the Lend-Lease Act.
To be entirely clear, while there are going to be some crazy conspiracy freaks out there, I don’t think Clarence Thomas had a secret summit with Putin in 2003 or that he’s some sort of Manchurian Candidate triggered by the word “Oyez.” There’s nothing to suggest this was anything but a vacation. Even if it’s a curious trip given Thomas’s leisure preference for cruising the highways and byways of America and generally hanging out in places where there weren’t constant suicide bombings and political assassinations that year.
On the other hand, a senior U.S. policymaker (dropping the comic pretense that Thomas approaches cases as anything but) visiting a KGB-run kleptocracy outside of official missions probably warrants some heightened scrutiny, right? This is an official who could foreseeably have access to classified information — especially during the height of the war on terror when its questionably constitutional excesses could wend their way up the chain. That might just be the sort of guy that Russian intelligence would love to mine for kompromat as he flitted about their country.
Yet no one seems interested in doing anything about this outside of Congress. After Whitehouse and Wyden wrote Garland asking him to get off his duff, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez followed through on her pledge to introduce articles of impeachment directed at Thomas and fellow (though much less ostentatious) free money fan Sam Alito. It’s a doomed project, but then… is it really any more doomed than seeking effort from Merrick Garland?
Unfortunately, even if an impeachment could clear a hypothetical future House, the prospect of a 67 Senator majority to remove Thomas from office is unthinkable. They couldn’t get 67 Senators to convict Trump one month after his supporters chased them into a bunker, so there’s no way they’re pulling the trigger on mere corruption. That said — if Trump wins — savvy Republicans should totally jump on board because Clarence Thomas isn’t leaving the job that acts as his personal ATM machine and the only way they replace him with one of their 40-year-old Proud Boy-cum-FedSoc Treasurer clones before Thomas becomes their RBG would be to join the Democrats and pretend to be shocked, SHOCKED to find that bribery is going on in there.
But I digress.
All Congress will ever be able to realistically do about the Supreme Court’s ethical cesspool is yank funding from the judiciary — a move we called for in 2023, but here’s a 2024 edition:
Zero funding their clerks is a fair start though cutting off the air conditioning would be futile. As unpleasant as Washington can get in the summer, the justices would just push out opinions before it gets too muggy and then work from home.
Or Moscow.
Earlier: Senators Beg Merrick Garland To Do His Job And Investigate Clarence Thomas
Sam Alito Laments It’s Getting So You Can’t Take All-Expense Paid Luxury Vacations Funded By Billionaires Anymore
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
#Big #Deal.. #Clarence #Thomas #GOP #Donor #Money #Visit #Russians
