Virgina Thomas ginny 2

called 2 1/24 sorta random

see Virginia(https://app.thebrain.com/brain/29a0e41c-eb5f-43d4-bd1e-1bd0ec315487/1faf48a6-95cf-5bed-99af-612943f932a9) "Ginni" Lamp Thomas (see Thomas G)

see liberty central

SEE LEO $

no merri

married to a black guy, so has cover to attack BO (not that anyone really needs it)

some J6 here

hub? see CNP primary on insurrection stop steal

htmlMalaysian oil

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https://truthout.org/articles/the-not-so-independent-women-s-forum-was-born-in-defense-of-clarence-thomas-and-the-far-right/

hBO’s new film on demand, Confirmation, revisits the painful battle over the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court in spite of the testimony of Anita Hill that he sexually harassed her.}:

Some pundits have attempted to the film, even though it has several scenes that portray Thomas and his wife Ginny as quiet, sympathetic figures and not as the outspoken right-wing political activists that they were and are.

One of the harshest critics of the film is a group that calls itself the “Independent Women’s Forum” (IWF).

IWF is hardly independent though, despite its name.

It is deeply imbedded in the right-wing political infrastructure.

In fact, IWF began as part of the coordinated effort to get Thomas confirmed so he could advance the right-wing’s legal agenda on the courts, in the face of deep fears by many that he would limit individual rights as a judge—fears later validated by his rulings and extreme dissents as a Justice.

As Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote in their book Strange Justice: “the falsehoods and distortions involved in the selling of Clarence Thomas to the American people neither started nor ended with the treatment of Anita Hill’s accusations. From the beginning, the placement of Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means.”

Central to the efforts to get Thomas confirmed were not only the attacks on Hill by GOP Senators but also press outreach used to discredit her that was orchestrated by a small group of powerful right-wing women.

That confirmation battle put one of the most reactionary judges in modern history on the Court, and it also led to the creation of IWF, an ultra reactionary women’s group opposing women’s rights in numerous ways.

IWF’s creators defended Thomas, despite the detailed evidence against him, and the organization they founded has defended him and continued to attack Hill since 1991.

The Thomas hearings also led to a backlash from voters to a US Senate that had 98 men and only two women as Senators.

In spite of a temporary majority supporting the confirmation of Thomas based on the incomplete information provided in the Senate hearings, American voters resoundingly rejected the idea of an all-white male Senate Judiciary Committee examining a woman’s testimony about sexual harassment.

The 1992 election that followed swept out President George H.W. Bush and swept in four women as new Senators and more women in other offices, making that election “the Year of the Woman.”

Today, 20 US Senators are women; and IWF leaders and alums have regularly attacked the most powerful woman elected Senator since the Thomas hearings, Hillary Clinton.

IWF — which has had close ties to the billionaire Koch Brothers, before they were infamous, and to other rightwing donors — has used its well-funded platform to secure numerous press appearances without much scrutiny of its record and sometimes because of its reactionary positions.

That’s in part because media outlets have defaulted to point-counterpoint “reporting” that gives equal weight both to facts IWF opposes and to outlier claims that are IWF’s stock in trade.

Part of the playbook was set as IWF came into being, as its founders deployed women in the press to counter a fellow woman whose testimony threatened their political agenda and ally.

Much of that claim boiled down to denying her experience as inauthentic and deceitful because Thomas had not sexually harassed them. It was a brutally effective tactic.

This is the story of IWF’s roots.

IWF: Born to Give a Woman’s Voice to Defending Clarence Thomas

On June 28, 1991, the first black man to serve on the US Supreme Court, Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall — an icon to the civil rights community — announced his retirement.

Ten days later, President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a 43-year old African American judge who had a controversial tenure as President Reagan’s Chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where he challenged core ideas about equal economic opportunity for women, such as equal pay andcomparable worth.

Although it was only 16 months before the next presidential election and even though the choice of a young right-winger like Thomas to fill the beloved Justice Marshall’s seat was a lightening rod for controversy, the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled hearings on his nomination for September.

As the controversy over Thomas’ nomination grew, a small group of right-wing women began meeting for lunch to discuss the nomination at the offices ofTed Olson in the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

One of the women at those lunch meetings was Barbara Kay Bracher, a lawyer who married Olson in 1996.

Following the Thomas confirmation, she would go on to staff investigations of the Clinton Administration as a congressional aide and to write a diatribe called “Hell to Pay: the Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” which was published by the right-wing bookseller Regnery shortly before Olson perished on a plane in the 9/11 attacks on her way to a taping for Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” TV show.

(Ted Olson became famous for taking theBush v. Gore case to the US Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas sided with him and four other GOP Justices in stopping the Florida recount in 2000, making Republican George W. Bush president despite Democrat Al Gore winning the popular vote. Bush then named Ted Olson Solicitor General of the United States.)

The driving force at those pro-Thomas strategy sessions in Olson’s office back in 1991 was Rosalie “Ricky” Silberman, who had worked with Thomas as Vice-Chair of the EEOC and was one of his confidantes.

Before that, Silberman had worked as the press secretary for GOP SenatorBob Packwood, who later resigned in 1995 in the wake allegations that he harassed and assaulted numerous women he worked with.

(Ricky Silberman was also married to Thomas’ mentor from Thomas’ brief time as a judge on the DC Circuit: Judge Laurence Silberman, a very political judge who among other things later tried to clear George W. Bush of culpability for lying about Iraq’s weapons and was later given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Bush.)

The third major figure in these lunches was Anita K. Blair, who was a lawyer who became General Counsel for IWF. President George W. Bush made her Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and in 2011 she was hired as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department on human resources in the Obama Administration.

In the later 1990s during the Republican effort to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton, Blair claimed on behalf of IWF that:

“nothing ever did more to trivialize sexual harassment than the sorry spectacle surrounding Anita Hill … Given prime-time exposure on national television Hill told a bizarre, uncorroborated story about Thomas, her boss at two federal agencies. Hearing her belated complaints about off-color jokes allegedly told about 10 years before, millions of Americans wondered, ‘What on earth does this have to do with sexual harassment?’ Americans learned the answer from Hill and her supporters: ‘Sexual harassment isn’t about sex, it’s about power.’ The Anita Hill spectacle wasn’t about sexual harassment; it was about the exercise of pure partisan political power. The media circus surrounding Hill and Thomas was produced and directed by liberal operatives, includingfifth-columnistslike NPR’s Nina Totenberg.” [jewish?]

Those three right-wing politicos—Silberman, Olson, and Blair—formed an ad hoc committee called “Women for Judge Thomas,” which ultimately became a non-profit group dubbed the “Independent Women’s Forum.”

The Clarence Thomas Nomination Begins and IWF’s Founders Step Forward

But even before Anita Hill was in the picture — discovered by Senate Judiciary Committee staffers vetting the Bush nominee — allies of Thomas knew his controversial record as President Reagan’s chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) could play poorly with many women and others concerned about equality.

The Women for Judge Thomas committee began holding press conferences the month President Bush announced Thomas’ nomination to a lifetime position on the Court in July.

Thomas was in his early 40s and had never argued a case before the US Supreme Court, and he had only had 16 months of experience as a sitting judge on any court.

His selection was considered a tactical masterstroke by C. Boyden Gray,President Bush’s White House Counsel, who had been criticized for letting the first vacancy in Bush’s term go to New Hampshire Justice David Souter, who was considered by the far right to be not “conservative” or activist enough to deliver judicial votes to change the law in the ways they wanted.

By putting forward an African American with right-wing bona fides, at Gray’s urging the Bush White House sought to mute Democratic objections for fear of offending a major constituency over fighting a nominee with a rags-to-riches life story.

(Gray is the grandson and also the nephew of three presidents of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. After President George H.W. Bush lost his bid for another term in the 1992 “Year of the Woman” election, Gray became chairman of David Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, which would later officially join forces with IWF.)

But Thomas’ limited judicial experience and the hearings on his nomination deepened concerns of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As the New York Times reported: “‘Judge Thomas lacks the experience and qualifications that a Supreme Court Justice ought to have,’ said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. ‘He fled from his record and he refused to answer legitimate questions.'”

Leahy also noted: “‘Nothing in Judge Thomas’s record or testimony suggests the level of professional distinction or constitutional grounding appropriate for a Supreme Court nominee. His legal and judicial experiences are limited. His speeches and writings have shown little in the way of analysis or scholarship.'”

So, when his nomination was considered, the Committee deadlocked 7-7 on his nomination but then voted to send the nomination to the full Senate for a vote without a recommendation for or against confirmation. Although the Democrats had a 57-43 majority, a number of Southern Democrats had already pledged to vote for Thomas to be confirmed.

Hill Comes Forward and IWF’s Founders Step Up to Counter Her in the Press

Before the Senate vote could be held, however,National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg broke the story that the Senate investigation had uncovered allegations that Thomas had made unwanted advances toward some of his subordinates in his leadership positions in the Reagan Administration.

Totenberg received a tip that Professor Anita Hill, a conservative black law professor, had told the Senate that Thomas had made sexual comments to her when he was her supervisor when they both worked for the Reagan Administration.

This shocking development increased the volume of concern about confirming Thomas to a lifetime job on the highest court in the land, and the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled another round of hearings to examine the allegations.

Under the guidance of Ricky Silberman, the Women for Judge Thomas Committee identified women who worked with Thomas who said they had not been sexually harassed by him and that he had behaved professionally toward them.

Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigators—including a Democrat named Ricki Seidman—identified another staffer who said she had been subject to sexual advances in the workplace by Thomas and also interviewed colleagues of Professor Hill, whom she confided in about the inappropriate things she said Thomas said.

As Steve Kornacki noted in Salon:

“Three Hill friends — Susan Hoerchner, Ellen Wells and John Carr — testified under oath that she had told them about Thomas’ conduct as it happened between 1981 and 1983. ‘Anita said that Clarence Thomas had repeatedly asked her out … that he wouldn’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer,’ Hoerchner told senators. ‘The thing Anita told me that struck me particularly and that I remember almost verbatim was thatMr. Thomas had said to her, “You know, if you had witnesses, you’d have a perfect case against me.”‘”

On October 11, 1991, in nationally televised hearings, Hill testified in detail about things Thomas had said to her when she worked for him. While many observers were shocked by the graphic details, the Republicans on the Committee and other Thomas proxies strongly attacked Hill’s character and her decision to continue working for Thomas rather than file a legal complaint, despite her concerns that doing so would destroy her career and her future.

Hill had explained on NPR that her decision to testify was a difficult one, and was made on moral grounds because Thomas, as Chair of the EEOC, the agency that enforces federal workplace discrimination laws, had been “in charge of protecting rights of women and other groups in the workplace” but instead was “using his position of power for personal gain.”

Simply put, by sexually harassing her as she described, Thomas was alleged to be engaging in the kind of workplace discrimination that his agency was tasked with stopping.

Many women believed that such behavior demonstrated that Thomas was unfit for a position of power and a lifetime position on the nation’s highest court.

But the Senate’s hearing about her allegations morphed into an inquisition of her, much like how criminal defense attorneys attempt to discredit rape victims in order to prevent the conviction of their clients.

What people saw on TV was an all-white Senate Judiciary Committee filled with several men who impugned Hill’s character, doubted her intelligence, and attacked her motives — despite her conservative credentials — instead of treating her with respect and giving any credit to her eye-witness accounts of Thomas’ behavior. The attack on Hill was led by Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Orrin Hatch, and Alan Simpson on the Committee, and by Missouri’s John Danforth, Thomas’ champion in the Senate.

More than 20 million American households tuned in to watch Hill testify at hearings chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden, who is now Vice President.

As Politico noted last fall when Vice President Biden was considering running for president: “Biden’s done a lot over the past 24 years, including authoring the landmark Violence Against Women Act … But that hasn’t erased the memories of how Biden presided over those hearings … blamed for doing little to stop the attacks on Hill.”

He has also been criticized for opting not to call Angela Wright, an African American who worked in the press office at the EEOC, whose testimony would have echoed Hill’s charges of sexual harassment.

Wright had “detailed a pattern of harassing behavior, including an instance in which Thomas asked her what her bra size was.” Wright had also told her colleague, Rose Jourdain, at the time that Thomas made comments about “her figure, her body, her breasts, her legs, how she looked in certain suits and dresses.”

Wright’s statement was allowed to go into the official hearing record but she was not allowed to testify to help rebut Thomas’ denial.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, another Thomas aide “Sukari Hardnett wrote that many black women at the agency felt they were ‘an object of special interest’ to their boss. ‘If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive,’ her letter read, ‘you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female,'” as noted by Kornacke.

But the Senate and the country did not get to hear from these women.

When Mayer and Abrahamson conducted a full investigation for their book, rather than the rushed examination that occurred in the Senate, they also discovered that classmates of Thomas reported:

“that he often recounted sexually explicit films in lurid detail. Kaye Savage, a former colleague, reports that the walls of his bachelor apartment were covered with Playboy nude centerfolds. The owner of a video store near the EEOC [called Graffiti] said Thomas was a regular customer for pornographic movies.”

This evidence would have corroborated Hill's testimony and refuted Thomas’ denial, but none of this was part of the Senate’s hearings.

Years later, another woman “Lillian McEwen, who had dated Thomas in the 1980s and who was promoted by Thomas backers as something of an alibi during his confirmation hearings, spoke publicly about her relationship with him for the first time [in 2010]. Now retired, McEwen said that ‘Hill’s allegations that Thomas had pressed her for dates and made lurid sexual references rang familiar,’ as the [Washington] Post put it—as detailed by Kornacke in Salon.

Kornacke added: “McEwen said that Thomas had been ‘obsessed with porn’ and ‘would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting.’ She also said that Thomas would tell her about the women he worked with — even commenting to her about one’s bra size. ‘He was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners,’ McEwen told the Post. ‘It was a hobby of his.'”

That information was not known to the Senate at the time Clarence Thomas’ nomination was being considered, but none of that has changed IWF’s line of attack against Hill.

Thomas Fires Back

In response to Hill’s testimony, Thomas attacked the Senate for what he flamboyantly described as a “high-tech lynching” of an “uppity” black man who dared to be conservative.

He used the televised broadcast of the hearings to portray the Senate’s consideration of Hill’s allegations against him as racist and as promoting racial stereotypes—even though his accuser was also a conservative African American.

GOP senators like Arlen Specter were given wide leeway to attack Hill with incredibly derogatory and personal claims such as suggesting she had “fantasies about sexual interest in her” and that she “was having a problem being rejected by men she was attracted to.”

Hill took and passed a lie detector test, but Republican Senators smeared her further claiming she passed because she believed her “fantasies” about Thomas pursuing her.

Many women were disgusted by the way the Senate treated Hill and by the words and actions of Thomas, but not Silberman and her committee of Women for Judge Thomas, which held press conferences and other outreach buttressing the Republican attacks on Hill.

The IWF predecessor did so by pressing the claim that because he had not harassed the women they assembled he could not have harassed Hill and by arguing that she had “other” motives, which fueled the right-wing narrative that she had made up the allegations supposedly because she wanted to be with Thomas.

Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee hearings ended by effectively giving Clarence Thomas the last word, as Hill did not testify again to rebut Thomas’ denial of her allegations.

Thomas Was Confirmed in One of the Closest Votes in History

Given how forcefully the GOP Senators sought to discredit Hill and the deployment of women in defense of Thomas, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the public remained divided over Thomas’ confirmation. Several polls indicated that a majority favored his confirmation, while the remainder were split between opposing and being undecided.

In a contest of he-said-she-said, it appeared that a majority of those polled believed Thomas, who had so evocatively taken umbrage at the allegations against him. Having other women, like Ricky Silberman, defend him certainly helped his case.

And, at the same time, the public was denied the chance to hear from another woman willing to testify that she had also been sexually harassed by Thomas.

Also lost in the hot-button national conversation was the message that no one is entitled to a lifelong job on the US Supreme Court.

So, on October 15, 1991, the Senate handed Thomas a lifetime job on the Court, with narrow 52-48 vote (with 11 Democrats joining 41 Republicans and 2 Republicans — Senator Jeffords (R-VT) and Senator Packwood (R-OR) — joining the Democrats).

Hill was home in Oklahoma, and Thomas, after he was confirmed for the lifetime post at the youthful age of 43, reportedly swore he would stay on the Court for 43 years to get his revenge on his enemies.

It was out of the ugliness of the Clarence Thomas nomination fight that the “Independent Women’s Forum” was born.

IWF Continued to Fight Hill Even After Thomas Was Confirmed

If the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had sought to incapacitate Anita Hill with an array of punches at her reputation, Ricky Silberman seemed determined to throw the knockout blow.

A year to the day after her senate testimony, Hill returned to Washington DC to recount her experience. At a conference at Georgetown Law, she spoke in academic terms while analyzing the structures that had colluded against her, and received a standing ovation for her bravery.

Across the city on that same day, Ricky Silberman held a counter-conference at the Federalist Society.

Speaking to that audience, Silberman accused Hill of being a liar, labeled the assembled group of academics at Georgetown “the extreminists,” and proclaimed that Hill’s “unsubstantiated charge of sexual harassment launched the mother of all gender wars.”

Later that year, in 1992, Silberman formally founded IWF with Barbara Bracher (Olson), Anita Blair and Lynn Cheney to fight that so-called “gender war.”

However neither Silberman nor IWF would let the Anita Hill testimony rest.

In 1993, David Brock published the book “The Real Anita Hill,” an alleged investigation into the “true motives” of Hill’s testimony.

Silberman helped Brock edit, assemble, and advertise the book, which by all accounts was an orchestrated hit piece.

Brock, who had repeatedly referred to Hill in the media as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,” would later apologize for his actions, and label himself as a “witting cog in the Republican sleaze machine.” (Brock has disavowed his past as a political hit man for the right-wing and now leads groups challenging the right-wing and is also now aligned with Hillary Clinton.)

Silberman, who passed away in 2007, never apologized. The IWF tribute to her included a tribute from her memorial by Clarence Thomas.

Beyond Attacking Anita Hill, IWF Routinely Peddles Reactionary Claims

As documented by Barbara Spindel in Slate, five years after Hill’s testimony, IWF ran a cover-story in its 1996 “Women’s Quarterly” magazine where Elizabeth Larson, an IWF staffer, speculated that women were “spurred on by Anita Hill’s example” and now found “it more profitable to litigate than to work.”

In that article, Larson also suggested that women should simply “deal with” sexual harassment, a position the organization would advocate for in the 1990s time and again.

As detailed by researcher Lee Cokorinos in his book, “The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice,”IWF received substantial financial underwriting by right-wing funders like the Scaife Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation to focus many of its efforts on Silberman’s “gender war.”

In the words of Anita Blair, who served as an IWF leader from 1992 until 2000, “it was in 1977 or 1978 that feminism should have declared victory and gone home… All that was needing to be done had been done.”

In keeping with this fictitious worldview, IWF opposed a host of women equality initiatives throughout the 1990s using misleading data and taking some extreme positions:

• when lobbying against the Senator Biden’s “Violence Against Women Act,” IWF claimed “wives instigate violence, including severe violence, against husbands more often than husbands do against wives.”
• IWF argued that gender integration of the Virginia Military Institute would cripple national defense,
• IWF asserted that the problem of sexual assault on college campuses was overblown, since it is “inherently incredible” that female college students “are unable to report assaults to authorities,”
• and much more, including assailing key Title IX protections for female athletes.

Like every GOP-aligned group in the 1990s, IWF also supported efforts to impeach President Clinton, reaching out to Kenneth Starr for legal assistance as early as 1994. Barbara Olson and other IWF-ers helped carry the torch against Bill and Hillary Clinton.

IWF also provided Republicans in Congress with women’s voices to testify against affirmative action, social safety net programs, and gun violence mitigation measures.

As a whole, IWF was focused on combatting a caricature of what it described as “radical feminism.” [strict fr vs nurture mo?]

Over the past 25 years since the Clarence Thomas hearings, IWF has given a female face and voice to opposing almost every mainstream and common sense protection for equality that’s been advanced — opposing equal pay, paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage, and protecting women’s reproductive privacy and freedom, and much more —many of which Thomas has also sought to weaken or strike down from the Supreme Court.

Over the years, IWF has not lost its interest in attacking Hill, even though its latest spin is about its supposedly “family-friendly” policies that put Wall Street in the driver’s seat and would take away responsibilities from employers regarding maternity leave, despite overwhelming business support for expanding employer-paid maternity and family leave, as the Center for Media and Democracy recently documented in a story broken by Lydia DiPillis in The Washington Post.

IWF’s kind of outlier, free-market fundamentalist approach should come as no surprise since IWF and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity have been close partners—even sharing space and leadership for a number of years—and because the Koch network of billionaires uses an array of vehicles to push an anti-government, anti-science, anti-worker agenda.

But the claim that IWF is merely a “right-leaning think tank,” given its legacy and extreme positions, ignores the history of a group that began with efforts to discredit Anita Hill and that continues to traffic in denial and disdain, despite the evidence that has mounted against so many of its claims.

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politico

mrs. Thomas denies link to Sept. 11 event

By BEN SMITH

08/18/2010

Another prominent conservative — Ginni Thomas, wife of the Supreme Court justice — has disavowed links to a planned protest this Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center site.

The far right Dutch politician Geert Wilders has written that he plans to attend the rally, organized by blogger Pam Geller, but another listed speaker, Newt Gingrich, already denied plans to attend.

"Mrs. Thomas was not invited, and has not agreed to attend and speak at the 9/11 rally at ground zero on Sept. 11, 2010, in lower Manhattan, New York City. Any report of her attending is an error," said Sarah Field, director of policy and legal counsel of Liberty Central, which is headed by Thomas. "However, Liberty Central does support leveraging citizens’ voices in opposition to this mosque."

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raw story

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/clarence-thomas/

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' right leaning political views have been obvious for decades in his writings for the Court. A new report in the Daily Beast, however, spotlights just how intertwined his financial connections are to an ultra-conservative judicial activist.

When Thomas was looking to promote the release of his memoir last October he chose to hire a public relations firm, CRC Advisors, run by the former chief of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo. Leo is a top fundraiser for right-wing judicial activist groups. The Daily Beast reports that "Leo has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the three decades on behalf of right-wing dark money groups to influence the federal judiciary and Supreme Court. He advised and persuaded Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump in their appointments of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—and prepped Justice Thomas for his nomination hearings."

The report also says that Leo is the "hub" of dark money groups that stealthily fund and link up with parties who argue cases before the Supreme Court, something that Supreme watchers have dubbed an "amicus flotilla."

Leo’s affiliations with the court - and especially Thomas - are especially pronounced. He made the justice the godfather of one of his children and has hosted him on vacation at his New England retreat.

Paul Collins is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of several books about the high court. He says Thomas’ choice of Leo’s firm is “strange” and “unnecessary.”

“It signals that this world of the Federalist Society is even smaller than we thought,” Collins told The Daily Beast.

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1 22

former top FBI official who served as Chief of the Bureau’s Counterespionage Section and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election says it’s “concerning” that Ginni Thomas signed a letter attacking the House January 6 Select Committee.

Peter Strzok, who also led the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server and for a short time served on the Mueller Investigation, responded to Tuesday’s social media eruption over the resurfaced letter signed by Thomas, a far right wing conspiracy theorist and lobbyist who happens to be married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

That letter calls for U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to be expelled from the House Republican conference, which would also involve stripping them of their committee assignments.

Strzok was more focused on the current makeup of the Supreme Court, and other points of the letter which was signed in December by Thomas and more than 60 other mostly far right wing conservatives – making it a veritable who’s who of well-known extreme conservative activists including the head of an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

“Which is more concerning: That the spouse of a SC Justice recently signed a letter calling the Jan 6 Cmttee ‘an overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law [and] legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong’ Or,” Strzok wrote, “The fact that the former President who encouraged those ‘private citizens who have done nothing wrong’ to violently oppose the peaceful transfer of power appointed three of nine Justices to the Supreme Court?”

More than 700 Americans have been charged in conjunction with the January 6 attack.

The letter, resurfaced by Charlie Sykes at the never-Trump media outlet The Bulwark, also claims, falsely, that the January 6 Committee is using “improperly issued subpoenas and other investigatory tactics…for the sake of political harassment and demagoguery.”

On the morning of the January 6 attack Ginni Thomas, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has pointed out, expressed support for the so-called protestors, declaring “LOVE MAGA PEOPLE!!!!”...[twt]

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omfg

no lnx

lAW SCHOOLS

Law School Student Famous For Saying ‘I HATE BLACK PEOPLE’ Now Has Prestigious Federal Clerkship

Hate doesn't seem to be slowing down her career prospects.

By KATHRYN RUBINO

on October 5, 2021

https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/law-school-student-famous-for-saying-i-hate-black-people-now-has-prestigious-federal-clerkship/

I’d say Crystal Clanton just keeps failing upwards, but given that outrage is currency in right-wing circles, it is more accurate to say that her career is progressing on schedule. Do you remember why Clanton first became a news story? It’s been a minute, so I’ll cover the deets.

In December of 2017, the New Yorker reported that Clanton, who at the time worked at the conservative student group Turning Point USA, texted co-workers with this hateful message:

I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all .?.?. I hate blacks. End of story.

From ABOVE THE LAW

Awful, right? And this was far from a one-off incident, as reported by Mediaite:

Numerous sources who worked with Clanton detailed how she would exchange racist remarks regularly with other TPUSA staffers — including Alana Mastrangelo, who currently works for the group, and Timox Prax, who was allegedly forced out of TPUSA this year over “bigoted” remarks — using Snapchat.

One such message reviewed by Mediaite features a photo of a man who appears to be Arab and a caption written by Clanton that reads, “Just thinking about ways to do another 9/11.” (The source who provided Mediaite with the image requested it not be published to protect their anonymity.)

Well, even though Clanton was forced out of the right-wing nonprofit, her career prospects were far from damaged. Shortly after she left Turning Point USA, Ginni Thomas — yes, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife — hired Clanton to assist with her media ventures. And Clanton lapped up her connection to the powerful jurist.

But that wasn’t the end of Clanton’s ambitions. She was admitted to ASSLaw — that’s George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, for the uninitiated — and is scheduled to graduate this spring. And now we know that her post-graduation plans include an incredibly prestigious clerkship with Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor for 2023-24.

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ginni ali hubs?

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/how-ginni-thomas-and-the-shadowy-council-of-national-policy-advanced-a-disinformation-campaign/

before Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas took to Facebook in the early morning hours that Wednesday; there she urged people to tune into the so-called Stop the Steal rally held on the grounds of the White House. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” sheposted, adding minutes later, “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING.”

Though her affinity for caps-lock commentary may suggest otherwise, Ginni Thomas is an influential right-wing activist respected in conservative politics. The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, she has made her own mark on the Republican Party with lofty positions at Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation, The Daily Caller, and the Council for National Policy,a highly secretive organization whose members include some of the most powerful conservatives and right-wing players in the country.

Respected though she may be in conservative circles, Ginni Thomas’ connection to extremists is nothing new. In 2010, she led Liberty Central, a think tank she founded to appeal to Tea Party supporters andto serve as the connective tissue between “Tea Party groups and the new citizen activists,” as she claimed in a2010 interview. That group’s sponsors included the Gun Owners of America—a radical alternative to the NRA—and its gun-rights extremist leaderLarry Pratt, who addressed white supremacists at a 1992 gathering in Colorado and appeared to call for war against the U.S. government in 2010. The far-right Catholic groupTradition, Family and Property, known for being virulently anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman, and anti-democratic, was also linked to Ginni Thomas’ think tank from its inception. 

Ginni Thomas’ zeal for the Stop the Steal campaign and its followers, a mob of whom would later storm the Capitol in an act of domestic terrorism, is notable in and of itself—her husband sits on the highest court, after all—but it’s also disconcerting for another reason: She is the latest in a string of Council for National Policy members—and an authoritative voice at that—who has supported the Stop the Steal movement.'[twt]

since the inception of this latest incarnation of the Stop the Steal campaign on Nov. 4 by lead organizer Ali Alexander, who himself was...obtained by the watchdog group Documented, it has received support from CNP members. In fact, the tacit support of key CNP members for challenging the 2020 presidential election results may have been theimpetus for Alexander’s decision to begin the campaign to overturn the results of the presidential election by peddling disinformation. 

Formed during the Reagan administration, CNP holds closed-door meetings and instructs members to not discuss the council’s work or its membership, though, over the years, membership rolls have been leaked to the press. Those rolls have shown the organization to be home to a couple hundredmarquee names in the conservative movement, Christian right, and right-wing fringe: Current members include Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Tony Perkins of the religious-right Family Research Council; former members include Trump’s former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. 

The CNP has a close relationship with the Trump White House—so much so, that at thesuperspreader Rose Garden event to celebrate the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “there were more Council for National Policy members present there than there were members of the White House staff and members of Congress combined,” said Anne Nelson, author of the “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” a book about the CNP. And on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump gave a big speech to the Council for National Policy, calling it as his “flagship address,” a rare public event for the council, Nelson said.

Nelson describes the CNP’s main role as providing “coordination, rather than direction” to its members, which include executives of such right-wing outlets the Salem Media Group and The Daily Caller.Ginni Thomas, Nelson points out, is on the board of governors of CNP Action, the lobbying arm of the secretive organization. In May 2019, Thomas and Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell provided an update on the Conservative Action Project,CNP’s 501(c)(4) arm that holds weekly meetings, and laid out their strategy for the coming year with aslide presentation to CNP members, which included messaging about building a robust infrastructure on the right and protecting Trump. 

In the days leading up to the Jan. 6 mayhem, and on the day itself, the connection between CNP and Stop the Steal—and the campaign’s influence on the White House—became more apparent. 

On Dec. 30, Right Wing Watch posted areportabout alettersent by the Conservative Action Project to Senate Republicans urging them to “contest the electoral votes” from “Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona”—the battleground states Biden won. That letter may have not mentioned Stop the Steal by name, but it asked senators to do exactly what Stop the Steal was demanding of Republican members of Congress: to reject electoral votes in favor of Biden. 

Those signees included Cleta Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer (who was on theinfamous phone call when Trump asked that Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes”); Tom Fitton, an CNP executive committee member whose Judicial Watch group constantly spouts voter fraud conspiracy theories; Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and columnist for The Washington Times; Tony Perkins, former CNP president and leader of the Family Research Council; Kenneth Blackwell,former Ohio secretary of state and member of CNP Action’s board of directors; and William L. Walton, current CNP president. All were revealed as CNP members in a leak of CNP’s September2020 membership directory. 

ADec. 10 letter posted on the Conservative Action Project website,reported by Alex Kotch at Exposed by CMD, asked state legislatures in battleground states to “exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump,” and that the House and Senate only recognize the electors of those states that do so. Again, this was the same demand state legislators and Congress members were hearing from Stop the Steal activists. Kotch reports that the letter links to a document that, according to metadata embedded in the file, was created by none other than Cleta Mitchell, calling for a “constitutional remedy” to reject votes for Biden. The signatories included some of the same names that appeared on the Dec. 30 letter, in addition to Ed Martin, a leading Stop the Steal organizer and CNP member whom Alexander has thanked for his“mentorship” in organizing the Stop the Steal campaign. 

Two days before the Jan. 6 rally, CNP member Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth-oriented group Turning Point USA, shared a video from Women for America First’s Kylie Jane Kremeradvertising the rally and told his followers that his organizations, TPUSA and Students for Trump, had funded more than 80 buses to attend the rally. “The historic event will likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history,” Kirk wrote. “The team at @TrumpStudents & Turning Point Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president,” he said in the since deleted tweet,uncovered by Daily Dot. Kirk’s Students for Trump co-chair is Ryan Fournier, a Stop the Steal organizer who spoke at the Jan. 5 rally on the same stage where speakers advocatedrebellion.  

While a viral claim that Ginni Thomas funded the buses herself appearsto be false, Ginni Thomas has been linked to the group in the recent past, serving on Turning Point USA’s advisory council in 2019, along with fellowCNP members Foster Friess, Adam Brandon, and former Ohio congressman Bob McEwen.

On Jan. 5, speakers took to Freedom Plaza for a Stop the Steal rally designed to prime attendees for the big day. Among the speakers wasPeter Navarro, a fringe right-wing economist whospoke at the May 2019 CNP meeting. and who serves as an assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. On the stage at Freedom Plaza, Navarro peddled voter fraud conspiracy theories and urged activists to stay angry,declaring to the assembled crowd, “We will take this back.”  

On Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas told her Facebook followers to watch the event convened by groups working in concert with the Stop the Steal campaign, dubbed the “Save America Rally,” on the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting, one of the few networks to cover the gathering. The massive rally, at which Trump would incite his supporters to bring their wrath to the Capitol, was led by the groups March for Trump and the Kremers’ Women for America First. 

Amy Kremer, who was listed as a member in a2014 CNP membership directoryobtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was among the first speakers. Jenny Beth Martin, the CNP executive committee secretary whom Trump thanked in his speech to CNP this summer, was another. She brought with her Simone Gold, who is nowsought by the FBI after she appeared to be part of the crowd thatstormed the Capitol following her speech on the main stage, as seen on social media.

After the Capitol insurrection, Ginni Thomas either deactivated or deleted her Facebook account, likely unhappy thatreporters noted her enthusiasmfor a movement what would launch a riot. Josh Hawley, one of the senators who led the charge to contest electors’ votes in the Senate,charged ahead even as other lawmakers backed off in light of the violent consequences wrought by the disinformation campaign designed to delegitimize the outcome of the presidential election. “Shadow Network” author Nelsonnoted that, throughout his career, Hawley was groomed by CNP affiliates.

[pix 

Ali Alexander and other “Stop the Steal” activists at Dec. 15, 2020 press conference (Image from NTD livestream posted on Epoch Times YouTube channel.)

The Stop the Steal disinformation campaign wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without CNP support. When on Nov. 4, Ali Alexander floated the idea of rebooting the Stop the Steal campaign, which in its prior iteration was focused on the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections, baselessly claiming that the election had been stolen from Trump, he called on key CNP members including Tom Fitton, Amy Kremer, Ed Martin, and Charlie Kirk.

“Because Ali Alexander is a fairly veteran operative, he managed to get a lot of people on board very quickly,” ​said Stephanie Lamy, a French information warfare researcher with the advocacy groupDanaides. “Although he was a fairly marginal actor, he managed to have a big reach because he knew which people to rely on. And that was a lot of the CNP.”

Once he began to be successful, Lamy said, the White House seemed to have taken note.

Right Wing Watch reported about CNP members’ connection to Stop the Steal on Nov. 13—the same day Vice President Mike Pence was set to address CNP attendees in Virginia. CNP convened that meeting, Nov. 12-14, “to strategize on how to challenge the election results,”according to Exposed by CMD reporter David Armiak. At the meeting, a panel dedicated to the election results and the ensuing legal battles featured Cleta Mitchell, J. Christian Adams, a knownvoter suppressor who leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, a leading proponent ofthe voter fraud myth. 

The following day, Stop the Steal organizers held the first of three major rallies in Washington, D.C., with speakers peddling disinformation and violent rhetoric on the main stage—a day that ended in violent skirmishes between Proud Boys and counterprotesters, foreshadowing the violence to come.

“Most people don’t realize that disinformation has an aim, and that aim is to have real life impact. So what we saw with Stop the Steal, it had a real-life impact as of the 6th of November [the date of one of the first Stop the Steal rallies], and it kind of culminated with these terrorist threats and a breach of the Capitol,” said Lamy, the French disinformation researcher. “And it’s still ongoing,” she continued. “The CNP hasn’t finished manipulating anger and personal grievances.”

Tags: Ali Akbar Ali AlexanderAmy Kremer Charlie Kirk Clarence Thomas Cleta Mitchell Ed Martin Ginni Thomas Hans von Spakovsky J Christian Adams Jenny Beth Martin Kellyanne Conway Ken Blackwell Kylie Jane Kremer Peter Navarro Ryan Fournier Steve Bannon Tom Fitton Tony Perkins William Walton Capitol Insurrection Disinformation Stop the Steal Council for National Policy Gun Owners of America tea party Women for America First

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JOK group?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ginni-thomas-applauded-the-rally-that-preceded-the-capitol-building-attack/

Hours before a violent mob of far-right extremists attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, President Donald Trump and his supporters spoke at an event in Washington D.C. — where they demanded that Congress overturn the electoral college results for the 2020 presidential election. And one of those supporters was conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ginni Thomas tweeted her support of that event on January 6, saying, "LOVE MAGA people!" and "God bless each of you standing up or praying." Slate's Mark Joseph Stern notes that after the attack on the Capitol Building, she added an addendum and posted, "Note: written before violence in US Capitol."

On the morning of Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the protest demanding… https://t.co/eLlivAAMR7

— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern)1610078996.0

Stern, in an article published by Slate on January 8, notes, "Thomas, a conservative lobbyist and zealous supporter of Donald Trump, has fervently defended the president over the last four years. On her Facebook page, she frequently promotes baseless conspiracy theories about a 'coup' against Trump led by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic hate. Thomas draws many of these theories from fringe corners of the internet, including an anti-vax Facebook group that claimed Bill Gates would use the COVID vaccine to kill people."

For background, Ginni Thomas is a conservative lobbyist and avid Trump supporter who campaigned for him. She also r… https://t.co/IPbF5CGHX1

— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern)1610080689.0

Soros, of course, has never promoted any type of coup d'état against the United States, but the words "attempted coup" easily apply to the events of January 6 — when a sitting president egged on his supporters, who in turn violently stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The extremists who showed up in Washington D.C. that day included members of the Proud Boys, supporters of the QAnon conspiracy cult and neo-confederacy groups.

"In all likelihood," Stern explains, "Ginni Thomas will face no consequences for cheerleading a rally that sought to overturn an election, then laid siege to the Capitol in a failed insurrection. Her husband will ignore the controversy and continue to rule on cases that involve his wife's 'lobbying efforts.' We may never know how much influence a conspiracy theorist has on the highest court's most conservative justice."

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no lnx many

Ginni Thomas, Wife of Clarence, Cheered On the Rally That Turned Into the Capitol Riot

“GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”

By MARK JOSEPH STERN

JAN 08, 202112:17 PM

Ginni Thomas at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2017. Gage Skidmore/Flickr

On Wednesday morning, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the rally in Washington demanding that Congress overturn the election. She then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. Two days later, Thomas amended her post with the addendum: “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].” By that point, five people involved in the insurrection, including a Capitol Police officer, had died.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the protest demanding that Congress overturn the election, then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. She has not posted since. pic.twitter.com/378CHMkFN5

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 8, 2021

Thomas, a conservative lobbyist and zealous supporter of Donald Trump, has fervently defended the president over the last four years. On her Facebook page, she frequently promotes baseless conspiracy theories about a “coup” against Trump led by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic hate. Thomas draws many of these theories from fringe corners of the internet, including an anti-vax Facebook group that claimed Bill Gates would use the COVID vaccine to kill people. In recent months, she also amplified unsubstantiated corruption claims against Joe Biden while insisting, falsely, that the Obama administration illegally spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign, then tried to rig the election against him.

In turn, Trump has rewarded Thomas with an extraordinary amount of access to the Oval Office. Her advocacy group Groundswell got an audience with the president in early 2019. According to the New York Times, the meeting was arranged after Clarence and Ginni Thomas had dinner with the Trumps. (Clarence Thomas and Trump appear to be quite friendly: The justice took his clerks to meet with the president in the Oval Office at least once; Ginni attended as well.) At the White House, Groundswell’s members lobbied Trump against transgender service in the military, which he already prohibited in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019, around the time of Groundswell’s meeting, after the Supreme Court lifted lower court orders blocking it by a 5–4 vote. (Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from the case; he has never recused from any case because of his wife’s lobbying activities.) The New York Times also reported that Ginni Thomas compiled lists of federal employees whom she deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. She sent her lists to Trump, urging him to fire the disloyal employees, though he seems to have largely ignored her. He has, however, stacked his administration with former Thomas clerks.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, Thomas remained active on Facebook, condemning Black Lives Matter, opposing COVID-19 shutdowns, and touting the “Walk Away” movement, which purports to spotlight Democrats who became Republicans under Trump. (At least two individuals featured in the “Walk Away” series, both Black, were actually models from royalty-free stock photos.) She also campaigned for Trump in person—and, according to the Intercept, spearheaded a dark-money operation to support the president. Cleta Mitchell, the Republican lawyer who participated in Trump’s shakedown of the Georgia secretary of state, led the project.

After Nov. 3, Thomas grew uncharacteristically quiet on Facebook; she did not share popular conspiracy theories about election fraud, perhaps because election challenges would inevitably come before her husband. She provided her clearest statement yet on Jan. 6, when she enthusiastically endorsed the D.C. rally designed to make Congress overturn the election result and give Trump a second term. There is no evidence that Thomas personally attended the rally, and her posts indicate that she watched the events on TV from another location.

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Ginni Thomas’ activism on matters that come before her husband raises thorny ethical issues. Federal law requires justices to recuse themselves from any proceeding in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” It also compels justices to recuse if their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome” of the case. In the coming months and years, Democrats will likely pressure Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from high-profile cases or to resign altogether. If Thomas steps down under Biden, progressives can restore a 5–4 divide on the Supreme Court, giving Chief Justice John Roberts control once again. Given Thomas’ staunch refusal to recuse thus far, though, there is little chance that he will take any steps to remediate his conflicts of interest, let alone retire during the presidency of a man he openly despises.

In all likelihood, Ginni Thomas will face no consequences for cheerleading a rally that sought to overturn an election, then laid siege to the Capitol in a failed insurrection. Her husband will ignore the controversy and continue to rule on cases that involve his wife’s lobbying efforts. We may never know how much influence a conspiracy theorist has on the highest court’s most conservative justice.

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https://theintercept.com:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{/2019/06/04:(style="background-color:#ffff33ff"):}::{/ginni-thomas-trump-conservative-group/

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cONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST VIRGINIA “Ginni” Thomas is launching yet another project to wage war on multiple fronts of America’s most heated cultural and political debates. This time, however, her plan will include a project to “protect President Trump” using at least two new campaign-related political entities, according to a presentation obtained by The Intercept and Documented.

Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, unveiled the new venture in a closed meeting of GOP lawmakers, donors, and Christian-right leaders last month, seeming to make reference to the movement disarray and electoral losses suffered by conservatives in the Trump era — and the gains made by left-wing groups and politicians.

The sweeping presentation covered a range of topics, including the “mob tactics” used by leftists against those wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and how the “hard left” has co-opted “the corporate community” to support a ban on housing and employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.“Our house is on fire and we are stomping ants in the driveway. We’re not really focused on the arsonists who are right around us,” Ginni Thomas said.

Some of the most controversial icons in conservative circles will be involved with other branches of Thomas’s new project, which is dubbed “Crowdsourcers.” One such project is titled “Protect Our Heroes,” led by conservative filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe.

The node of the project focused on political campaigns — slated to do business under the name “American D-Day” — will be set up by Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer and partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner. D-Day will include a 501(c)(4) arm that can solicit undisclosed donations and a separate PAC registered with the Federal Elections Commission.

O’Keefe and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment. Mitchell, in response to an inquiry from The Intercept, wrote that it was not her “role to answer any questions on this. Sorry.” Asked who to contact about the new venture, Mitchell wrote, “No one. None of your business.”

THOMAS AND MITCHELL announced the suite of projects at an invite-only gathering hosted by the Council for National Policy in McLean, Virginia, in mid-May. The CNP meetings are influential and secretive gatherings designed to advance a hard-edged view of social and political causes.

At the CNP event, Thomas issued a dark warning about a “cultural revolution,” a confrontation conservatives might lose unless they “help explain to America the fight against America.”

The campaign entities and O’Keefe project are among several initiatives to be “incubated” by Thomas’s Crowdsourcers initiative. The presentation lists efforts to “Build Robust Infrastructure,” led by Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and “Brand the Left: You’ve Been Lied To!” led by direct-mail consultant Richard Viguerie.

Most of all, Thomas said, conservatives must study successful left-wing groups and emulate their tactics. To drive home this point, Thomas pointed to Chinese military general Sun Tzu, presenting the crowd with a slide featuring a quote that began: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

The colorful presentation provided a snapshot into the latest of a series of right-leaning movement ventures by Thomas, who has worked in GOP advocacy since the late 1980s. She has served as an aide to a Republican lawmaker and then as a lobbyist with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[ pix  A slide from a presentation given by     Ginni Thomas explaining Crowdsourcers.

Image: Council for National Policy. Screenshot: The Intercept

In 2009, Thomas founded a grassroots organization called Liberty Central, which she proclaimed would “be bigger than the tea party.” The group raised $1.5 million from anonymous donors and paid Thomas a $120,000 salary, but only lasted a few years before disbanding.

In 2011, Clarence Thomas acknowledged that he had failed to disclose in his judicial ethics forms his wife’s additional income, relating to her work for the Heritage Foundation and Hillsdale College.

More recently, Ginni Thomas has been involved in an ad-hoc coalition known as “Groundswell,” touted as a plan to wage a “30-front war” on left-wing activists and the GOP establishment.

In January, Thomas met with Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, according to a reportin the New York Times. The story claimed that Thomas used the hourlong meeting to sharply criticize the president for not doing more to place Trump supporters in administration positions.

IN THE PAST, critics have raised issues with Thomas, arguing that her political activity represents a conflict of interest for her husband on issues ranging from health care to campaign finance. There is no law barring spouses of judges from engaging in politics at any level, and there is no suggestion that — beyond the justice’s previous failure to report his wife’s outside income — any formal rules of the court have been broken.

Still, the increasingly combative and partisan nature of Thomas’s activism will reflect on public perception of the Supreme Court and her husband’s archconservative rulings

 Washington Post noted that, in recent years, Thomas has made her Facebook page a forum for increasingly conspiratorial and inflammatory content. She has linked to memes alleging that Democrats stole the 2018 midterm elections and shared an image post, now deleted, claiming that Parkland, Florida, students advocating for gun control were “dangerous to the survival of our nation.”

Earlier this month, Thomas posted a meme demanding that Congress should turn away from undermining Trump and focus on “real problems” such as a the “rise of infanticide.”

Her private presentations to conservatives take a similar tone.

Last October, the Council on National Policy held another gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, at which Thomas gave a presentation on the state of the election and her views of the challenges ahead.

“The hard left,” Thomas said at the time, “is in control of the Democrat Party.” She continued, “They’re pushing and pulling at the party. And they’re also controlling the media and corporations and Hollywood and education. And we’re in the minority in our country.”

Thomas warned that the “fascist left” had encouraged violence over the hearings to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and would continue waging a cultural war against conservatives.

That war included, she said, a push to use “rainbow flags” to send “powerful, subtle messages” against conservatives. She also cited the left-wing shooter who arrived at the congressional baseball game in 2017 to target GOP lawmakers. The members of Congress targeted were lucky that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., had security with him, Thomas said.

“We all have guns and concealed carry,” Thomas said, “to handle what’s coming.”

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no lnx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-is-ginni-thomas-saying-now-the-evolution-of-an-unusually-outspoken-supreme-court-spouse:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{/2018/:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{12/26

wapo

What is Ginni Thomas saying now? The evolution of an unusually outspoken Supreme Court spouse

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been unusually outspoken and partisan, especially on social media, where she shares conspiratorial memes touting farfetched notions.

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been unusually outspoken and partisan, especially on social media, where she shares conspiratorial memes touting farfetched notions. (Susan Walsh/AP)

By

Dan Zak

Dec. 27, 2018

What is going on with Ginni Thomas?

She looks and sounds like the Washington wife of yore, with the pearl earrings, the Reagan-red cocktail attire, the sunglasses tiara’d atop her blond bob. At the holidays, she lays wreaths at Arlington and sings carols around the piano with her be-sweatered husband, Clarence, who happens to be the longest-serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Memorial Day means a backyard barbecue with star-spangled tablecloths and a sheet cake that reads “God Bless America!”

But meanwhile, on Facebook, she’s behaving like your slightly paranoid neighbor who stockpiles bullets and astronaut food.

This month, Ginni Thomas shared a Facebook post that bizarrely described California as a war zone, with illegal immigrants scaling walls and carjacking U.S. citizens. Last month, she shared a post alleging that Democrats committed voter fraud in four midterm races. (Which ones? How? She didn’t say.) Then there was the post in August (since deleted) proclaiming that teenage survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting are “dangerous to the survival of our nation” because of their gun-control activism. And the post in February that harangued Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for supposedly wiretapping Donald Trump — a baseless accusation indulged in only by conspiracy theorists.

[pix All nine Supreme Court justices posed for a portrait on Nov. 30. This is the first official group photo to include Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Does it matter that the spouse of a Supreme Court justice is sharing such nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda? Or have we hit the point at which this kind of rhetoric has been so normalized that, well, why wouldn’t a prominent party activist be doing this?

It hardly seems to have hurt her status in Washington’s elite Republican circles, where Thomas is admired by some as a conservative leader, a station she worked decades to achieve.

“I regard her as one of the three or four most influential conservative activists in the country,” says writer and economist Stephen Moore, who advised Trump’s campaign and frequently sees Thomas at conservative confabs. “She has channels into the White House that gets her stuff on the president’s desk.”

Does she? The White House did not respond to a query, and Thomas declined to comment for this story. But she often describes herself using a word that conveys the nature of her power: “troublemaker.” Every so often, Thomas does something that sets her critics’ hair on fire. Recently, those things have included giving an “impact” award to Fox News host Sean Hannity and suggesting that a shadow government is trying to undermine the president’s agenda — parts of which, after all, are subject to review by the Supreme Court.

Conservatives must not “be complicit as the left moves its forces across our country,” she said last year at the “IMPACT Awards” luncheon she hosted at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, honoring Hannity as well as media provocateur James O’Keefe and other conservative combatants, according to video of the event shared online. She declared that Americans are throwing away their rights for “false entitlement” and that the National Football League is “mainstreaming anti-Americanism” by letting players kneel during the national anthem. Thomas concluded her remarks by saying that the left wants “to extinguish our rights.”

Past the cheery smile and the squeaky-cute voice is not a “wife of” but a woman who has gathered her own power over the years. A woman whose grievances appear to be flowering in the Trump era.A woman who could summon dozens of fellow warriors to her second annual awards luncheon this month — at the same time as the funeral of George H.W. Bush, no less. The attendees at the Mandarin Oriental on Dec. 5 included young pro-Trump commentator Candace Owens and 87-year-old Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s attorney general.

“Ginni Thomas is a crucially important person in this conservative movement,” saidMark Levin, a talk-radio hostwho dabbles in conspiracy theory, at the luncheon. “Don’t you think?”

The attendees applauded heartily.

In one of her recent, gentler Facebook posts, Ginni Thomas shared a photo of herself and her mother, Marge Lamp, wearing matching gingham shirts at the 1980 Republican National Convention. Marge was a Nebraska delegate for Reagan. Ginni was 23 and already devoted to the cause. After the election, she moved to Washington to work for her hometown congressman. And she joined a group that she would later realize was a cult.

Lifespring, with roots in the 1970s consciousness-raising movement, was advertised as an intensive self-help seminar. Some devotees found it helped them achieve breakthroughs in their lives and careers, but its tactics included psychological exercises that were often humiliating or even physically harmful. Some students had psychotic breaks. Several sued. A few died.

Medical experts alleged that Lifespring stripped away a student’s rationality through forced confrontation. One psychiatrist told The Washington Post in 1987 that he treated a woman who “thought the world was going to end and she had to save it.”

Thomas witnessed one exercise in which students disrobed and engaged in communal ridicule and sexual interrogation. After months of trying, she broke away.

“I had intellectually and emotionally gotten myself so wrapped up with this group that I was moving away from my family and friends and the people I work with,” she told The Washington Post then. “My best friend came to visit me, and I was preaching at her, using that tough attitude they teach you.”

She became an anti-cult activist in 1985 and an attorney at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where she rankled women’s rights groups by opposing legislation on maternity leave and comparable worth. Her goal was a seat in Congress, she told Good Housekeeping in 1986 when it showcased her as one of “28 Young Women of Promise.” That same year, she went on a lunch date with one of Jet magazine’s most eligible D.C. bachelors: Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Ginni was “an old-fashioned idealist whom Washington’s cynics had not yet managed to spoil,” her husband wrote later, in his memoir. She “wanted good to prevail over evil.”

They married in her native Omaha the following year. Four years later, Bush nominated Clarence to the Supreme Court.

“The one person he really listens to is Virginia,” a longtime friend told The Post in 1991. “He depends on her for advice.” When his former colleague Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, turning his Senate confirmation process into a battle, the Thomases became each other’s greatest ally. She described the experience as akin to going “through a furnace”; he wrote that the “fiery trial” fused them into “one being.” After his close confirmation vote, she recast herself as a fighter for conservatism. She did tours of duty on Capitol Hill, in the think-tank world, in academia, in the grass roots.

In the ’90s, she foraged for Clinton scandals while working for House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.). In May 1996, Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) blew up when he spotted her at a hearing on the White House travel office, according to a Wall Street Journal report. What was “Mrs. Clarence Thomas in that bright blue dress” doing there, he reportedly asked a staffer, adding, “I really smell a political witch hunt.”

Even colleagues wondered whether her partisan tradecraft was rooted in revenge, according to the Journal, which asked her in 1997 whether she still envisioned a run for Congress. “I’m kind of stuck here,” Thomas replied, acknowledging that her husband’s ascent had complicated her own.

During the recount chaos of 2000, she helped the Heritage Foundation identify potential Bush staffers while her husband was deciding the outcome of the presidential race. “We have our separate professional lives,” she told the New York Times then, asserting that her work was bipartisan.

Thomas had felt professionally hamstrung by her husband’s job, says one longtime friend. That changed after Sept. 11, 2001, when her friend Barbara Olson perished on the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon. A conservative legal analyst with a talent for TV debate, Olson boldly carried on her punditry despite being married to a high-profile man in government: Theodore B. Olson, George W. Bush’s solicitor general.

“We all were desperately wounded, but Ginni came back and said to me, ‘Who’s our Barbara Olson? We need a Barbara Olson,’?” says the friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she works in government. “Ginni said, ‘I feel like I have to do this. I have to get more involved.’?”

Ginni Thomas during a break in the October 1991 testimony of Anita Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This “fiery trial,” Clarence Thomas later wrote, fused them into “one being.”Ginni Thomas during a break in the October 1991 testimony of Anita Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This “fiery trial,” Clarence Thomas later wrote, fused them into “one being.”

Ginni Thomas during a break in the October 1991 testimony of Anita Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This “fiery trial,” Clarence Thomas later wrote, fused them into “one being.” (Arnie Sachs/Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP Images)

Public confidence in the Supreme Court has dwindled and polarized over the past two decades, according to Gallup. This has made Ginni Thomas both more influential and more vulnerable to scrutiny.

After Democrats took control of the White House and Congress in 2009, she launched a nonprofit. “Liberty Central will be bigger than the tea party,” Thomas told Fox News. The group, underwritten by $1.5 million in anonymous donations, maintained a website to organize “citizen patriots” against Obama’s “hard-left” agenda, including the Affordable Care Act (which her husband would eventually declare unconstitutional in a dissent from the majority that upheld it). Watchdog group Common Cause complained to the IRS that the group skirted too close to political activity to sustain its nonprofit status. The complaint was never resolved, but Liberty Central dissolved within a few years — though not before Thomas paid herself a one-year salary of $120,000.

She shifted to Liberty Consulting, a one-woman shop offering herself as a “political entrepreneur” who could advise donors on how to direct their funds. Politics was flush with new money after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, in which her husband voted to allow unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. Critics wondered whether Thomas’s work — and her appeal to clients and collaborators — could be separated from the fact of her marriage.

Thomas herself claims to have been annoyed by the association.

“It’s like, ‘What do you want?’?” she said at her awards luncheon last year, playacting her suspicion of beseechers. “You want my husband, don’t you?”

During the Obama years, Thomas traveled the country connecting with the tea party movement and seeking allies in Congress. She made videos for the Daily Caller in which she wondered whether “cultural Marxists have already won in our country.” In 2016, Thomas, a devout Christian, endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for president; after he dropped out, she began to see opportunity in Trump. The morning of his win, she was at the National Press Club with other conservatives, claiming the mantle of whatever the movement had become overnight.

“With Donald Trump,” said Thomas, “we can do so much more.”

Within weeks of his inauguration, she issued a call to arms against the left’s resistance efforts, according to an email obtained by the Daily Beast. She continued to attend a regular meeting of conservatives calledGroundswell, which had formed in 2013 to strategize message wars against the left. Attendees in its first years, Mother Jones reported, had included future top Trump advisersStephen K. Bannon and John Bolton. One member says that Thomas excuses herself from the room whenever matters of the court arise.

But her most visible work is on Facebook, which she considers a prime conduit for influencing the conservative base. Her specialty is meme warfare — sharing loving tributes to Trump, derogatory takedowns of progressives and broadsides against congressional Republicans. A week after a neo-Nazi killed a woman by driving a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Thomas derided House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not speaking out against violence on the left.

“LiberalFascists have their useful idiots,” she wrote, and we are left to wonder, as always: What is going on with Ginni Thomas?

These memes come off the assembly line of jingoistic conservative Facebook groups with names such as the Citizens Mandate and the Great American Movement, which have 160,000 followers between them. The groups seem as automated and leaderless as many of the murky forces in social media these days, but the latter appears to be linked on Twitter to a fellow Groundswell member, and the former was apparently born of a 2014 pledge to “Stop the Fundamental Transformation of America” — which was signed by anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, evangelical James Dobson and 50 other conservatives, including a few that Thomas has honored with “impact” awards.

“I can’t believe that the wife of a Supreme Court justice would be spreading such dangerous lies,” wrote a Facebook commenter named Elizabeth in October, after Thomas equated Democrats with rioting and mob rule.

A handful of Thomas’s fellow warriors, when asked about her Facebook activity, say they haven’t observed it or haven’t caught anything objectionable, though at least one says she can overreach at times.

“She’s hardcore to a fault,” says an alumnus of the Heritage Foundation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly. “Sometimes it clouds her political judgment.”

The Thomases at the funeral of his Supreme Court colleague Antonin Scalia in February 2016. “It’d be impossible without you,” he said in a joint interview with her recently. “It makes it whole, when I have my wife.”The Thomases at the funeral of his Supreme Court colleague Antonin Scalia in February 2016. “It’d be impossible without you,” he said in a joint interview with her recently. “It makes it whole, when I have my wife.”

The Thomases at the funeral of his Supreme Court colleague Antonin Scalia in February 2016. “It’d be impossible without you,” he said in a joint interview with her recently. “It makes it whole, when I have my wife.” (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

There is no official policy or protocol preventing Ginni Thomas from going full MAGA. It's her First Amendment right to fulminate that America is becoming a godless, socialist nightmare and to practice the dark art of political messaging on social media.

But it doesn’t reflect well on the institution of the court, says Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor and scholar of legal ethics at Stanford University.

“Think about what this would look like if she was doing this on behalf of Democratic candidates or Hillary Clinton,” Rhode says. “I think this is a moment — especially in the wake of the [Brett M.] Kavanaugh hearings, which heightened people’s concerns about partisan bias — where members of the Supreme Court and their families need to think about ways that their public conduct can affect popular trust.”

Her husband’s former clerks see a much gentler version of Thomas. She is a maternal figure to their tightknit network, a binding source of love, strength and patriotism through the generations, according to Helgi Walker, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

“I think she is a role model for independent women who love their husbands,” says Walker, who clerked for Clarence Thomas in 1995, adding: “There is a really big difference between law and politics. And Justice Thomas and Mrs. Thomas exemplify those two very different areas and understand and appreciate the difference between them.”

In Washington, though, lines can be blurred. Former Thomas clerks include the current deputy solicitor general, two lawyers in the White House counsel’s office, and the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, as Slate has pointed out. United in Purpose, the Christian organization that hosts Ginni Thomas’s awards luncheon, is partly funded by a dark-money group that gave $23.5 million in 2016 to the Judicial Crisis Network, which — under the leadership of another former Thomas clerk — spent millions to block Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court and support Neil M. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Ginni Thomas counts as a mentor Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society leader who has guided conservative court nominations for decades; last year, she gave him one of her awards.

“These are troubling times, and you are at the forefront of that fight,” Sean Hannity said at the lunch, where speakers inveighed against Islam, socialism, “race-based groups,” “men in women’s locker rooms” and African American activists and residents of Ferguson, Mo. There was much praise for Ginni Thomas, though. As Dan Bongino, a Trump cheerleader and Fox News regular, said while receiving his award, “When you look at the impact on the conservative movement and the principles we hold dear, I think her and her husband stand toe to toe.” She may not have become a congresswoman but, in the eyes of some people, she is so much more.

And what about her husband? He’s been as taciturn on the bench as she’s been outspoken in the conservative movement. One of Ginni’s last videos for the Daily Caller, earlier this year, was an interview with Clarence. It was funny and charming and personal, no talk of politics or policy, apparently conducted at their home in Virginia. They seem like best friends, still bound by true love and old wounds.

At one point in the video, after talking about their love of motorhoming and Nebraska football, Ginni asks Clarence about the best part of being a justice.

His answer: Her.

“It’d be impossible without you,” Clarence Thomas says. “I have to be honest. It would be, um — it’s sort of like, ‘How do you run with one leg?’ You can’t. It makes it whole, when I have my wife.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/heres-the-case-for-impeaching-clarence-thomas-the-most-corrupt-supreme-court-justice

With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the radical right has completed its long and painstaking project to seize control of the Supreme Court, and to reshape constitutional law for generations to come. Barrett's elevation will give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the court and usher in a crisis of legitimacy for the third branch of government not seen since the 1930s.

The right's triumph has prompted anger and soul-searching among Democrats and progressives, sparking calls to expand the number of Supreme Court justices, echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt's unsuccessful effort to add additional seats to the high tribunal in the midst of the Great Depression.

Enlarging the Supreme Court is entirely within the power of Congress, as the number of justices is not set by the Constitution. The court's composition has, in fact, varied over time, ranging from six justices when the Constitution was ratified to 10 in 1863. The panel was reduced to nine by an act of Congress in 1867 and has remained there since then by statute.

While Democrats should definitely demand court expansion if they retake the White House and the Senate and hold the House, there is at least one additional step they should take to address the court's legitimacy crisis—the impeachment of its most corrupt member—Clarence Thomas.

Thomas should be impeached on charges of perjury for allegedly lying in his annual financial disclosure statements for over a decade and, more fundamentally, for lying in his 1991 confirmation hearing about his disgusting history of sexual harassment.

Although federal judges are appointed for life, their terms are subject to "good behavior." Like all civil officers of the United States, they can be removed, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

The impeachment process, as we were reminded by the experience of President Trump, consists of two basic steps: First, members of the House of Representatives impeach an official by adopting, on a simple majority vote, one or more articles of impeachment, which read very much like a criminal complaint or a grand jury indictment. Step two proceeds with a trial in the Senate, which has the power to convict on a two-thirds ballot. Ouster from office follows conviction automatically, and cannot be appealed.

Only three presidents—Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Trump—have been impeached in our history, and all were exonerated in their Senate trials. A fourth, Richard Nixon, resigned in the face of near-certain impeachment and removal for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The impeachment of federal judges, by contrast, has been far more common. To date, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and eight have been convicted by the Senate. Indeed, the only Senate impeachment trials resulting in convictions have involved judges.

Since 1988, three federal judges have been impeached and removed on charges involving perjury. The last judge to be impeached was G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of the Eastern District of Louisiana, a Clinton appointee who was convicted by the Senate and ejected from office in December 2010 for accepting bribes and, among other derelictions, signing false financial declarations under penalty of perjury.

Thomas, if targeted, would become just the second Supreme Court Justice to be impeached. In 1804, the House charged Associate Justice Samuel Chase with eight articles of impeachment for engaging in arbitrary and oppressive conduct and expressing political bias while serving as a trial judge in certain Sedition Act cases during an era when Supreme Court justices also conducted trials. An outspoken Federalist and supporter of John Adams, Chase incurred the ire of Thomas Jefferson and his Republican allies. Chase was acquitted the following year in a Senate trial presided over by Vice President Aaron Burr. (The chief justice of the Supreme Court presides only in presidential impeachment trials.)

As the Senate's website instructs, Chase's exoneration has since been construed to insulate the "judiciary from… congressional attacks based on disapproval of judges' opinions." Guided by the Chase example, an impeachment proceeding against Thomas could not be initiated because of policy differences Democrats may have with him, even though Thomas has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the constitutional rights of minorities, women and criminal defendants during his tenure on the Supreme Court.

Like Porteous, however, Thomas is vulnerable to perjury allegations.

Under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, all high-ranking federal officials are required to file yearly financial disclosure statements for themselves and their spouses to safeguard against conflicts of interest. But for 13 years, Thomas failed to report his wife Virginia's earnings on the mandatory annual financial disclosure forms that he signed under penalty of perjury, indicating that his spouse had no non-investment income when in fact she was steadily employed in high-level jobs as a policy analyst and an outspoken conservative activist.

According to Common Cause, Virginia—who is also a lawyer and a one-time aide to former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey—received more than $686,000 between 2003 and 2007, working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, claiming incredulously that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, Thomas amended his financial disclosures, which can now be examined on the OpenSecrets.org website.

As University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos pointed out in a 2011 Daily Beast article, "The relevant question on the disclosure form isn't complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn't a lawyer, he shouldn't have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase 'Spouse's Non-Investment Income' should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income." In Campos' view, Thomas' omissions were "criminal."

Thomas' alleged perjury in his testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 was of a far greater magnitude, centering on his denial under oath that he harassed Anita Hill and other female colleagues while he served as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The clash between Hill and Thomas was televised and made for riveting viewing, even more so than the rancorous battle over the 2018 confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Thomas was treated with kid gloves by the all-male members of the Judiciary Committee, who sat largely in silence as he denied ever engaging in inappropriate behavior and claimed that he was being "subjected to a 'high-tech lynching.'"

Hill, who is now a professor of social policy and law at Brandeis University, was treated with scorn and contempt by the Judiciary Committee. Some members called her "delusional," suggested she was mentally "unstable" and was a "scorned woman" out for revenge against Thomas for rebuffing her romantic advances.

In addition to assassinating Hill's character, the committee, under the chairmanship of Joe Biden, then the senior Democratic senator from Delaware, declined to call three other female Thomas accusers to testify at the hearing. One of those accusers, writer Angela Wright, remains an outspoken critic of Thomas, and has publicly called for his impeachment. Anita Hill, too, has never wavered, insisting she told the truth.

Unlike criminal trials, impeachment proceedings are not governed by statutes of limitations. In any event, it is never too late to do justice and provide Hill and Thomas' other accusers with the fair hearing they never received.

Even assuming Thomas would avoid conviction in the Senate, his impeachment trial would be nothing like the farce of Trump's proceeding. With Democrats holding a majority in the Senate and Kamala Harris presiding as vice president, documents would be subpoenaed and witnesses, including Thomas, would be called to testify.

The impeachment of Thomas would also offer Biden a full and final opportunity to make amends for the past. Above all, combined with a move to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court, impeaching Thomas would restore the legitimacy of the judiciary as a bulwark of constitutional rights, and send a message that the nation has had enough of Republican efforts to return the country to the dark days before the New Deal and the civil rights movement.

Before any of that happens, of course, Donald Trump and his GOP enablers must be defeated at the polls.

Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes regularly on law and politics and is the author of three widely acclaimed legal thrillers: Prejudicial Error, The Last Appeal, and The Face of Justice.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Majority of Supreme Court now confirmed by senates where Republicans represented fewer Americans than Dems - Alternet.org ›

**==**

**That is what has placed Sotomayor’s name in the news. I seriously doubt, however, that Trump understands or cares about these legal maneuverings, which is why he couldn’t articulate his objections to Sotomayor during a news conference in India today.**

The reason Trump is on the attack against liberal Supreme Court justices probably has more to do with a case that is being made against Justice Clarence Thomas. As we’ve seen, the president is in the :{**midst of a purge of federal employees who don’t demonstrate enough loyalty to him**. Jonathan Swan reported that:(style="text-decoration-line:none;background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{ Ginni Thomas—the wife of Clarence Thomas—has been deeply involved in lobbying on behalf of a purge:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}:, providing the administration with lists of who needs to go as well as potential replacements.

In response, there have been calls for Thomas to recuse himself on matters related to Trump and his administration. Trump’s call for Sotomayor and Ginsberg to recuse themselves is not only a way to further politicize the Supreme Court; it also provides his media enablers with a distraction from the issues surrounding Thomas and the ability to pretend that both sides do it.

:{As I’ve been suggesting for a while now, the Supreme Court is scheduled to issue rulings in several explosive cases prior to the November election. One of them has to do with whether or not Trump will be required to release his tax returns. From everything we’ve seen, that is the hill that this president is prepared to defend at all costs. And according to CNN, the latest dissent issued by Sotomayor could indicate that tensions are rising as the justices consider these major case:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:s.

The justices are behind schedule in releasing opinions, and court watchers have questioned if the delay is caused in part by Chief Justice John Roberts’ required participation in the impeachment proceedings, or if the justices themselves are fractured over a number of cases. Although Sotomayor wrote alone, her opinion suggests unease behind the scenes.

All of this is probably just the opening salvo in what promises to be a very contentious season for the Supreme Court.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-the-real-reason-trump-is-lashing-out-at-supreme-court-justices-as-his-cronies-try-to-short-circuit-the-judicial-process/

==

===

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-teams-up-with-james-okeefe-in-dark-money-operation-to-protect-trump/

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a right-wing political activist, has launched a new set of organizations meant to “protect President Trump” and attack Democrats and left-leaning organizations, according to an article published by The Intercept this week.

The well-connected Thomas, a former Heritage Foundation staffer, presented her plans to build a “robust infrastructure” to a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy last month. TheCNP is a strategy-development-and-sharing network that includes leaders across the U.S. religious and political Right, including people like neo-Confederate Christian Reconstrucionist Michael Peroutka. CNP members pushed Trump to sign an executive order on religious liberty.

Thomas is planning to build a “robust infrastructure” of affiliated organizations.Among her partners in the new project are longtime right-wing operative Richard Viguerie; undercover videographer and political tricksterJames O’Keefe;Republican campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell;and Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a matchmaker for corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators willing to do their bidding.

A slide from Thomas’s presentation at Council for National Policy notes, “Long Term teams taking shape will focus on Education, Media, Entertainment/Arts, Faith, Corporate/Economic, Government, Science, and more”—nearly identical to the list of spheres of cultural influence targeted by Religious Right proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism.

The Intercept also reported that Thomas had spoken at another CNP event last October, at which she declared, “The hard left is in control of the Democrat Party … And they’re controlling the media and corporations and Hollywood and education.”

This January, Thomas organized a White House meeting where she was joined by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and others where, among other things, they complained that White House aides were blocking right-wing Trump supporters from getting administration jobs.

Thomas and many of her partners were among conservative activists who mobilized a year ago to try to replace then-House Speaker Paul Ryan with right-wing favorite Rep. Jim Jordan.

Thomas presented United in Purpose “Impact” awards to O’Keefe, Gaffney, and Sean Hannity in 2017. In 2016, TPM reported that Thomas “wanted to ‘target’ the ‘most questionable’ precincts in Virginia with an anti-voter fraud campaign.”

Thomas also interviewed right-wing radio host Jesse Lee Peterson for the Daily Caller in 2016. The two talked about what Thomas called “race hustlers” who she said are “in the business of keeping blacks angry” and about Black Lives Matter, which Peterson called “evil,” “wicked,” and “worse than the KKK.” Last year, Thomas reportedly hired a former Turning Point USA staffer who had resigned after The New Yorker published screenshots of text messages that included a text that said “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.”

Tags: Bill MeierlingCleta MitchellGinni ThomasJames O'KeefeRichard ViguerieElection 2020Seven MountainsALECAmerican Legislative Exchange CouncilCouncil for National Policy

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/justice-clarence-thomas-has-been-secretly-lobbying-senators-to-get-controversial-trump-judicial-nominee-confirmed/

In a rare move **Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas** has been secretly lobbying Republican Senators to urge them to vote to confirm **President Donald Trump**‘s highly controversial judicial nominee, **Neomi Rao**.

Justice Thomas “is working behind the scenes to boost the prospects of his former law clerk, Neomi Rao, to serve on a powerful federal appeals court in Washington,” The Washington Post reports Thursday.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is a small but highly powerful appellate court that has the power to hear cases brought by or against the federal government. It “tends to have exclusive jurisdiction over matters that are likely to have a national effect,” and its judges are considered prime candidates to become Supreme Court justices.

Most recently, Judge, and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh sat on the D.C. Court of Appeals. Neomi Rao, whose rulings and stated beliefs are considered far out of the mainstream and by some entirely inappropriate for any judge sitting on the federal bench,  is President Trump’s nominee to replace Kavanaugh now that he has been elevated to the nation’s top court. Four of the nation’s current sitting Supreme Court justices came directly from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Justice Thomas is not the only lobbyist in his family. His wife, far right wing Tea Party activist **Ginni Thomas**, a professional lobbyist, was recently in the news after it was discovered she has been lobbying President Trump inside the White House, disparaging transgender troops and women serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Thomas’ husband, Justice Thomas, likely will hear at least one case on the constitutionally of banning troops because they are transgender.

Meanwhile, Republicans opposed to Rao believes she is not extreme enough to overturn Roe v. Wade, the top target of the religious right and many conservative groups. Others, including some Democrats, point to her refusal to say if she believes same-sex relationships are a sin.

Other critics of Rao point to her college-era writings “about date rape, sexual assault and the responsibility of those involved. At times, she placed the onus on women to ‘accept responsibility,'” NBC News reported during her confirmation hearing.

“She was asked repeatedly about one article in the Yale Herald, headlined, ‘Shades of Gray,’in which she posited that sexual assaults at college parties might be avoided if women didn’t drink too much. She wrote that ‘a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober.'”

Rao has expressed regret about some of her earlier writings, “but she also said some of what she wrote amounted to ‘common sense observations’ that would make women less likely to be a victim of assault.”

==

ref

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=%22Ginni+Thomas%22

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CHARLIE KIRK PRAISES KANYE FOR SUPPORTING TRUMP – AND TRASHES TAYLOR SWIFT FOR VOICING POLITICAL OPINION

“She stayed away from politics—she was all about music all about, you know, female empowerment.”

==

GINNI THOMAS

Head of National Black Chamber of Commerce on Obama’s priorities: ‘This is not America’

GINNI THOMAS

Contributor

8:40 PM 08/11/2013

1838125

Committed to successful black entrepreneurship, Harry C. Alford, Jr. has been president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce since 1993.

During that time, he has spoken out with increasing boldness against the liberal orthodoxy hurting the black community. In 2009, he took on Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer at a cap-and-trade hearing, and that video went viral. In this interview with Alford, he continues to boldly confront the politics of government dependency, which he believes stand opposed to the founding principles of capitalism, private property and opportunity.

Alford claims President Barack Obama is hurting black entrepreneurship everyday with entitlements and dependency.

“He’s just after votes,” Alford said of Obama. “And people who don’t know, ‘He gives me a free cell phone, I increase my food stamps.’ That’s not America. That’s not why we fought the British.”

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“It’s for the freedom of being what you want to be and not being … suppressed from your dreams,” he continued. “Go for it. But this president seems to think the government will run everything.”

Alford compared the founders’ guiding principles with Obama’s.

“Free enterprise. The freedom to have your own business to create jobs and wealth. The freedom to be educated. The freedom to speak any way you want, as long as it’s moral and true. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. The right to own a gun to protect you and your family. This administration is against all that,” he said. “And a surprising amount of people are trying to support that on his side, and it’s not America! Go back to your history books, it’s not America.”

His provocative blog includes recent commentary comparing what he believes was President Obama’s superficial trip to Africa with the productivity of China’s president, pointing out corruption in minority assistance programs and providing ideas for rebuilding Detroit.

Mrs. Thomas does not necessarily support or endorse the products, services or positions promoted in any advertisement contained herein, and does not have control over or receive compensation from any advertiser.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/11/harry-alford-on-obama-priorities-this-is-not-america-video/#ixzz3eBEI506u**

===

David Corn brings us news of yet another quasi-"secret" conservative group looking to shape messaging and the media coverage of that messaging. That yet another one exists, and that like others one of their top priorities is defeating not-conservative-enough Karl Rove and demanding a more radical conservatism of their conservatives, is not too surprising. That they seem to be in opposition to uberconservative Grover Norquist is a bit more surprising, but I suppose Norquist has gone out of favor now that people in the movement have started to suspect him of secret Muslimizm.

The list of people who participate in these "Groundswell" strategizing sessions, however, has a definite B-grade flavor to it.

One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Oh, well if you've got John Bolton, the Family Research Council and Allen West thinking up your strategy, I'm sure nothing can go wrong with that. Also featured prominently are various Breitbart apparatchiks, so you know it's top-notch stuff.

At its weekly meetings, the group aims to strengthen the right's messaging by crafting Twitter hashtags; plotting strategy on in-the-headlines issues such as voter ID, immigration reform, and the sequester; promoting politically useful scandals; and developing "action items."

Oh God, stop, you're killing me. #HashtagBasedStrategizing

Groundswell members saw immigration as a life-or-death issue. "If we lose on immigration," the post-meeting memo noted, "we lose on every other issue. […]"

The group also reviewed how best to oppose the confirmation of Tom Perez, Obama's nominee for labor secretary. Groundsweller's claimed that Perez, then a senior Justice Department official, supported "Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Shariah." (One Groundswell memo maintained that Perez "is extremely antagonistic toward whites.") A third agenda item that Wednesday morning was beating back the effort to end the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay scouts. […] The post-meeting memo suggested Twitter hashtags to push: #CantTrustObama, #PoliticsOverPublicSafety, #SequesterLies.

A troupe of Rove-hating conservatives who spend their days talking about Sharia conspiracies. I'm beginning to see why this group is secret: I think it's so they don't get teased. Also, members literally seem to get something called "brownie points" for putting out the group's message, which in any other context would probably be humiliating for all involved. Not them, though!

The Groundswellers feel that they too often lose the political narrative to their progressive rivals. One memo that circulated among members declared, "We must reclaim the language and put 'a face' on our messages; tell stories. Write articles on 4th grade level!"

Some of you have almost managed 3rd grade level, so don't lose hope. Practice! You'll get there eventually.

There's one place I have to disagree with David Corn's reporting on this story. He refers to some of the persons involved as "journalists," citing Breitbart "News" participants and others. I don't think you can claim that; the Breitbart group does not do "journalism," they do something … else. Their namesake made the brand on pushing falsified "pimp tape"-style stories to gullible peers. While it would indeed be alarming if "journalists" were coordinating strategies with the likes of Ginni Thomas, Frank Gaffney (snicker), John Bolton (cackle) and Allen Freaking West (it hurts, stop, I need a moment!), none of the columnists, "researchers" or Fox News hangers-on named in the story really pass as "journalists" in the conventional sense of the term. They might claim otherwise, but that doesn't make it true, and we really shouldn't just accept such claims at face value.

The Breitbarters seem to play a substantive role in the group, which gives you an indication of the caliber of minds at work here, and is probably one force behind the group's apparent routine of thinking up good-sounding storylines first, then bothering with the "evidence" later. I am not thinking there is much to fear from this particular peanut gallery, but it might be interesting in the future to watch their promotion of certain themes and how they collect their "brownie points" for reinforcing each other's messages. Hell, we can give them "brownie points" ourselves, right? Ten points to Slytherin, guys, but come up with a really good hashtag and I'll make it 15. #MelonSizedCalves?

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO HUNTER ON THU JUL 25, 2013 AT 02:20 PM PDT.

==

Clarence Thomas' Wife Cashes In as Tea Party Lobbyist

Does Virginia Thomas' new lobby job raise a conflict with her Supreme Court husband?

By Andy Kroll | Fri Feb. 4, 2011 8:42 AM PST

Like former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and California political strategist Sal Russo, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is cashing in on her tea party cred. Ginni Thomas, as she's known, has started an outfit called Liberty Consulting [1], Politico reports [2], devoted to political strategizing (which in Washington can mean just about anything) and also tea party-tinged lobbying that, according to her website, draws on Thomas' "experience and connections" on the Hill. "Ginni plans to leverage her 30 years of experience as a Washington 'insider,'" reads her website, "to assist non-establishment 'outsiders' who share her belief in our core founding principles and values."

In a recent email she sent to chiefs of staff on the Hill, Thomas branded herself a "self-appointed ambassador to the freshmen class and an ambassador to the tea party movement." Her new shop is just getting started, but already Thomas says she's met with almost half of the 99 freshman Republicans on Capitol Hill. That lobbying, combined with Thomas' previous role as a tea party activist dedicated to defeating Democrats in the 2010 midterms, has irked good government groups who claim she's politicizing the Supreme Court. "It raises additional questions about whether Justice Thomas can be unbiased and appear to be unbiased" in cases where his wife's political advocacy has had an impact, like the challenge to the health care reform law or limits on corporate campaign spending, a lawyer for the group Common Cause told Politico.

Then again, Thomas doesn't look to have made thatbig a splash in Congress:

Even among congressional Republicans, with whom Thomas boasts she has close ties, the reaction to the entreaties from her new firm, Liberty Consulting, ranged from puzzlement to annoyance, with a senior House Republican aide who provided Thomas's e-mail to POLITICO blasting her for trying to "cash in" on her ties to the tea party movement.

Freshman Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.)—who courted tea party activists and who was endorsed by Liberty Central, the tea party nonprofit group she headed until December—was unaware of Thomas’s new effort.

"This is the spouse of Justice Thomas?" he said, when asked by POLITICO on Tuesday about her outreach. "No, I've never met her. It's not something I've heard about. And I hang out with a lot of freshman," he said.

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/clarence-thomas-wife-tea-party-lobbyist

Links:

[1] http://libertyinc.co/site/services

[2] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48812.html

===

 ---

  The Chamber's lawyers successfully got the Supreme Court to make it harder for victims of corporate negligence to sue for damages, whether they are claimants in the BP oil spill or employees of corporations filing class-action lawsuits in cases of abuse. They recently ruled in favor of agribusiness giantMonsanto in a seed patent case against a farmer trying to save his seeds, ruling that Monsanto had the right to claim domain over the farmer's crops, since their genetically-modified seeds had cross-pollinated into the neighboring organic crops on the farmer's plot. Justice Clarence Thomas once worked as a corporate attorney for Monsanto. He did not recuse himself from the decision. He also didn't recuse himself when ruling against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, despite his wife's having launched a lobbying group opposed to the Affordable Care Act's implementation.

--

$1.6 m  1997 -2011 from health care co's to lobby, not disclosed by hubby

Attacks on federal funding of liberal non-profits, however, are particularly attractive as a strategy because most conservative non-profits receive the bulk of their funding from corporations and right-wing foundations and not from the federal government.

In 1995, the new Republican majority in Congress took part in a particularly ambitious -- though ultimately unsuccessful -- attempt to defund the left. According to a May 30, 1995 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (which does not appear to be available online except through subscription-only sources):

"Congressional Republicans -- with the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas playing a key role -- are preparing a new budget-cutting assault on scores of government-funded nonprofit groups whose liberal views are considered a threat to the conservative agenda. ... The effort, referred to by conservatives as 'defunding the left,' is intended to take aim at what they consider advocacy groups that lobby for liberal social programs from which they receive grants and contracts."

The story went on to say, "Led by Virginia Lamp Thomas, the wife of the Supreme Court justice, a special group of senior House Republican experts and staff members has been quietly working under the auspices of House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. Their aim is to identify nonprofit organizations whose funding should be cut and to plan a strategy to end their grants or contracts with the government or the programs for which they provide services."

See also Liberty Central

Virginia "Ginni" Lamp Thomas (born February 23, 1957) is a conservative lobbyist and activist and the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas founded the Tea Party-affiliated group Liberty Central in January 2010, and after stepping down as President in November 2010, founded the lobbying firm Liberty Consulting, Inc.^[1]

Ginni Thomas' political activities have raised questions about political impartiality for the nation's highest court. ^[2] Common Cause has filed a charge with the Department of Justice that Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the Citizens United case. ^[3] In February 2011, seventy four House Democrats sent a letter to Justice Thomas asking that he recuse himself from hearing any challenge to the Affordable Care Act on grounds that his wife's political and financial interests were tied to overturning healthcare reform. ^[4]

Supreme Court Impartiality?

Although Americans generally expect justices to be politically neutral, and judicial rules prohibit judges from participating in political activity, those rules don’t extend to spouses. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "[t]he move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day."[5]

At the time the group was formed in January 2010, legal ethicists pointed to the fact that Thomas' husband had sided with the majority in the Citizens United decision, in effect making it possible for Liberty Central to operate with unlimited funding from secret donors. Further questions arose in July 2010 when POLITICO revealed that Liberty Central had received an anonymous $550,000 donation while Justice Thomas and the U.S. Supreme Court were deliberating over the case. ^[6]

Common Cause Alleges Justice Thomas Should Have Recused in Citizens United

In January 2011,Common Cause submitted a letter to the Justice Department alleging that Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the Citizens United case and that “the complete lack of transparency of Liberty Central’s finances makes it difficult to assess the full scope of the ethics issues raised by Ms. Thomas’ role in founding and leading the group.”^[3] The letter also pointed to possible conflicts of interests arising from the attendance by Justices Thomas and Scalia at events sponsored by the Koch brothers.

"Thomas’s role as a de facto tea party lobbyist and — until recently — as head of a tea party group that worked to defeat Democrats in November 2010 “show a new level of arrogance of just not caring that the court is being politicized and how that undermines the historic image of the Supreme Court as being above the political fray,” Arn Pearson, a lawyer for Common Cause, tells Politico. ^[2]

More concerns have arisen since Virginia Thomas announced the formation of her lobbying firm Liberty Consulting (whose website claims it will use Thomas' “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and offer "advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes."). Think Progress has pointed out that Thomas' work advising clients on how to donate money to political causes could have been facilitated by her husband's vote in Citizens United; the decision enabled corporations to spend unlimited money influencing elections, and she can now make a living advising corporations on how to direct that spending. ^[7]

Democrats Ask Justice Thomas for Recusal from Health Care Challenges

In February 2011, seventy four House Democrats sent a letter to Justice Thomas asking that he recuse himself from hearing any challenge to theAffordable Care Act on grounds that his wife's political and financial interests were tied to overturning healthcare reform. ^[4] The letter stated, in part:

"The appearance of a conflict of interest merits recusal under federal law," the House Democrats wrote. "From what we have already seen, the line between your impartiality and you and your wife's financial stake in the overturn of health-care reform is blurred. Your spouse is advertising herself as a lobbyist who has 'experience and connections' and appeals to clients who want a particular decision -- they want to overturn health-care reform. Moreover, your failure to disclose Ginny Thomas's receipt of $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, a prominent opponent of health-care reform, between 2003 and 2007 has raised great concern."

The entire letter can be read here.

Corporate funding increases impartiality concerns

Since theSupreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision permitted corporate dollars to flow into political campaigns, Liberty Central and Liberty Consulting will accept donations from corporations, and be permitted to spend those funds advocating for candidates. In addition to possible conflicts of interest arising from Justice Thomas hearing a case related to the group’s political activities, concerns also exist were he to face a decision involving one of Liberty Central’s donors.

This concern is exacerbated because Liberty Central is organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, allowing the group to raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors. As reported by Slate Magazine's Emily Bazelon:

As a 501(c)(4), the group can raise unlimited money for lobbying without identifying all its donors. So how will we know whether Thomas is taking himself out of every relevant case? Liberty Central should err on the side of disclosure—let's see if it does. This is particularly salient because Justice Thomas, and Justice Thomas alone, will make the decision about whether to sit out a case. Recusal calls by the individual justices aren't reviewed by the court as a whole, or any other body. "That's the real problem," Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode says. "There's no structure for oversight. I'd say most of the time judges do the right thing, but when they don't, there's very little you can do about it. ^[8]

Virginia Thomas

The Los Angeles Times reports that "Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep.Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP." ^[5] Further, according to the Liberty Central website, Ms. Thomas "is a fan of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham and other talk radio hosts," and "is intrigued by Glenn Beck." ^[9]

Early Life

Thomas grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, the youngest of four children whose father was a successful engineer. Her parents were described by The Washington Post as "upper middle class Republican Party insiders who stressed family and religion at home" and who wintered in Florida.[10] Thomas earned her undergraduate degree from University of Nebraska and earned her law degree from Creighton University in 1983.

From 1985 to 1989, Thomas worked as an attorney and labor relations specialist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and lobbied on behalf of business interests. She argued against the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which requires larger employers to give employees leave to care for a new child or during a serious personal or family illness. ^[11]

In 1991, Thomas entered the Department of Labor, which led some Senators to raise conflict-of-interest questions during her husband's judicial confirmation hearings. Further questions of conflict-of-interest were raised by her subsequent position as Policy Analyst for Congressman Dick Armey, who was then the Republican House Conference Chairman. In 2000, she was working for the Heritage Foundation and conflict-of-interest was again raised because she was collecting résumés for potential Presidential appointments in the George W. Bush Administration when the Supreme Court was deciding Bush v. Gore.

External Links

Liberty Central web site:http://www.libertycentral.org/ Liberty Consulting, Inc: http://libertyinc.co/site

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas and Liberty Consulting Fake Astroturf video from ProtectOurElections.Org

References

2. ↑ Kenneth Vogel, Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni, reportedly quits Liberty Central, POLITICO, November 15, 2010.
3. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1}
4. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Common Cause letter to the Justice Department re: Conflicts on Interest in Citizens United Case, accessed February 2011.
5. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Felicia Sonmez, [House Democrats say Justice Thomas should recuse himself in health-care case http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/02/house-democrats-say-justice-th.html], Washington Post, Feb. 09, 2011, accessed Feb. 10, 2011.
6. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Justice's Wife Launches 'Tea Party' Group, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2010
7. ↑ Kenneth Vogel, Secret donors makes Thomas's wife's group a tea party player, POLITICO, July 6, 2010.
8. ↑ Ian Millheiser, Is Ginni Thomas Getting Rich Off Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court Decisions?, Think Progress, Feb. 4, 2011.
9. ↑ Ginni Thomas Brings the Tea Party to the Supreme Court, Slate Magazine, March 16 2010
10. ↑ Bio page Liberty Central website, accessed March 2010
11. ↑ Laura Blumenfeld, "The Nominee's Soul Mate", Washington Post, Sept. 10, 1991.
12. ↑ Stanton, Betsy (December 10, 1987). "Big business: Family and Medical Leave Act is a bitter pill". Daily News Record.

Categories: Front groups | Corporate strategy | Politics (U.S.)

---

Virginia "Ginni" Lamp Thomas (born February 23, 1957) is an American attorney who is the founder and president of the conservative advocacy group Liberty Central; and the head of Liberty Consulting, Inc. Thomas previously worked at The Heritage Foundation. She is the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Contents

[hide]

February 4, 2011

Justice Thomas's Wife Sets Up a Conservative Lobbying Shop

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON -- The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed "ambassador to the Tea Party movement."

Virginia Thomas, the justice's wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for "liberty-loving citizens" who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her "experience and connections" to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.

Ms. Thomas's effort to take a more operational role on conservative issues could intensify questions about her husband's ability to remain independent on issues like campaign finance and health care, legal ethicists said.

Justice Thomas "should not be sitting on a case or reviewing a statute that his wife has lobbied for," said Monroe H. Freedman, a Hofstra Law School professor specializing in legal ethics. "If the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that creates a perception problem."

Ms. Thomas's founding of her own political consulting shop, Liberty Consulting, was first reported Thursday by Politico, which said she had begun reaching out to freshmen Republicans in Congress.

The move comes a few months after she gave up the top spot at Liberty Central, a conservative Web site that she founded in 2009 and that has strong links to the Tea Party movement.

An anonymous $500,000 donation to start up Liberty Central came from Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate investor and Republican financier, Politico reported.

Mr. Crow, reached by phone Friday, would not say whether he was the source of the money. "I disclose what I'm required by law to disclose," he said, "and I don't disclose what I'm not required to disclose."

Ms. Thomas did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for an interview on Friday. The Daily Caller reported in December that she had said in an interview that she was looking forward to a new role involving "lobbying on Capitol Hill" and a variety of other hands-on operational duties.

Arn Pearson, a vice president at Common Cause, a liberal group that has been critical of potential conflicts at the Supreme Court caused by Ms. Thomas's work, said her new position, combined with Justice Antonin Scalia's recent address before a closed-door seminar of the Tea Party Caucus, provided further evidence of "the politicization of the court."

"The level of bias we're seeing is really troubling," Mr. Pearson said.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-we-just-beginning-to-see-effects-of.html

^^

^wife ^ginni ^was ^TP ^now ^{lobbyist: http://www.americancrossroadswatch.org/index.php?q=node/235}

While Thomas was well-known in conservative circles as an aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, as a midlevel staffer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at The Heritage Foundation and as the spouse of one of the court's most conservative justices, she did not draw much attention until 2009, when she started speaking at tea party rallies.

Liberty Central Inc. is a 501(c)(4) Tea Party-affiliated nonprofit lobbying group who aims to "connect the grassroots to the political class" and whose website is "constantly assessing proposals that would limit liberty in America."^[1] The group was launched in January 2010 by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, raising questions about political impartiality for the nation's highest court. Thomas left the group in December 2010, but appears to have maintained close ties to the group. ^[2][3] After Thomas' departure, the group merged with the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty.^[2]

Supreme Court Impartiality?

Although Americans generally expect justices to be politically neutral, and judicial rules prohibit judges from participating in political activity, those rules don’t extend to spouses. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "[t]he move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day." ^[4]

At the time the group was formed in January 2010, legal ethicists pointed to the fact that Thomas' husband had sided with the majority in the Citizens United decision, in effect making it possible for Liberty Central to operate with unlimited funding from secret donors. Further questions arose in July 2010 when POLITICO revealed that Liberty Central had received an anonymous $550,000 donation while Justice Thomas and the U.S. Supreme Court were deliberating over the case. ^[5]

Common Cause Alleges Justice Thomas Should Have Recused in Citizens United

In January 2011, Common Cause submitted a letter to the Justice Department alleging that Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the Citizens United case and that “the complete lack of transparency of Liberty Central’s finances makes it difficult to assess the full scope of the ethics issues raised by Ms. Thomas’ role in founding and leading the group.”^[6] The letter also pointed to possible conflicts of interests arising from the attendance by Justices Thomas and Scalia at events sponsored by the Koch brothers.

"Thomas’s role as a de facto tea party lobbyist and — until recently — as head of a tea party group that worked to defeat Democrats in November 2010 “show a new level of arrogance of just not caring that the court is being politicized and how that undermines the historic image of the Supreme Court as being above the political fray,” Arn Pearson, a lawyer for Common Cause, tells Politico. ^[3]

More concerns have arisen since Virginia Thomas announced the formation of her lobbying firm Liberty Consulting (whose website claims it will use Thomas' “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and offer "advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes."). Think Progress has pointed out that Thomas' work advising clients on how to donate money to political causes could have been facilitated by her husband's vote in Citizens United; the decision enabled corporations to spend unlimited money influencing elections, and she can now make a living advising corporations on how to direct that spending. ^[7]

Democrats Ask Justice Thomas for Recusal from Health Care Challenges

In February 2011, seventy four House Democrats sent a letter to Justice Thomas asking that he recuse himself from hearing any challenge to the Affordable Care Act on grounds that his wife's political and financial interests were tied to overturning healthcare reform. ^[8] The letter stated, in part:

"The appearance of a conflict of interest merits recusal under federal law," the House Democrats wrote. "From what we have already seen, the line between your impartiality and you and your wife's financial stake in the overturn of health-care reform is blurred. Your spouse is advertising herself as a lobbyist who has 'experience and connections' and appeals to clients who want a particular decision -- they want to overturn health-care reform. Moreover, your failure to disclose Ginny Thomas's receipt of $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, a prominent opponent of health-care reform, between 2003 and 2007 has raised great concern."

The entire letter can be read here.

Corporate funding increases impartiality concerns

Since the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision permitted corporate dollars to flow into political campaigns, Liberty Central and Liberty Consulting will accept donations from corporations, and be permitted to spend those funds advocating for candidates. In addition to possible conflicts of interest arising from Justice Thomas hearing a case related to the group’s political activities, concerns also exist were he to face a decision involving one of Liberty Central’s donors.

This concern is exacerbated because Liberty Central is organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, allowing the group to raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors. As reported by Slate Magazine's Emily Bazelon:

As a 501(c)(4), the group can raise unlimited money for lobbying without identifying all its donors. So how will we know whether Thomas is taking himself out of every relevant case? Liberty Central should err on the side of disclosure—let's see if it does. This is particularly salient because Justice Thomas, and Justice Thomas alone, will make the decision about whether to sit out a case. Recusal calls by the individual justices aren't reviewed by the court as a whole, or any other body. "That's the real problem," Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode says. "There's no structure for oversight. I'd say most of the time judges do the right thing, but when they don't, there's very little you can do about it. ^[9]

Virginia Thomas, Liberty Central's Founder

The Los Angeles Times reports that "Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP." ^[4] Further, according to the Liberty Central website, Ms. Thomas "is a fan of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham and other talk radio hosts," and "is intrigued by Glenn Beck." ^[10] See also the SourceWatch entry on Virginia Thomas.

Contact

Web site: http://www.libertycentral.org/

Liberty Central does not publish its physical address on its Web site.

References

1. ↑ News page, Liberty Central website, accessed February, 2011
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Kenneth Vogel, Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni, reportedly quits Liberty Central, POLITICO, November 15, 2010.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Kenneth P. Vogel and Marin Cogan and John Bresnahan, Justice Thomas's wife now lobbyist, POLITICO, Feb. 4, 2011.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Justice's Wife Launches 'Tea Party' Group, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2010
5. ↑ Kenneth Vogel, Secret donors makes Thomas's wife's group a tea party player, POLITICO, July 6, 2010.
6. ↑ Common Cause letter to the Justice Department re: Conflicts on Interest in Citizens United Case, accessed February 2011.
7. ↑ Ian Millheiser, Is Ginni Thomas Getting Rich Off Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court Decisions?, Think Progress, Feb. 4, 2011.
8. ↑ Felicia Sonmez, [House Democrats say Justice Thomas should recuse himself in health-care case http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/02/house-democrats-say-justice-th.html], Washington Post, Feb. 09, 2011, accessed Feb. 10, 2011.
9. ↑ Ginni Thomas Brings the Tea Party to the Supreme Court, Slate Magazine, March 16 2010
10. ↑ Bio page Liberty Central website, accessed March 2010

Categories: Front groups portal | Front groups | Corporate strategy | Politics (U.S.)

defund the left:

K street 

In early 1995, Jeff Shear wrote in the National Journal and subsequently the Baltimore Sun of a Republican project - later to be dubbed the K Street project - being co-ordinated out of the office of House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Heading the project was Virginia Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), which also involved Scott Hodges the Heritage Foundation's budget director. One of those involved in the project, conservative activists Grover Norquist, told Shear "we will hunt [these liberal groups] down one by one and extinguish their funding sources".

Now, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has recast herself yet again, this time as the head of a firm, Liberty Consulting, which boasts on its website using her “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and political donation strategies.

Thomas already has met with nearly half of the 99 GOP freshmen in the House and Senate, according to an e-mail she sent last week to congressional chiefs of staff, in which she branded herself “a self-appointed, ambassador to the freshmen class and an ambassador to the tea party movement.”

...

While Thomas was well-known in conservative circles as an aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, as a midlevel staffer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at The Heritage Foundation and as the spouse of one of the court's most conservative justices, she did not draw much attention until 2009, when she started speaking at tea party rallies.

http://www.americancrossroadswatch.org/index.php?q=node/235

Mon Mar 15, 2010 at 04:53:20 PDT

No, this is not snark or a joke.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in the majority opinion of the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case whereby the court ruled that Corporations have the same rights as individual humans to free speech, that limiting money limits free speech, so therefore they can give unlimited money to campaigns,

has a wife named Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, who just started a Tea Party group.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

The group is a "non profit" called Liberty Central Inc.

http://libertycentral.org/

Liberty Central.org, where like minded people gather to preserve freedom in America.

She intends to take donations and issue score cards on political candidates.  She used to work for the Heritage Foundation and Dick Armey. (Armey now is chairman of Freedomworks, which is an astroturfing org masterminded by Koch Oil's David Koch, who also runs Americans for Prosperity.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...  Freedomworks is Tea Party, and harrassed Democrats at August town hall meetings in 2009.

On the endorsements page of Thomas' new lobbying group, the first gush of lying spin blather goes:

What Others are Saying about Liberty Central...

"Liberty Central, with its focus specifically on training grassroots activists interested in returning the country to its founding principles, is a necessary component of a successful, long-term conservative revolution. With its intent to serve a broad coalition of grassroots organizations, and a long term view of the new conservative revolution, Liberty Central is an organization worthy of every conservative's support."

Mark Meckler / Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founders / National Coordinators, Tea Party Patriots

Mark Meckler is a Republican political front guy operative based in the Sacramento Northern CA area, and has done and been paid for Tea Party appearances for Russo Marsh & Rogers/ Move America Forward, the Republican PR firm which does Swiftboating and Smear campaigns, besides being the publicists for Kurdistan in Northern Iraq.  RMR/MAF is also known for their "Thank You Sarah Palin" campaign, their Tea Party anti health care reform Bus Tours featuring the anti Muslim bigot radio jock Mark Williams, and the "You Don't Speak for Me" campaign featuring their own pit bull in lip gloss, Deborah Johns, "Pentagon Liason,"  who attacks peace activists.  Meckler is also involved in the Million Mormons on Facebook, which is loaded with whacky Glenn Beck devotees who think all government activities are anti Christian conspiracies designed to turn them into communists.  See links in this story

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

One of Meckler's many Tea Party locations, see how it says "non partisan?" -  no, Republican

http://www.facebook.com/group....

The Tea Party logos on the Liberty Central site matches the one on Mark Meckler's facebook page.  They claim to be:

misunderstood and mischaracterized by much of the mainstream media. "New citizen activists have been cast as ignorant, intolerant or a radical fringe by many in the media. The facts are now demonstrating that the mainstream media is wrong and ordinary citizens are up against biased elitists who are not seemingly interested in the truth." said Virginia Thomas, President and CEO of Liberty Central .....

Since I live in Tea Party ground zero, which is older, very wealthy Republicans manipulating anti tax populist anger combined with LDS Ron Paulian Libertarians who pretend we have no government as they collect on Medicare or work for the government, and I have witnessed Tea Party activity, let me tell you that the MSM is being too soft on them.  The MSM likes to pretend they are grassroots nutters, when they interview the hapless front guys,  when they are really Oil, Defense Contractor, Tobacco and Pharma Money, and Republicans with just another angle working.  But they endeavor to bring out the worst of human emotions, fear, selfishness, racism, and greed.

You know what "grassroots is?"  It's not Koch Oil and others, spending millions donating to a 501(c)(4) anonymously, fronting anti tax protestors to kill health care reform, keeping the mid east mercenary drone wars going, and stopping any energy policies that would cut carbon emissions and lesson the use of petrochemicals.  Add in this political "non profit" being run by a wife of a Supreme Court Justice, and we have the Supreme Court BUYING OUR ELECTIONS OUTRIGHT for the highest bidder of their services.

Jenny Beth Martin likes to make up stories about her self being just a plain, aw shucks sort of grassroots type of girl, and neglects that part on her resume where she worked for Republicans or that her failed business owes the IRS a half million dollars.   http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi...

Can you say Republican neocon war "grifters?'  Sure you can.

Can you say "conflict of interest ? for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?"  

per a law professor

"There is opportunity for mischief if a company with a case before the court, or which it wants the court to accept, makes a substantial contribution to Liberty Central in the interim," he said.

Justice Thomas would be required to be aware of such contributions, Gillers said, adding that he believes Thomas should then disclose those facts and allow parties in the case to argue for recusal.

But it would be up to Justice Thomas to decide whether to recuse himself. He could not be reached for comment.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

The LA Times story says Ginni Thomas is "intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully."

Here's another endorsement of  Ginni Thomas' LibertyCentral.org

Leaders committed to smaller government, fiscal prudence, and a strong national defense will be returning to Washington D.C., and I am confident that Ginni Thomas will be part of the reason it will happen."

Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense

Neglects to say it was Sec of Defense under George W. Bush, the Rumsfeld who went to war with the Army he had instead of the Army he should have planned for a peaceful Iraq occupation, which he totally effed up, who quit on the day after the Nov 2006 election. Amen.

2 more endorsements for Ginni's little Tea Party fundraising for political campaigns:

Morton C. Blackwell, President, The Leadership Institute http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...   The "Leadership Institute"  does weekend workshops and pronounces its "graduates" as having journalism degrees  (think James Guckert, the male hooker and fake reporter for Talon News (Bobby Eberle) who pitched softball questions at WH press briefings under Rove and Bush )  Blackwell is a co founder of the Moral Majority.   Think also, the dreadful Barton kid and ex Minuteman who did the "wore his uniform to a war protest with a hanging effigy" and other ads for Russo Marsh Rogers/MAF and Tom McClintock. (Barton has been paid by Russo Marsh Rogers/MAF PACs)

Edwin J. Feulner, President, The Heritage Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...  Right wing think tank full of  Reaganites and supply sided trickle down economics.  Heritage had gotten money from Joseph Coors, Olin foundation, Scaife, DeVos, (think Amway, Prop 8 and Blackwater, that family) and Bradley foundations, in 2007 they got 48.7 million dollars per wikipedia.  Edwin Feulner was connected to the Abramoff scandal thru his co founding Belle Haven Consultants, which took Malaysian oil money and laundered it thru a non profit run by Tom Delay's friends, and ended up bribing Republicans in the Bush administration with it.  http://www.calitics.com/diary/...    http://www.dailykos.com/commen...  (How Jack Abramoff started lobbying for Malaysia only a few days after 9/11/2001, and how ex Rep. John Doolittle was involved )

The LA Times says "although Liberty Central is a non partisan group.....  "

Non partisan ?  

CUT THE NONSENSE, LAT !  Have you every heard of politcal blogs, or teh google?   The Tea Party is 100% Republican.   What part of Supreme Court Palace Coup did you just miss ?

Clarence Thomas should be impeached and removed from the Supreme Court.  = blog  http://www.docudharma.com/tag/Mark%20Meckler

4. Hillsdale College: The school was in the news recently when it was revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose the Hillsdale salary of his wife Ginni Thomas. Called the “citadel of American conservatism,” Hillsdale features academics like Rush Limbaugh fill-in Mark Steyn, and is said to be a pipeline to Republican jobs on Capitol Hill.