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https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Justice-Selling-Clarence-Thomas/dp/0395633184

https://archive.org/details/strangejusticese00maye

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CAMP FIN OVERVIEW:

Kochs key among small group quietly funding legal assault on campaign finance regulation – Center for Public Integrity

...

But the funding that is known offers key clues about the players behind the greatest unraveling of campaign finance regulation in U.S. history.

‘Buckley’ and Cato

One must travel back in time more than 40 years to understand how today’s motley collection of campaign money laws came to be — and how limits on political fundraising and spending have unraveled along the way.

It began with the Supreme Court’s *Buckley v. Valeo* decision of 1976, a reaction to Watergate reforms passed by Congress. The court upheld limits on contributions to political campaigns, but in a critical part of the ruling which would play a major role years later, allowed for unlimited spending on campaigns.

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The Buckley v. Valeo fight also helped inspire Ed Crane, former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, which was one of the case’s plaintiffs, to create a libertarian equivalent to the predominant think tanks of the day — the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

With $500,000 from Charles Koch, Crane became the leader in 1977 of the Cato Institute, previously named the Charles Koch Foundation. In 1981, it moved from San Francisco to the heart of American political power — Washington, D.C.

Ever since, the Cato Institute has tirelessly fought against campaign finance laws it considered antithetical to its philosophy of small government and largely unencumbered speech.

“We stand against campaign finance laws in general,” Cato Institute research fellow Trevor Burrus said. “We believe that most campaign finance laws are unconstitutional. They are clear impediments of political speech.”

For the Kochs, was Cato an ideological enterprise or vehicle for self-interest? Both, to some degree. Avowed libertarians, the Kochs control a vast empire of heavily regulated companies that would undoubtedly benefit from less government intrusion. Coloring the political system red instead of blue has practical, financial implications for the Kochs, who overwhelmingly support Republican candidates and causes.

The nation’s campaign money system largely stood unchanged until 2002, when Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, named for its two Senate sponsors. The law curtailed a variety of political activities and included a ban on unlimited “soft money” contributions — corporate and union cash — given to political parties.

It also attracted an immediate backlash by foes of campaign finance legislation. Twelve suits brought by more than 80 plaintiffs — were consolidated as McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, named for Mitch McConnell, a U.S. senator from Kentucky and current majority leader, who has long been in favor of liberalizing restrictions on campaign contributions.

‘McConnell’ et. al.

Those joined together under McConnell included the National Rifle Association, the Republican National Committee, the National Right to Life Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others.

Generally, the backers of these campaign finance case litigants are well-known, but not always.

And some are surprising.

Take the ACLU. Despite its reputation as an unabashedly liberal organization, the ACLU has routinely aligned itself with libertarians and conservatives in recent legal fights against campaign finance regulations. Who are the top donors to the ACLU?

Tops is the left-leaning Sandler Foundation, having given more than $24 million to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation since 2001, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax records.

Other known funders of the ACLU’s 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit arms include the ACLU Foundation; Equal Justice Works; Proteus Action League; GLBTQ Legal Advocates; and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Together, they’ve given more than $856,000 since 2010, tax filings show.

Proteus Action League is an affiliate of Proteus Fund, a left-leaning philanthropic organization. It also creates and oversees grants aimed at limiting money and politics, according to its website. Between 2013 and 2015, the Proteus Fund and the Proteus Action League have together given $306,000 to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation.

Publishers Clearing House money has infused the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, which in turn has contributed more than $6.6 million to the ACLU Foundation for various initiatives, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of available tax documents from 2005 to 2015.

The National Rifle Association is prominent for its passionate support of firearms rights, and more recently, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But it, too, began supporting campaign finance deregulation in earnest at the time of the McConnell case.

One of the NRA nonprofit’s more notable funders is the Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, a social welfare organization connected to the famous outdoor outfitter Cabela’s, which is also a major firearms retailer.

From 2012 to 2015, the fund gave the NRA $1.3 million. Richard Cabela, the now deceased founder of Cabela’s, was a passionate supporter of the NRA. The company, which Bass Pro Shops acquired earlier this year, had about $4.1 billion in revenue last year, according to its annual report.

Koch-connected organizations have also been quite active.

Cato intervened by filing an “amicus brief” in McConnell, as did the Institute for Justice, a group that got its start thanks to the Kochs.

The Supreme Court, for the most part, upheld the “soft money” and political advertising restrictions of the McCain-Feingold law but struck down the age restrictions on minors’ ability to contribute money to politicians as a violation of free speech rights.

The mixed ruling gave pro-political speech advocates fuel to continue challenging campaign laws, and the chipping away of the reforms began in earnest.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC in 2007 further eroded the McCain-Feingold law by allowing certain nonprofit groups to air political issue ads within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Wisconsin Right to Life Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, wanted to run ads that would ask voters to call their senators urging them to oppose filibusters of judicial nominees.

Emerging as a national figure in this case after working for years in lower courts was James Bopp, who was counsel for Wisconsin Right to Life.** A bevy of organizations intervened in the case, many arguing for religious freedom of speech. The American Civil Liberties Union, a regular stalwart opponent of limits on free speech, had its say, as did a number of Koch-connected organizations.

Among them, the Center for Competitive Politics (now the Institute for Free Speech), the Cato Institute, the Goldwater Institute and the Institute for Justice.

The Goldwater Institute is a public interest legal organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, named after former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. Timothy Sandefur, vice president for litigation for Goldwater, said its primary mission is “to defend constitutional principles, through direct litigation and amicus participation.” Donors Capital Fund, the Mercer Family Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation are among its most generous funders with a combined total of $4.2 million.

‘Citizens United’

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations, unions and certain nonprofits could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against politicians. The enormity of the impact of the decision would not be realized for months, even years.

But those who argued the case and participated in it were well aware of its importance. The usual liberal reform groups chimed in, as well as a cadre of Koch-backed crew members, including: the Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

A few months later, a federal court ruling in SpeechNow.org v. FEC allowed for the creation of “independent expenditure-only committees” — political groups soon nicknamed “super PACs.” These super PACs could themselves accept unlimited money from corporations, labor unions and even 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits and business trade associations that themselves could keep their donors secret.

Four years later in *McCutcheon v. FEC*, the Supreme Court axed limits on how much money a person could give, in aggregate, to political parties, candidate committees and PACs. The practical effect: people are now allowed to directly pump hundreds of thousands of dollars more into party and candidate coffers.

Among the organizations involving themselves in the case? The Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

Institute for Justice

The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit, libertarian public interest law firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with satellite offices in states including Florida, Minnesota and Arizona.

It was co-founded in 1991 by former Department of Energy Deputy General Counsel Chip Mellor and Clint Bolick, a former assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch provided $350,000 in seed money for the organization.

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The players who have shaped campaign finance »

The Center for Public Integrity combed through tax information for the Institute for Justice and found some of its top donors include the Claws Foundation, Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking, Searle Freedom Trust and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, totaling about $19.8 million since 1998. But the largest donor identified for the Institute for Justice was the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, giving more than $15.5 million since 2003, according to tax records.

Wilson was a notable hedge funder and philanthropist who jumped to his death from his New York apartment in 2013.

Donors Trust, a Virginia-based free-market charity and “donor advised” fund that distributes money to charities across states has been the Institute for Justice’s most consistent supporter.

Tax records show that Donors Trust has contributed to the Institute for Justice every year since 2004, giving it more than $1.6 million. Charles Koch’s foundation is one of the heavyweights that holds an account with Donors Trust. Koch’s organization also directly gave the Institute for Justice $9,600, according to 2014 and 2015 tax records. The David H. Koch Foundation gave $250,000 in 2001, according to records.

The Jewish Communal Fund, another donor advised fund, has given $317,050 to the Institute for Justice since 2010, according to tax records. The John Templeton Foundation, an avid promoter of free market ideas, gave $900,000 between 2013 and 2014, according to a review of tax records.

One of its other generous donors, however, is the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which gave almost $2.8 million since 2007.

This donor advised fund typically gives to Christian churches and ministries with a mission of “mobilizing resources by inspiring biblical generosity.”

The political leanings of organizations such as the Institute for Justice are not a basis of scrutiny for the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and they’re mostly unknown to the foundation, Chief Creative Officer Steve Chapman said.

“NCF doesn’t have any stance on campaign finance issues,” he said in a statement. “We don’t hold positions on such political topics, and we don’t hold stances on whether charities to which we make grants should or should not be active on that issue.”

Richard Uihlein, a wealthy conservative donor who increased his political giving after the *Citizens United* decision, gave the Institute for Justice $17,500 between 2014 and 2015. But, he wasn’t the only well-known donor to contribute. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which usually contributes to global health and economic development causes, donated $600.

The Institute for Justice has more than 8,000 donors, said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice who specializes in First Amendment litigation. No one donor provides more than 8 percent of its budget. In its most recent fiscal year, donations comprised more than 96 percent of its income, while the rest came from court-ordered awards of attorneys’ fees.

But that doesn’t mean those donors shape the Institute for Justice’s work, Sherman said.

“IJ’s donors give to us because they support our mission,” he said, noting that the organization has litigated in the same areas for more than over 25 years. “We have never taken a case or passed on a case because of pressure from a donor.”

Other notable contributions to the Institute for Justice include $90,000 from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, which was started by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her husband in 1989. The foundation has given yearly since 2004, except for 2012 and 2014.

‘SpeechNow.org’ victory

The Institute for Justice notched a win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a critical lower-court case.

In the case, the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics represented David Keating, who now serves as president of the newly renamed Center for Competitive Politics.

Together, the groups questioned whether the federal government had the legal right to make Keating’s SpeechNow.org group register as a political committee — forcing it to adhere to contribution limits for political committees.

The court ruled in SpeechNow.org’s favor, thereby allowing it to raise unlimited amounts of money to independently advocate for or against political candidates. Limits on how much it could receive were found to be in violation of the First Amendment. It was the first time the Citizens United decision was applied in federal courts.

And it gave birth to a kind of political committee that would soon be dubbed a “super PAC.”

Although the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice have no formal affiliation, they are “allies in the fight to defend political speech from government regulation,” Sherman said.

Sherman said both organizations have supported each other’s work with amicus briefs, and SpeechNow.org v. FEC was a great match of their strengths.

“CCP’s people had extensive experience with practice before the FEC, and IJ’s people had extensive experience litigating in federal court,” he said. “And we all knew one another. The world of libertarian public-interest lawyers is not huge.”

But the Institute for Justice isn’t always taking up the long, arduous process of going to court. Like other groups that want to provide suggestions and expertise to courts on matters, it has done so through amicus briefs in McConnell, Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United.

The positions that the Institute for Justice has taken on campaign finance issues are made clearer when looking at who funds their endeavors, which include many donor advised funds and conservative-leaning family foundations and charitable groups.

While the Institute for Justice has some history with big money and politics because of its founding relationship with the Kochs, the Center for Competitive Politics can also be counted among the names of Koch beneficiaries.

Center for Competitive Politics

Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith founded the Center for Competitive Politics in 2005, lamenting the extent of federal regulation on political activity.

The Center for Competitive Politics has waged war against the FEC as litigators, and it has represented others when political free speech is under attack.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said the organization is simply honoring the guarantees of the First Amendment more so than political ideology or deregulation.

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The players who have shaped campaign finance »

The Center for Competitive Politics prides itself on being part of changing the scope of campaign finance laws since its founding, while noting that there is still more freedom to be sought, especially when it comes to contribution and disclosure rules.

“Our country didn’t have campaign contribution limits until the 1970s,” he said. “I don’t see there’s any evidence that it’s made people we’re electing better than they were before the 1970s.”

Keating said government should make it easier for average citizens to become politically involved and, therefore, it should rethink contribution laws.

While the Center for Competitive Politics has not objected to disclosure by candidates and PACs, it is not in favor of pushing for more disclosure. Doing so, said Keating, would result in more difficult fundraising for groups and misleading disclosure information.

“Disclosure is where a lot of the action is right now,” he said. “That’s going to be in the courts and we may well be the ones representing the plaintiffs.”

Because the Center for Competitive Politics’ mission is the protection of free political speech, its legal argument in Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United cases are just part of that mission.

The terrain of money and politics has the Center for Competitive Politics’ opponents questioning whether its ideals are truly its own — or if it’s just the mouthpiece for its wealthy benefactors.

Although the Center for Competitive Politics does not disclose the identity of its donors, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other financial records indicates the group is funded by a bevy of right-leaning organizations.

Since 2006, the Center for Competitive Politics has received more than $5.3 million from Donors Capital Fund, $1.3 million from the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust and $511,000 from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation — itself funded in full by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein — and $440,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

As far as its Koch alliances? The Charles Koch Institute gave $20,700 from 2014 to 2015, and the Charles Koch Foundation donated over $57,000 from 2012 to 2015, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other records shows.

A Koch spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions about the brothers’ giving. In a statement, spokeswoman Tonya Mullins said the Charles Koch Foundation “gives to non-profit organizations and more than 300 colleges and universities around the country that are exploring diverse ideas to meet the challenges of our day.”

The majority of the Charles Koch Institute money goes toward a fellowship program between the Center for Competitive Politics and the Charles Koch Institute, in which both organizations split the cost to pay for the fellow’s compensation, Keating said. The fellowship seeks to groom future free enterprise workers. The Charles Koch Institute provides support for internships and job placement for free-market professional hopefuls.

Keating said the Center for Competitive Politics’ donors give because they’re genuinely concerned with protecting free speech and they have a right to maintain their privacy.

If the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics are just mere soldiers in an overall battle plan to charge against reform, their success makes them among the most decorated and skilled in the field.

War on disclosure?...

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ginni-and-clarence-thomas-steal-2024-election-coup.html

dahlia &

no lnx many

Clarence and Ginni Thomas Are Telling Us Exactly How the 2024 Coup Will Go Down

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN

MAY 23, 2022

Justice Clarence Thomas sits side-by-side with his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas.

On Friday, the Washington Post broke the news that Ginni Thomas sent emails to Arizona elections officials asking them to set aside the will of the voters and submit a slate of fake electors who would support Donald Trump, even after he demonstrably lost the 2020 presidential election. The news barely caused a ripple because there is seemingly nothing to be done about Justice Clarence Thomas’ refusal to recuse in cases that materially affect his spouse, even as he has already decided several matters surrounding the 2020 election … and also because that same spouse had written far more inflammatory, QAnon-style texts to Trump’s chief of staff urging him to set aside the 2020 contest, and nothing was done about that either.

In reality, of course, there is plenty to be done about Supreme Court justices who decline to be bound by federal recusal statutes and judicial ethics canons. But unless and until there is a ravenous public appetite for reforms to the court, we will continue to watch this play out in mute horror, as though it’s a Netflix special about the Tudors, and the only recourse we have is to return to our mutton farming. Reforms aside, there is another more crucial lesson from the Thomases’ tag-team efforts to seat a president who lost an election: What’s past is prologue, and what was done sloppily in 2020 is being mapped out by experts for 2024.

It’s easy to dismiss the demented texts and emails from a sitting justice’s spouse to public officials who have long-standing professional connections to that justice as zany conspiracy theorizing. Ginni Thomas can be lumped into the QAnon weirdos bucket with Cleta Mitchell, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Lindell—hapless insurrection enthusiasts who were unable to marshal a single winning argument in an actual court of law after the 2020 election. But the other way to look at the texts and emails that were pinging around the highest echelons of power and influence in the weeks after November 2020 is as a warning and road map for what is already being put into place for the next presidential contest.But next time, the lawyers won’t be sweating brown makeup or referencing crackpot theories of Italian election meddling.

What Thomas was emailing was a prefabbed piece of legal advocacy that urged Arizona state officials to “Please stand strong in the face of political and media pressure. Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that aclean slateof electors is chosen for our state.” That isn’t just words. It’s actually a theory underlying the subversion of an entire presidential election. It’s also a theory her husband has endorsed as a matter of constitutional law. It didn’t work in 2020 because the legal and political structures to support it weren’t in place at the time. Those pieces are being put into place as we type this.

Recall, for instance, that back in November of 2020, it wasn’t clear there were five votes at the Supreme Court to support the proposition that state legislatures could simply set aside election results they deemed tainted by impropriety. Recall that when lawyer/insurrectionists John Eastman (a Thomas clerk) and Jeffrey Bossert Clark floated that notion at the White House and elsewhere, serious DOJ attorneys told them in no uncertain terms to go away. Recall finally that one of the lawmakers in Arizona, Shawnna Bolick, is married to a state Supreme Court justice and is parent to Clarence Thomas’ godchild. Bolick, as Jane Mayer of the New Yorker reported in 2021,later introduced legislation that “would enable a majority of the legislature to override the popular vote … and dictate the state’s electoral college votes itself.” In other words, what Bolick couldn’t lawfully do in 2020 is a thing she hopes to do under color of law in future. Oh, and Bolick is now running for secretary of state, the office that oversees state elections.

The New York Times reported this weekend on the proliferation of Bolick’s fellow travelers: election-deniers seeking or holding office in states that will decide the winner of the 2024 presidential race. According to their tally, at least 357 sitting Republican legislators in swing states “have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”That number amounts to “44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided.” Moreover, election deniers around the country are running for secretary of state and attorney general—vying to be swing states’ top election officer and top cop, respectively. If successful, they can use this power to aggressively investigate bogus claims of voter fraud, attempt to nullify Democratic ballots, refuse to certify the true results, and even try to approve an “alternative” slate of electors for the loser. This is what Ginni Thomas was pushing two years ago, and what her husband has already deemed constitutionally permissible.

Will any of this work? The Thomases clearly think it will. At the same time Ginni was lobbying state legislators to overturn the results, Clarence was developing and promoting a constitutional theory that would lend legitimacy to just such a brazen coup. The justice has become an avid fan of the “independent state legislature doctrine,” a verifiably false, pseudo-originalist theorythat allows state legislatures to ignore the real results and rig elections for Republicans. Thomas repeatedly deployed this theory during the 2020 race in an effort to void mail ballots in battleground states(which disproportionately favored Democrats). He later peddled a somewhat sanitized version of the Big Lie, falsely asserting that mail ballots—specifically, those used to elect Joe Biden in 2020—are highly susceptible to voter fraud.Ever since, he has continued to champion the theory whenever lower courts’ election law rulings happen to help Democrats. As our colleague Richard Hasen has pointed out, it looks increasingly likely that the Supreme Court will decide this issue by 2024.

The symmetry between Ginni and Clarence Thomas’ work has never been more obvious. While Clarence fought to give state legislatures the constitutional authority to reject election results, Ginni lobbied state legislators to do exactly that. A casual observer might assume they were working in tandem, with Clarence handling the law and Ginni working on the political side. They aren’t particularly subtle about it. You need only read Ginni’s emails and Clarence’s opinions to see exactly how the 2024 coup attempt will go down because it’s identical to the 2020 coup attempt: If a Democrat prevails, red state officials will question the legitimacy of the results, giving state legislatures an opportunity to throw them out and declare the Republican to be the real winner. This has nothing to do with liberals squelching Ginni Thomas’ feminist drive to have a separate and distinct political life apart from that of her spouse. More power to her. This has everything to do with two public actors working together to ensure that red state legislatures decide future elections in lieu of the voters.

The question remaining isn’t whether it’ll happen; the question is whether it’ll succeed. The Thomases tried this approach in 2020, but like Trump’s other allies, they developed their strategy a bit too late and didn’t buff out the crackpot edges until recently. But this time they’re putting in the work with plenty of time to spare. If Republicans succeed in pulling off a much more respectable coup in 2024, Americans will have every right to be furious and appalled. But no one will have any excuse to be surprised, because Clarence, Ginni, Eastman, Clark, and their many powerful friends are currently laying out the game plan right before our eyes.

For more on Ginni Thomas’ role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, listen to this episode of What Next.

vote suppr bill text

https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/1R/bills/HB2720P.pdf

The selection of the precincts shall not begin until all ballots voted in 12 the precinct polling places have been delivered to the central counting 13 center.

sim lang in 2020 manual?

no lnx twt

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/ginni-thomas/

the latest revelations about the actions of Ginni Thomas, the far right wing activist, lobbyist, and spouse of a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice who had unprecedented access to the Trump White House are leading experts to demand Clarence Thomas’ recusal while calling the combination of their actions “breathtaking corruption,” and noting the Justice’s extraordinary hypocrisy.

Later Friday morning The Washington Post reported that Ginni Thomas pressed two Arizona lawmakers to overturn the will of Arizona’s voters in the 2020 presidential election by choosing a “clean” slate of electors, representing Donald Trump and not Joe Biden. The Post notes Thomas did not mention any candidate by name but reports “the context was clear."

Before you choose your state’s Electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” an email bearing Ginni Thomas’ name, sent to the Arizona lawmakers, reads.

It included a link to a video of a man delivering a message meant for swing-state lawmakers, urging them to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”

“You have only hours to act,” said the speaker, who is not identified in the video.

Thomas also pressed Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to work to overturn the election, as has been widely reported.

Her efforts, combined with Justice Thomas’ actions on the Supreme Court, amount to “breathtaking corruption,” writes Slate’s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern.

“The conflict of interest between Ginni and Clarence Thomas has never been greater. While Clarence was applying the ‘independent state legislature doctrine’ from the bench, Ginni was using the exact same theory to try to overturn the 2020 election. Just breathtaking corruption,” Stern says.

He adds:

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, now an NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst and law professor, issued a strong warning.

Either Justice Thomas recuses in every case that comes to the Court where his wife is heavily involved in the action or the public’s confidence in the Court will be damaged beyond repair.”

Reuters reporter covering the U.S. Supreme Court, Lawrence Hurley:

Former federal corruption prosecutor Noah Bookbinder, who is president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) says it is “outrageous” Justice Thomas has refused to recuse:

"New evidence that Ginni Thomas’s participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 election was even greater than we knew; in this case pressure on AZ legislators to overturn that state’s vote. Makes it even more outrageous that Justice Thomas did not recuse.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona legislators to overturn Biden’s win and choose a‘clean slate of electors.’ In other words, she supported a coup to overthrow an elected president. What did her husband know?”

Economist and frequent political commentator David Rothschild observes, “Ginni Thomas was conspiring with high ranking Republicans to overturn [the] republic, and her husband was either privy to or actively involved in this conspiracy before using his position to coverup his wife’s role.”

Former SDNY Asst. U.S. Attorney Richard Signorelli sums up:

same paper same day?!

the prominent wives of a U.S. Supreme Court justice and an Arizona Supreme Court justice were involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. 

Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tried in the days after the election to convince  two Republican state legislators to help her overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona and instead award the state’s presidential electors to Donald Trump. 

One of the legislators Thomas emailed was state Rep. Shawnna Bolick,a Phoenix Republican who is now running for Arizona Secretary of State.The Bolicks and Thomases are close: Bolick’s husband, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, is :{a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, and the U.S. Supreme Court Justice is:{godfather to Bolick’s son:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

Thomas also emailedHouse Speaker Rusty Bowers,who repeatedly told Trump and others in his orbit in the weeks after the 2020 election that he would not help in their efforts to overturn the results. Bolick, on the other hand, sponsored a bill just a few weeks later that would...

 “Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” Thomas wrote in a Nov. 9 email to Bolick, the Post reported. “Please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

Records show Bolick responded by directing Thomas to refer any complaints of fraud to the attorney general. Less than two months later, Bolick sponsoredHouse Bill 2720, a wide-ranging election bill that included a provision giving the state legislature sweeping authority to disregard voters’ choice for president.In a key provision, the measure would have given lawmakers the power to “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a majority vote at any point before the president is inaugurated. 

Bolick at the time protested that critics were twisting her bill’s intent, which she said was an effort to make the process more bipartisan and call the legislature into a special session. 

Bolick declined to comment for this story, but pointed the Arizona Mirror to a statement she posted to Twitter that attacks the media. 

“The dishonest media wants to distract attention from election fraud & our efforts to secure elections. Let’s cut through the conjecture & put this to bed,” she wrote. Bolick also singled out local journalists for sharing the Washington Post story or other stories on the emails. 

If Bolick wins her four-way Republican primary in August and then defeats her Democratic opponent, as the state’s chief elections official she would be tasked with certifying all election results for both the 2024 and 2026 elections. 

Bolick also was named as a chair for a working group created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that crafts model legislation for state legislatures to pass similar laws.The working group –– where Bolick served as chair leading up to the 2020 election –– partnered with GOP election attorneys, including Cleta Mitchell, one of the:{most prominent figures involved:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results.

Their objective, :{according to reporting by :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:*:{Documented:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:*, was to start a letter campaign, emailing secretaries of state “questioning the validity of an election.” The effort sought to engage state legislators nationwide and allow them “to kind of exercise their political muscle” by raising unfounded questions about the election.

ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson told the group during one of its meetings, “obviously we all want President Trump to win and win the national vote. But it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that really when it comes down to is the states and the state legislators.”

Bolick told the ArizonaMirror she did not attend that meeting in question. 

In addition to Mitchell, the group worked alongside :{Hans Von Spakovsky:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, an attorney for the Heritage Foundation, which crafts election legislation for states and has :{bragged about its voter suppression efforts in the past:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. Trump named Von Spakovsky, who has for decades :{falsely claimed:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: there is widespread voter fraud among Democrats, to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

BS

https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2022/05/20/rep-bolick-emails-to-and-from-wife-of-u-s-supreme-court-justice-show-no-pressure-or-quid-pro-quo/

if you were to rely solely on certain recent media reports, you might be under the impression Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix) did something improper by receiving two mass-generated emails sent by organizations associated with the wife of a supreme court justice.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is a well-known conservative involved in organizations which supported Donald Trump’s reelection efforts. She is also married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who happens to the godfather to the son of Bolick’s husband Clint, a justice on the Arizona Supreme Court.

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But a closer look at two unsolicited emails sent in 2020 to Bolick’s legislative email account from an account in Ginni Thomas’ name about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election shows there were no improper or unethical communications between the women, nor any suggestion of a quid pro quo because of any personal relationship.

The same can be said for two replies sent by Bolick.

In fact, several election officials say Bolick responded on Nov. 10, 2020 to the first email the way she should have – by referring Thomas to the Arizona Attorney General Office with any evidence of voter fraud or election interference. Even Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer describes Bolick’s reply as “eminently reasonable.”

Bolick also stressed in that reply to Thomas that bringing forth any such evidence was “the most productive” thing to do while various election lawsuits worked their way through the courts.

“From there we will see our best options moving forward to protect the integrity of the election,” Bolick wrote.

A further reading of the two Ginni Thomas emails show they have all the characteristics of auto-generated messages sent to recipients on a mailing list. Bolick even notes in a Nov. 12 followup reply to Thomas that Bolick’s legislative office received the same “Dear Representative Bolick” email three times in a span of a few minutes.

Thomas’ Nov. 9, 2020 email noted that Article II of the U.S. Constitution gives Arizona’s legislators the “awesome responsibility” for choosing state’s presidential electors. It also requested a meeting with the recipients. A Dec. 13, 2020 email simply asked recipients to watch an attached two-minute video.

But Bolick isn’t the only Arizona legislator to receive the two emails under Thomas’ name.

Public records released by the Clerk of the House of Representatives confirm Speaker Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa) received both, although it appears he never responded. There is also no indication that Bolick, Bowers, or their staff ever made arrangements for the requested meeting.

Bolick’s current campaign to be the Republican nominee for Arizona Secretary of State has been questioned by some media outlets in light of the Ginni Thomas emails, as has her legislative record of introducing election integrity bills. The suggestion woven into much of the reporting is that Thomas was using the emails to exert “pressure” on Bolick due to the personal connection between the two husbands.

It did not take long for Bolick to slap down what she called “the conjecture” about the communications.

“The dishonest media wants to distract attention from election fraud and our efforts to secure elections,” she stated Friday morning. As to questions about Bolick’s motivation for introducing an election integrity bill last session, she provided a link to a February 2021 Op-Ed she wrote explaining her intentions

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Bolick is married to Clint Bolick, an associate justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, who worked with Clarence Thomas early in his career and has said he considers the justice a mentor. Shawnna...

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Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is a well-known conservative involved in organizations which supported Donald Trump's reelection efforts. She is also married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who happens to the godfather to the son of Bolick's husband Clint, a justice on the Arizona Supreme Court. Read more by Terri Jo Neff >>

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The Bolicks and Thomases are close: Bolick's husband, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, is a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas, and the U.S. Supreme Court Justice is godfather to Bolick's son. Thomas also emailed House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who repeatedly told Trump and others in his orbit in the weeks after the 2020 election ...

2019 acosta pizz

Pizzella’s first trip, in 1996, included meetings with the governor and the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association and a tour of a garment factory; some later trips included meetings with human rights activists. Later that year, Abramoff wrote in an email to Herman Guerrero, a CNMI official, that “the recent Congressional staff trips have done more good for the CNMI than almost anything we have done in the past.”

The leisurely aspect of the trips seemed to help. “[S]ome of the group plans to play golf at LaoLao on monday afternoon and Kingfisher on Tuesday afternoon,” Pizzella emailed Guerrero, “please arrange for that authorization letter to the managers at each course indicating we will be renting clubs etc…that worked very, very well last visit.” Another trip included a weekend layover in Hawaii on the way back, according to an email from Pizzella. The New York Times summed up the trips with the headline “They Came. They Saw. They Golfed.”

After they got back, they wrote. Clint Bolick,a co-founder of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, reported shortly after returning that the CNMI boasted “perhaps the most vibrant economy in the United States.The secret: largely unregulated marketsthat in two decades have created out of almost nothing head-spinning economic growth, productivity, and prosperity.”

Bolick, who is now a state Supreme Court justice in Arizona, and others were particularly impressed that Gov. Tenorio supported conservative priorities like school vouchers. That wasn’t an accident. The year before, Pizzella had discussed vouchers and a flat tax with the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute on behalf of the CNMI’s government. “Our travelers ate this up,” Abramoff wrote in his memoir. “The conservative groups in Washington had found a new hero in this Democratic governor of our least populated territory.”

==

Clint Bolick is Vice President and Director of Litigation at the Institute for Justice. KOCH

Bolick was an assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomaswas EEOC chairman. While working for the Landmark Legal Foundation, Bolick led the defense for the first Wisconsin school voucher program.

Until Bolick began presenting himself as a defender of low-income African American schoolchildren, he had been most closely associated with attacks on affirmative action. He is the author of "The Affirmative Action Fraud: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision?" published by the Cato Institute.

References

America’s Future Foundation is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, tax-exempt organization whose "mission is to identify and develop these future conservative and libertarian leaders." [1]

Contents[hide]

Staff

Directors

Advisory Board

Executive Council

Contact

2001 L Street NW, Suite 1050Washington, DC 20036Tel: 202.464.5120 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              202.464.5120      end_of_the_skype_highlightingEmail: info (AT) americasfuture.orgWeb: http://www.americasfuture.org/index.php

The Goldwater Institute filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block national healthcare reform, arguing it violates the rights of a Tempe business owner, Arizona lawmakers and even members of Congress.

The suit attacks the plan on several fronts, arguing it tramples individual rights and that Congress won't have proper oversight of a health care system that it doesn't even have the authority to create. It also violates the First Amendment rights of 29 Arizona lawmakers who signed onto the suit, said Goldwater attorney Clint Bolick.

"We believe that the lawsuit that we filed this morning is the strongest challenge yet to the federal health care law," Bolick said Thursday.

The Phoenix-based Goldwater attacked the bill, which is backed by President Barack Obama, as the most sweeping invasion of personal liberty in U.S. history.

The lead plaintiff is Nick Coons, 31, owner of RedSeven, a Tempe-based computer repair company. The suits says he carries only catastrophic insurance coverage to save money and because he is healthy. The plan covers costs of $5,000 or more and Coons pays for other medical care himself.

Coons said he invests money he saves on insurance to grow his company. He argues he shouldn't be compelled to pay for medical coverage he likely won't need.

"I think I would have standing in this case because I don't have health care coverage that the bill would consider adequate," Coons said Thursday.

Coons would face significant fines starting in 2014 if he didn't buy a health plan approved by the federal government. The fine would likely offset what he saves now, he said.

The suit argues Coon's medical privacy would be violated by forcing him to disclose medical records to an insurance company, and that those documents could be accessed by the federal government without his approval.

Goldwater Institute

From SourceWatch

The Goldwater Institute is a conservative Arizona-based think tank.

According to its website the Goldwater Institute "was established in 1988 as an independent,nonpartisan research and educational organization dedicated to the study of public policy in Arizona. Through research papers, commentaries, policy briefings and events, Goldwater scholars advance public policies based on the principles championed by the late Senator Barry Goldwater during his years of public service--limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility. Consistent with a belief in limited government, the Goldwater Institute neither seeks nor accepts government funds and relies on voluntary contributions to fund its work."

The Goldwater Institute is heir to the legacy of the late Barry Goldwater ... Transcending party lines, the term "Goldwater Conservative" came to be synonymous with the principles that made the United States a beacon of liberty--individual rights, economic freedom, and a government of strictly limited powers," the wesbite states.

"The Goldwater Institute board and staff share a belief in those principles, and work to develop solutions to public policy problems in accordance with them. Some call this philosophy conservative for its commitment to rule of law; others call it libertarian for its commitment to free markets and limited government; and, still others call it liberal for its commitment to individual rights. We believe our philosophy, regardless of the names by which it is known, builds a firm foundation for the free society to which we are dedicated", it states.[1]

Contents[hide]

Areas of work

They divide their work (their research or reports) into the following areas: [1]

Funding

Income for The Goldwater Institute in 2006 was $1,897,587. 82% of this came from individuals and 10% from foundations. A few of the over 170 contributors:[2]

Personnel

Staff:[3]

Senior Fellows:[4]

Contact details

Goldwater Institute

500 E. Coronado Road

Phoenix, AZ 85004

Phone: 602.462.5000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              602.462.5000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Fax: 602.256.7045

Web: http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org

References

  1. ↑ The Goldwater Institute, Research, accessed July 2007.
  2. ↑ Goldwater Institute, Annual Report 2006, pg 24, accessed July 2007.
  3. ↑ Goldwater Institute, Staff, accessed July 2007.
  4. ↑ Goldwater Institute, Senior Fellows, accessed July 2007.

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goldwater_Institute"

Categories: Non-Government Organizations | Think tanks | United States

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/teles0708.htm

The Horowitz Report doused cold water on patron enthusiasm for funding conservative public interest law firms but in time the foundations used the report to restructure how these firms operated  Two of these second generation firms are the subject of a separate chapter in which Teles compares the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), best known for its battles against affirmative action policies at the University of Texas and University of Michigan, and the Institute for Justice (IJ) whose fame soared after it turned defeat in KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON into a public policy success.  While the two firms differ significantly in many ways, they share important similarities.  For one thing, judicial activism no longer is a dirty word.  Instead both firms see judicial activism as a means of reviving old rights to protect the conservative goal of limited government; property rights and eminent domain offer just one example.  Clint Bolick (2007), co-founder of the Institute for Justice, recently argued in favor of judicial activism in a new book published by the libertarian Cato Institute.  The firms, seeing the value in an activist bench, are accordingly more strategic in the cases they select and [*635] keep a steady eye on whether a case has the potential to change the public policy agenda or the law.

Horowitz, like Powell, stressed that a “key site” to contest legal liberalism was the university.  In three chapters, Teles traces the winding, upward path of the law and economics movement and the seemingly inexorable growth of the Federalist Society.  The law and economics story has two parts.  The first deals with constructing the “mother ship” at the University of Chicago and the travails of Henry Manne to build law and economic centers at other universities and his final success at George Mason University.