A news report claiming conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may have violated ethics rules by not disclosing accepting luxury vacations from his wealthy friend marks the left’s latest attempt to delegitimize the country’s highest court, according to attorney Mark Paoletta.
“They hate Clarence Thomas, and they want to destroy him, and they are trying to make his life miserable,” Paoletta, who is a friend of Thomas, told The Epoch Times. Paoletta represented Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, during the House Jan. 6 panel investigation last year.
“This is all driven by the Democrats and the left-wing media, and activists, wanting to destroy the court, and delegitimize it, because they don’t like the opinions that they’re coming down with,” he added. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
According to Paaoletta, recent cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that didn’t turn out favorably for those on the left—such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, in which the court overturned Roe v. Wade; and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the court for the first time recognized a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense—have motivated their attacks.
ProPublica published an April 6 report alleging that Thomas accepted, and did not disclose on his annual financial statements, luxury vacations almost every year over the past 20 years from billionaire real-estate developer and Republican Party donor Harlan Crow, who is a friend of Thomas.
ProPublica is a left-leaning nonprofit funded by the preeminent Democratic Party donor, financier George Soros, through his Foundation to Promote Open Society. Soros has been criticized by conservatives for funding the election campaigns of various district attorneys who are soft on crime.
In response to the article, Thomas said that he had sought guidance from colleagues and “was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
“I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines,” the justice said in an April 7 statement.
Thomas noted that Crow and his wife “are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years.”
“As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them,” he added.
“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said.
ProPublica’s article sparked a swift response from nearly two dozen House and Senate Democrats, who have asked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to launch an investigation into Thomas.
“The Democrats in Congress are going after the Supreme Court to delegitimize it, to undermine it with this idea that it’s unethical,” Paoletta said, adding “There is no ethics problem or recusal problem at the Supreme Court.”
But the ProPublica piece was “dishonest,” Paoletta said, because it failed to mention that the filing guidance was updated in mid-March. Thomas’s trips, however, were all made before the updates.
In Paoletta’s opinion, the statute’s language before the updated guidance was “broad enough in the interpretation over the years” to include transportation, such as Thomas’s flying on Crow’s jet, in the “personal hospitality” exemption.
Accordingly, Thomas “did nothing wrong,” he said.
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