Liberty Central

see Ginni

SEE LEO 3 $ KELLYNNE MONEY LAUNDER corkery jcn

SEE CROW

see CLETA

SEE KOCH FREEDOMWORKS ARMEY

see schlapp

SEE PRATT GOA

bak 7 22

betsy death panel mccaughey?

rebrand after doc on issue she lobbied said "unconst"?

split off: http://www.patrickhenrycenter.com/

the two inseparable?

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."}:

Amy Gardner

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 15, 2010;

...Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas," said the message left last month, according to a transcript provided by ABC News. "I just want to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband."

The message to Hill is not the only controversy surrounding Thomas. On the morning she made the phone call, Thomas was the subject of a front-page New York Times article questioning whether her new prominence and acceptance of large, anonymous contributions for Liberty Central - including two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000 - might raiseconflict-of-interest questions for her husband.

Also last month, Liberty Central blamed a staff error for a memo with Virginia Thomas's name on it declaring health-care legislation unconstitutional - perhaps reflecting a new sensitivity to the relationship between her activism and her husband's job.

===

-=-=

“What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement”

September 10, 2023, 2:42 pm campaign finance, chicanery, Supreme Court

Rick Hasen

Very deep dive by Politico’s Heidi Pryzybyla:

At the time, the Citizens United ruling was widely expected, as the court had already signaled its intentions. When it came, it upended nearly 100 years of campaign spending restrictions.

The conservative legal movement seized the moment with greater success than any other group, and the consequences have shaped American jurisprudence and politics in dramatic ways.

From those early discussions among Leo, Thomas and Crow would spring a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues. It funded legal scholars to devise theories to challenge liberal precedents, helped to elect state attorneys general willing to apply those theories and launched lavish campaigns for conservative judicial nominees who would cite those theories in their rulings from the bench.

The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden: A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations. Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds. Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife. They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.

Leo’s role as the central figure in this movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history. Few are aware of the extent to which the movement’s baby steps were taken in concert with Ginni Thomas.

Two months before the Citizens United decision, but after the justices had signaled their intentions by requesting new arguments, attorney Cleta Mitchell — later to play a role in Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections — filed papers for Ginni Thomas to create a nonprofit group of a type that ultimately benefited from the decision. Leo was one of two directors listed on a separate application to conduct business in the state of Virginia. Thomas was president. She signed it on New Year’s Eve of 2009, and Crow provided much of the initial cash. A key Leo aide, Sarah Field, would come aboard to help Thomas manage the group, which they called Liberty Central.

After Liberty Central went public, it provoked an outcry over a Supreme Court justice’s wife promoting causes like overturning Obamacare that were before her husband’s court. Leo and Thomas changed gears. His network reactivated a dormant group, the Judicial Education Project, which would go on to become a major supplier of amicus briefs before the nation’s highest court. She created a for-profit consulting business using a similar name — Liberty Consulting — that enabled her to perform consulting work for conservative activist groups.

The Judicial Education Project supplied some of her business: Documents indicate Leo ordered at least one recipient of his groups’ funds, Kellyanne Conway, to make payments to Ginni Thomas for unspecified work, according to a Washington Post story earlier this year.

Now, Liberty Consulting is a focus of interest from congressional committees probing the Supreme Court’s ethics disclosures. Senate Democrats have demanded that Leo and Crow provide a list of “gifts, payments, or other items of value” they’ve given Thomas and her husband.…

-=-=

https://www.alternet.org/activist-arranged-thomas-wife-payouts/

an 5 23

no lnx

clarence Thomas' wife, "Ginni" Thomas, reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, and her name was intentionally left off of the paperwork.

Ginni Thomas received the funds from conservative activist Leonard Leo—who has also helped former President Donald Trump select judicial nominees—according to the Washington Post's investigation. The news comes at a time when Clarence Thomas himself is under fire for reportedly receiving undisclosed gifts.

Leo made the arrangements through former Trump Administration official Kellyanne Conway, according to the Washington Post's report.

"In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the documents show," according to the report. "The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case."[shelby]

The investigation further uncovered the circumstances surrounding how the payments were made secret.

"Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to 'give' Ginni Thomas 'another $25K,' the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have 'No mention of Ginni, of course,'" according to the Washington Post.

The Polling Company, Conway's firm, reportedly sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill, and listed the reason only as "Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting."

"In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas's firm,Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012," according to the Washington Post's investigation. "The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

In a statement, Leo reportedly told The Post that, "Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Ethics be damned': Legal experts aghast over bombshell report on Clarence Thomas’ luxury lifestyle ›

Why Clarence and Ginni Thomas have done more than anyone to 'damage the High Court’s reputation': journalist ›

Ex-GOP rep. slams 'slimy and unethical' Clarence and Ginni Thomas business enterprise ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Why the Clarence and Ginni Thomas scandal still matters. ›

Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court? | The New Yorker ›

The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas - The New York ... ›

---

ref no lnx

Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’

Leonard Leo told GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill nonprofit, then use money to pay spouse of Supreme Court justice

By Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O'Connell

May 4, 2023

Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist, speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in D.C. in 2019. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Clarence Thomas gift disclosures

The polite struggle to do something — anything — about Clarence Thomas

Crow tuition payment for Thomas relative adds to outcry over court ethics

A brief timeline of Clarence Thomas’s ethics questions

Analysis

Despite outrage from some, Congress reluctant to act on Supreme Court ethic...

Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate fir...

Clarence Thomas’s ethics are not the Supreme Court’s only problem

Analysis

Veteran U.S. judge joins calls for Supreme Court ethics code

Gorsuch property sale renews calls for Supreme Court ethics reform

The low cost (for a rich person) of sponsoring a Supreme Court justice

Analysis

Complaints about Justice Thomas’s disclosures sent to judicial committee

Clarence Thomas might have recognized law at issue in his real estate deal

Analysis

Senators call for probe of Thomas amid report of real estate deals with GOP donor

Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’

Parsing Clarence Thomas’s statements on the gifts he didn’t disclose

Analysis

Justice Thomas: Advisers said no need to report travel with GOP donor

Supreme Court justices under new ethics disclosures on trips, other gifts

Justice Thomas accepted luxury travel for years from GOP donor, report says

What is Bohemian Grove? The secretive camp visited by Clarence Thomas.

Who is Harlan Crow, the GOP megadonor who vacations with Justice Thomas?

End of carousel

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

Leo’s statement did not address questions about whether he had arranged other work for Ginni Thomas or how much money he directed to her in all from the nonprofit.

Conway, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, on Capitol Hill last year. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Thomases did not respond to messages seeking comment. Ginni Thomas, a political activist and former GOP aide on Capitol Hill, has long maintained that she and her husband keep their careers separate.

In December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. The court struck down a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules and procedures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5-to-4 majority.

Thomas issued a concurring opinion in the case, arguing that the preclearance requirement itself is unconstitutional. Thomas’s opinion, which was consistent with a previous opinion he wrote, favored the outcome the Judicial Education Project and several other conservative organizations had advocated in theiramicus briefs. He did not cite the Judicial Education Project brief.

Legal ethics experts disagreed about whether the arrangement outlined by Leo and the payments from Conway should have led Thomas to recuse himself from the Shelby case.

Federal law requires justices to recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” a standard that has not been well-defined as applied to filers of amicus briefs, the experts said. Law professor Kathleen Clark of Washington University said that if the Judicial Education Project paid Ginni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and timing of the payments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impartiality and require his recusal. Law professor Stephen Gillers of New York University, however, said that as the rule is now interpreted, the link appeared too “attenuated” to require recusal.

But both experts said the arrangement shows that current ethics rules and disclosure requirements fail to protect public confidence in the independence of the courts. For example, although justices must report the name of companies that pay their spouses, they are not required to report the names of the companies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a requirement, it is not clear that the Judicial Education Project would have been listed as a client, because the fees intended for Ginni Thomas were to go through Conway.

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

The effort to keep Ginni Thomas’s name off paperwork makes the arrangement seem “more egregious,” said Clark.

In his statement to The Post, Leo said that Ginni Thomas’s work had no bearing on her husband’s opinions.

“I have known Clarence and Ginni Thomas since 1990. They are dear friends and are people of tremendous good will and integrity. Anybody who thinks that Justice Thomas is influenced in his work by what others say or do, including his wife Ginni, is completely ignorant of who this man is and what he stands for. And anybody who thinks Ginni Thomas would seek to influence the Supreme Court’s work is completely ignorant of the respect she has for her husband and the important role that he and his colleagues play in our society.”

Leonard Leo and the Supreme Court's push to the right

28:51

Conservatives are winning the battle for America’s courts, a triumph decades in the making. This is how they did it. (Video: Dalton Bennett, Jesse Mesner-Hage, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)]

Leo, 57, has for years been the behind-the-scenes leader of a network of interlocking nonprofits that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support conservative judges and causes. Marble Freedom Trust, one of the organizations Leo chairs, received a contribution worth $1.6 billion in 2020 from a Chicago businessman, Barre Seid.

The Judicial Education Project was part of that network, although Leo was not listed on its tax filings or incorporation records. Leo’s allies founded the Judicial Education Project in 2004. Its mission was to “conduct research and educate the public on the role of the judiciary as laid out in the U.S. Constitution,” according to its tax filings. It secured tax-exempt status in 2011 and was not initially well-funded, filing paperwork with theIRS indicating it brought in less than $50,000 annually.

In 2012, it received about $1.5 million from donors whose identities were not publicly disclosed,the tax filings show. The Judicial Education Project spent $150,000 on “polling” that year, according to its tax filing. The filing does not identify which firm did the work.

The president of the Judicial Education Project that year was Neil Corkery, a Leo ally and bookkeeper for several of his nonprofit groups. Corkery certified on the group’s 2012 tax filing that no one other than the group’s officers or key employees had control over the nonprofit.

Corkery declined to comment.

Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny since ProPublica revealed in April that Texas billionaire Harlan Crow took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where Thomas’s mother lived; the transaction was not listed on the justice’s annual disclosure forms.

Senate Democrats this week held a hearing focused on Supreme Court ethics. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declined an invitation to testify, offering instead a statement signed by all the justices in which they reaffirmed their commitment to abide by “foundational ethics principles and practices.”

During the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) mentioned Leo, who The Post has reported used the nonprofit network during the Trump administration to conduct publicity campaigns in support of nominees he helped select. “This guy doesn’t have business before the court,” Whitehouse said. “His business is the court.”

Leo’s ties to the Thomases go back decades and span their personal and professional lives.

Leo advised Clarence Thomas through his contentious confirmation process in the early 1990s and made Thomas the godfather of one of his children. Leo also has hosted the justice at his New England vacation home, according to the New York Times.

At a Federalist Society event in 2018, Thomas shared a stage with Leo and jokingly told him, “You’re the Number Three most powerful person in the world.”

The year before that, Ginni Thomas called Leo a “mentor to me” and “a hero” when she honored him with one of her Impact awards for conservative activists.

“Leonard Leo has single-handedly changed the face of the judiciary,” she said at the awards dinner, held at what was then the Trump International Hotel in Washington. “He has many hats. That isn’t even all he does. He does not really tell all that he does. But I know enough to know the man is a force of nature.”

In 2009, when Thomas founded a tea party-aligned nonprofit called Liberty Central, Leo served on the board, tax filings show. Corkery was the nonprofit’s accountant, public records show.

Thomas stepped away from Liberty Central in late 2010 amid controversy over whether its anonymous funding — including one donation for $500,000 — posed a potential conflict of interest for her husband. (Politico reported the following year that thedonation had come from Crow.)

She then formed Liberty Consulting, a for-profit firm. On her LinkedIn page, Thomas describes her work as collaborating with “citizen activists, leaders and nonprofits to succeed and have impact in defending the principles that have made America an exceptional nation.”

Liberty Consulting began receiving payments from Conway’s firm within months of its creation in 2011, documents reviewed by The Post show. On multiple occasions, Thomas contacted the Polling Company to discuss her payments, the documents show.

The documents do not indicate whether Thomas knew of Leo’s role in the arrangement with Conway’s company, or of the Judicial Education Project’s role. (Conway sold the company in 2017 to what is now known as CRC Advisors, another firm that Leo chairs.)

Since its first amicus brief, in the voting rights case in 2012, the Judicial Education Project has submitted about a dozen amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. It has argued for limiting or rolling back race-based college admissions policies,regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions and gun-control measures.

In 2014, the group filed a brief in theHobby Lobby case, which challenged a mandate in the Affordable Care Act that employers make contraception available to workers at no cost to the workers. The court’s ruling struck down part of the requirement in a split decision, with Clarence Thomas again in the narrow majority.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House in 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)]

Thomas’s votes were aligned with the Judicial Education Project in six of the cases in which it filed briefs, including the Hobby Lobby case and two involving affirmative action at public universities. Thomas, a longtime critic of affirmative action, voted with the majority to uphold Michigan’s prohibition on race-based admissions at its public universities, and he dissented in a ruling that upheld admissions policies at the University of Texas.

Thomas’s votes did not align with the group’s position in three other cases, including one that largely upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. The court did not take up all the cases in which the Judicial Education Project filed briefs.

The group’s interest in the Supreme Court extended beyond the courtroom. It spent money on campaigns to support President Donald Trump’s nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And it is listed as a funder in the credits of a 2020 documentary that celebrated Thomas. Clarence and Ginni Thomasare featured extensively in the documentary, titled “Created Equal: Justice Thomas In His Own Words,” talking about the justice’s upbringing and his judicial philosophy.

As the Judicial Education Project pushed for a conservative court, the group grew into a financial juggernaut and was rebranded as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its revenue nearly doubled from about $66 million to more than $117 million, tax forms show.

Even so, the group has never had more than a handful of employees, tax filings show. It has listed its main office address as a UPS Store situated amid rowhouses and retail stores in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

===

The New Yorker reports that in 2010 Thomas, with Kimberly Fletcher, head of a group called Moms for America, co-hosted the “Remember the Ladies Banquet” at the Liberty xpo & Symposium, described as the “largest conservative training event in history.” Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, was a speaker at the symposium.

The Timesnotes that in 2019, she “joined the nine-member board of C.N.P Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 … that allows for direct political action.” The New Yorker’s Meyer describes C.N.P. Action, “behind closed doors, [it] connects wealthy donors with some of the most radical right-wing figures in America.”

The most troubling part of the Timesstory concerns “the extent to which Justice Thomas flouted judicial-ethical guidance by participating in events hosted by conservative organizations with matters before the court.” It adds, “those organizations showered the couple with accolades and, in at least one case, used their appearance to attract event fees, donations and new members.”

In 2002, Thomas headlined an event for the Council for National Policy and in ’08 he attended one of its meetings and, according to the Times, “was photographed with a gavel behind a lectern bearing the group’s name.” That same year he offered the keynote address at a special Manhattan Institute event and allegedly attended an all-expenses paid retreat put on by Charles Koch in Palm Springs (CA). (Koch funded a documentary, “Created Equal,” about Thomas.) In 2017, Thomas made a second appearance at the Eagle Forum when his wife received a special award.

Mrs. Thomas attended the 2016 Republican convention as a Sen. Ted Cruz (R-FL) delegate initially opposed to Trump’s nomination. However, once he was in office, she became a devoted Trump supporter. Following Kavanaugh’s nomination of the Court in July 2018, Trump invited Justice Thomas to a private dinner at the White House and he brought Mrs. Thomas. In follow-up, Ginni Thomas sought repeated meetings with Trump, which he apparently obliged.

At one, as The New Yorker reports, “by all accounts it was uncomfortable.” It then notes:

Thomas opened by saying that she didn’t trust everyone in the room, then pressed Trump to purge his Administration of disloyal members of the “deep state,” handing him an enemies list that she and Groundswell had compiled. Some of the participants prayed, warning that gay marriage, which the Supreme Court legalized in 2015, was undermining morals in America.

The Times notes that a Trump aide told reporters that “she [Thomas] began by leading the prayer.” It also reported the aide mentioned “talk about ‘the transgender agender’ and parents ‘chopping off their children’s breasts.’” Thomas brought with her Frank Gaffney, head of Center for Security Policy and a leading proponent of banning Muslims, and several other associates. As Mayer notes, “the White House was not informed that Gaffney’s group had been paying Liberty Consulting for the previous two years.” The Times reports that an ex-Trump aide called the meeting between the former president and Ginni Thomas as the “craziest” meeting he’d ever attended.

===

goth --> politico--> LAT PO'd at q

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-mar-14-la-na-thomas14-2010mar14-story.html

---

CYA ~ ACA

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/**2010/10/22/**mrs-thomas-group-pulls-health/23506223007/

Mrs. Thomas' group pulls health-care-repeal post

Staff Writer The Columbus Dispatch

WASHINGTON - A conservative group founded by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, removed references to the "unconstitutional" health-care law from its website yesterday and blamed staff errors for statements indicating that the group thought the law should be struck down.

"Liberty Central assiduously avoids taking a position on the constitutionality of this, and other issues, and will continue to do so in the future," said Sarah Field, the group's chief operating officer.

Field's comments came in response to a story noting that Mrs. Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, had taken positions on legal issues likely to come before her husband.

Field said Mrs. Thomas did not intend to sign a memorandum that called for the repeal of the "unconstitutional law." The memo was circulated by another group, the Conservative Action Project, and posted on Liberty Central's website. It has since been removed.

"(Mrs. Thomas) did not review the memo, it was reviewed by staff who mistakenly signed off with her name on it. As a result, we have asked CAP to remove her name and they did so immediately ," the statement said.

In addition to the memorandum drafted by CAP, Liberty Central's website included other posts that appeared to assert a position on the issue. The group urged supporters to attend an event hosted by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who has filed one of several court challenges against the law. It included a position paper signed by Liberty Central's managing editor, Brian Faughnan, that said the law contains provisions that the "Constitution does not permit."

The site also urged visitors to sign a petition on the health-care law circulated by Revere America, a group founded by former New York Gov. George Pataki.

Yesterday, Liberty Central posted an update to the site describing the position paper signed by Faughnan as "misattributed," saying that it was actually written by Betsy McCaughey [DEATH PANEL BS], an opponent of the health-care law who is not on Liberty Central's staff. Later in the day, the post was removed.

https://www.alternet.org/**2010/10**/ginni_thomas_think_tank_allied_with_group_that_celebrates_spanish_inquisition/

In recent days, the media has turned its attention to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- not for her troubling ties to right-wing extremist groups, but for her bizarre demand for an apology from the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment more than a decade ago. Yet Mrs. Thomas' Tea Party think tank, Liberty Central, promotes the causes of groups that take pride in intolerance, including one right-wing Catholic group, Tradition, Family and Property, whose founder declared the Spanish Inquisition "the most beautiful page in the history of the Church."

Earlier this year, AlterNet reported on Liberty Central's embrace of Gun Owners of America, whose president, Larry Pratt -- guru to the militia movement -- unapologetically addressed a rally of white supremacists in 1992, and more recently told attendees of a gun owners' rally in Washington, D.C., that they are "at war" with the federal government. We also looked at Liberty Central's relationship with the Missouri Sovereignty Project, which threatens armed insurrection against the government. Since then, Thomas has added to the "Friends of Liberty Central" page on her think tank's Web site a plug for Tradition, Family and Property, a virulently anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-democratic Catholic group founded in 1960 in opposition to Brazilian land reform.

TFP has long enjoyed ties to the far right in American politics, including the International Freedom Foundation, which existed primarily as an American front group for the apartheid regime in South Africa during the Reagan years, according to researcher Richard Bartholomew, and was once led by convicted felon and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But TFP is better known for its role in promoting and supporting authoritarian regimes in South America. Here's Bartholomew:

TFP played a role in the 1964 coup in Brazil, and in Uruguay it allegedly received explosives from the Brazilian military attaché that were used to attack communist installations. The editor of TFP's Chilean magazine, Jaime Guzmán, became chief ideologist for General Pinochet's regime.

If TFP's activities on behalf of torturers and anti-democratic forces weren't enough to give one pause, there's its status as a cult. TFP is an all-male organization that finds its recruits among adolescent boys, whom it trains in the use of the combat regalia of the Middle Ages -- maces, crossbows, and the like -- according to the late Penny Lernoux's 1989 book,People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism. The medieval games in which the boys partake are so brutal, Lernoux reported, that one recruit told her his arm had been broken three times in the exercises.

The medieval games continue today. Last July, TFP sponsored a 10-day "Call to Chivalry" camp in rural Louisiana, where, according to the group's Web site, boys and young men took part:

Some new skills were learned such as medieval spear throwing and archery. Mock sword battles with padded weapons were a great success as were paintball wars in the thick tropical-looking forest surrounding the property. An exhausting hike in the Tunica Hills Park taught a poignant lesson of endurance.

At the time Lernoux was reporting, recruits were taught to worship not only the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holiest woman in Catholicism, but also the flesh-and-blood mother of TFP founder Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, whom he referred to as Santa Monica. Oliveira, who died in 1995, loved the Spanish Inquisition, he wrote, "because, while it went on, the Catholic Church managed to cleanse itself of heretics." (Never mind that many of those so-called heretics were Jews who wanted nothing more than to practice their own faith, or people whose politics were inconvenient to the Spanish throne.)

I first learned of the American branch of TFP by stumbling upon one of their demonstrations in midtown Manhattan in the late 1980s, when thegroup was coddled by the late Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor.They often assembled on the sidewalk near St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, decked out in red polyester sashes emblazoned with a yellow lion. Their big issue at that moment was the criminalization of flag desecration, which was a lure for collecting names and addresses on petition forms. I remember feeling disconcerted by their need to videotape each interaction they had with those they were trying to attract.

The group remains active in New York, though its red-sashed members are as likely to be seen in lower Manhattan than around the cathedral.

The Catholic crusades against the Muslim world are viewed as a time of glory by the devotees of TFP. Roberto de Mattei, who wrote a friendly biography of Oliveira and is said to be close to TFP, presented his revisionist history of the crusades at a 2006 conference at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. TFP is expressing its embrace of the medieval crusades in the chorus of intolerance raised against the Parc51 Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan, dispatching student volunteers to a September protest at the site where the World Trade Center once stood. (TFP video here.)

TFP maintains a presence on the campuses of U.S. Catholic colleges, and currently sponsors a petition drive to purge them of LGBT rights groups. It describes a Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the suit that struck down anti-sodomy laws, as America's "Moral 9/11." Clarence Thomas, incidentally, joined Antonin Scalia's dissent in that case, which accused the court's majority of having "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

tea Party Think Tank Headed By Clarence Thomas' Wife Makes Common Cause With Militia Guru Larry Pratt

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has a new job, running a think-tank she founded to appeal to Tea Party supporters. Liberty Central, according to Kenneth P. Vogel, writing in Politico, "appears to be positioning itself as ahybrid think tank/advocacy group/campaign arm for the tea party movement."

Thomas herself explained it this way to Human Events magazine, Vogel reports:

“I’m getting to know the Tea Party groups and the new citizen activists,” Thomas told:{ Human Events:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: late last month. “What I think I can bring to the table is a connective (t)issue between the new people and the old people.”

On the Liberty Central Web site, visitors are urged to sign a "pledge to activism" that states the organization's commitment to small government, saying, in part:

In an effort to hold their government accountable to its constitutional limitations,many Americans have voiced their opposition to a “Big Government” agenda through protests and election upsets only to be blatantly ignored by many elected representatives,

Therefore, I pledge to be more informed and more active, and encourage others to do likewise, in order to maximize my impact and influence in preserving, protecting andpromoting liberty, freedom, and limited Constitutional government in America.

Call it the Great Convergence, this coming together of old-guard groups and extremists under the Tea Party brand -- something perhaps that only someone close to a major power center in the U.S. government could pull off. Unlike grassroots Tea Party organizations that struggle for donations, Thomas got off to a quick start last year with two large donations, according to Politico -- one for $50,000 and another for $500,000 -- whose sources the group declines to disclose. (One imagines that for certain players on the legislative field -- especially those signing on to cases that might come before the high court -- saying "I gave at the office" to the spouse of a sitting justice might not come so easily.)

AlterNet took a spin through Thomas' Web site, to see if we could get a sense of who might be showing her some love. What we found was a cadre of groups listed as "friends" -- ranging from the typical Tea Party Inc. types, such as FreedomWorks, to the downright radical, like Gun Owners of America, led by executive director Larry Pratt.

In our ongoing chronicle of right-wing events, we last left Larry Pratt at the 2nd Amendment March on Washington, where he appeared to be calling for war against the U.S. government. The 2nd Amendment March wasn't really a march at all, but a rally on the grounds of the Washington monument of some 2,000 gun owners that took place April 19 -- the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by self-styled militiaman Timothy McVeigh. (The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building took the lives of 168 innocents, including 19 children under the age of six.)

When Pratt took the stage on the grounds of the Washington monument about 15 years later, he could barely contain his ire for former President Bill Clinton, who was in office at the time of McVeigh's act of mass murder. On the day of the rally, Clinton published an op-ed that seemed to be aimed at the gun owners convening on the Mall in which he urged readers not to forget that McVeigh's act was born of the belief that government is the enemy. "[W]e must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged," he wrote.

At the gun rally, Pratt expressed his displeasure at Clinton's admonition, and at the attendance of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at an Oklahoma City ceremony commemorating the lives lost in the bombing. "I look around: it's so good to see all these terrorists out here," Pratt said to the gun activists. "Janet Napolitano, she figured, as governor of Arizona, that we didn't have a border problem, but she knows who the real enemy is. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And Bill Clinton's been runnin' cover for her, too. Watch out how you guys speak out there, you know, words can have consequences.

"Remember Oklahoma City?" Pratt continued. "Yeah, I do. And I also remember the Waco barbecue that your attorney general gave us. Thanks a lot...We're in a war. The other side knows they're at war, because they started it. They're comin' for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They're comin' for everything because they're a bunch of socialists."

Is Larry Pratt's anti-government "war" the sort of activism that Ginni Thomas, CEO of Liberty Central and wife of a member of the high court, would condone? [YOU BETCHA]

It is highly unlikely that Pratt's bitter rhetoric is a secret to Ginni Thomas. Pratt is no stranger to controversy. He's an unabashed supporter of the militia movement; his1990 book, Armed People Victorious,is viewed by many in the movement as an inspirational text.

In 1996, Pratt was forced to resign his role as an adviser to Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign when it was revealed that, in 1992, he addressed a gathering of white supremacists in Estes, Colorado. Included on the roster of speakers that day were neo-Nazis and militia advocates, including Louis Beam, a former Texas Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who had taken his cause over to the Aryan Nation organization. The meeting had been called by Pete Peters, then leader of the Christian Identitymovement, whose theology states that black people are subhuman and Jews are the spawn of Satan.

Pratt came to make clear his advocacy for unfettered gun rights. "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting," he told the crowd, according reporter Leonard Zeskind, reporting in *Rolling Stone*. Pratt explained that he bought his first gun during the 1968 riots that engulfed Washington, D.C., in the wake of the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "If they'd had that assault rifle, so-called, for sale, and I'd seen that big old magazine there at the time, that's exactly what I would have bought," Pratt said, according to Rolling Stone.

Pratt represents a kind of pivot point between the right-wing extreme and the right-wing establishment. While Pratt is cozy with Howard Phillips, the Christian Reconstructionist founder of the Constitution Party, he's also friendly with former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks, the kingpin of Tea Party Inc. astroturf groups. Armey once served on the advisory board of the now-defunct Family Foundation, an organization founded by Pratt, that housed an anti-immigrant group, English First (which still exists).

Ginni Thomas worked as an aide to Armey when he served in Congress in the GOP leadership, according to Politico. Today, Armey chairs FreedomWorks, the powerful Washington, D.C., organization that helped organize last summer's disruptions of town-hall meetings conducted by members of Congress about health care reform legislation. FreedomWorks also sponsored the stage program at the conclusion of last fall's 912 march on Washington, and an anti-health care rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol last spring. Ginni Thomas also worked with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe when both were on staff at the anti-regulatory lobbying group, the Chamber of Commerce.Like FreedomWorks, in last month's GOP primary runoff for Utah's U.S. Senate seat, Thomas' Liberty Central endorsed Tea Party candidate Mike Lee (the only candidate Liberty Central has endorsed so far).

Gun Owners of America is hardly the only eyebrow-raising friend listed on Liberty Central's Web site -- just the most extreme. Also nestled amid the group of 32 largely establishment outfits such as the Hudson Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, is Concerned Women for America, which has been on an anti-gay tear for the last two decades, and ParcBench.com, which currently features a post alleging that President Barack Obama committed treason when he presided over a session of the U.N. Security Council last fall --and that his administration won't prosecute violations of voting laws committed when white people are the victims.

Gun Owners of America frequently participates in lawsuits headed for the high court, and its attorney, William J. Olson, testified against the nomination of Elena Kagan to the bench of the high court at last week's Senate hearings. Likewise, Concerned Women for America also features an anti-Kagan post on the front page of its Web site. Not that people aren't entitled to their opinions, but it seems a bit untoward that the spouse of a sitting justice is running an organization that forges alliances with groups arrayed against her husband's next new colleague.

But more disturbing than that is the fact that Ginni Thomas, who shares her life with one of the most powerful men in the United States government, should use her social standing to recruit people to rage against the government in the company of the likes of Larry Pratt.

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 Wildershas 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."

===

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/the-glue-that-connects-jeffrey-clark-john-eastman-ginni-thomas-and-the-guy-who-was-air-dropped-into-the-doj-is-charles-kochs-money/

in September 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice filed racketeering charges against the major tobacco companies and two of their front groups. The court filings in that case carefully pieced together a half century of conspiratorial conduct and lies that gravely harmed the health of the American people, while lining the pockets of the tobacco industry, its lawyers and its paid shills.

The January 6 Select House Committee has that same, once-in-a-lifetime power in its hands. But that window of opportunity will close soon. The January 6 Committee can connect all the dots of the attempted coup leading to the doorstep of Charles Koch and expose his four decades of establishing front groups to shill for the fossil fuels industry and anti-climate change groups, or it can present a false and narrow view that this was all about the ego and narcissism of Donald Trump.

Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of one of the largest private companies in the world, Koch Industries, a fossil fuels and chemicals conglomerate that has been a serial polluter of the air and water for decades. According to Forbes, Koch has a net worth of $59.8 billion, making him the 17th richest man in the world. Charles Koch, and his late brother, David, functioned as backroom party bosses, behind the veil of a sprawling network of tax-exempt front groups, for 40 years.

Wall Street On Paradehas already produced the evidence tying the groups involved in the planning of the January 6 event to Charles Koch. See our report: The Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries.

We have already written about how the Trump administration was staffed up with Koch-related people and took its marching orders from a Koch-related entity, Freedom Partners.

There is also documented evidence that the Koch network engaged in a multi-faceted strategy to discourage progressives and liberals from turning out in the 2016 presidential election, thus tipping the victory to Trump. Not only did the Koch network fund Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners Action Fund ads portraying Democrats as tax and spend bureaucrats but the Koch-controlled i360 voter database and voter-targeting operations may have demoralized the progressive base from turning out while those same operations spurred Republicans to the polls.

And, today, we will show how key collaborators in the attempted coup on January 6 – Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, Cleta Mitchell, and Kenneth Klukowski – the attorney who was air-dropped into the U.S. Department of Justice just 35 days before the end of Trump’s term – all have ties to front groups funded by Charles Koch or his related nonprofits.

Let’s start withJeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer at the Department of Justice with no criminal experience that Trump wanted to name U.S. Attorney General because he was willing to go all-in with the attempted coup. After the failed coup, Clark was out of a job at the Department of Justice. He was, in short order, named Chief of Litigation and Director of Strategy at a group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA). That’s a curious hire for someone likely facing a long criminal investigation and possible conviction.

NCLA has received millions of dollars from Charles Koch related entities. The Charles G. Koch Foundation gave NCLA $1 million in 2017, $1 million again in 2018, and $1 million again in 2019 for “general operating support,” according to its publicly-available 990 tax filings with the IRS. The Charles Koch Institute gave NCLA $1 million in 2020. Donors Trust, a dark money nonprofit with Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over it, gave NCLA more than $2 million from 2018 through 2020, according to its 990 filings.

In addition to needing a job after the failed coup attempt, Jeffrey Clark needed a plugged-in attorney. Somehow, he found his way to Harry MacDougald, a Managing Partner at Caldwell, Carlson, Elliott & DeLoach. The fossil fuels industry watchdog, DeSmog, describes MacDougald as follows:

“MacDougald was part of the legal team that worked with the Southeastern Legal Foundation to challenge the EPA‘s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.In its lawsuit against the EPA, Southeastern Legal identified its allies in the effort as ‘like-minded organizations’ including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and the Independent Women’s Forum, among others.”

DeSmog notes that MacDougald spoke at the Heartland Institute’s “America First Energy Conference” in New Orleans in 2018. The Heartland Institute is a climate science denier that has received more than $26 million from two Koch-related groups, Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, according to the Conservative Transparency Project using publicly available 990 IRS tax filings. The conference was promoted as follows:

“The purpose of this event is to promote and expand energy freedom in the United States, as outlined in President Donald Trump’s bold America First Energy Plan, a proposal first released during the 2016 presidential campaign. The president’s plan marks a decisive change in direction from the Obama administration’s ‘war on fossil fuels’…”

Two of the allied groups mentioned above, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, have long histories with Koch money.Charles Koch and his late brother, David, were actually secret owners of the Cato Institute for decades. Greenpeace has called the Heritage Foundation “Koch Industries’ Climate Denial Front Group” and reports that it has received $6,130,201 from Koch foundations from 1997 through 2017.

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was firing off all of those emails to Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, to press for the attempted coup, had previously received $1,051,214 in compensation from the Heritage Foundationover a number of years. Clarence Thomas failed to report that compensation on his financial disclosure forms at the Supreme Court, even though he was required to do so.

The ties between Ginni Thomas and another attempted coup collaborator, Cleta Mitchell, run deep – with all roads leading to Koch money. As we reported in March:

In the emails that Ginni Thomas sent to Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, one of the people that she told Meadows to listen to was attorney Cleta Mitchell – a woman who has both a longstanding association with Ginni Thomas as well as with Koch front groups. Trump’s phone log for January 6 shows that Cleta Mitchell was one of the people that Trump spoke with at 7 :53 p.m. on the evening of the attack on the Capitol.

Cleta Mitchell has been in the news previously as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call was made public.)

Cleta Mitchell is also the attorney who filed an amicus brief in the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.

Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas.Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc. on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.

On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.

Liberty Centralhad the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.

Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.

Mitchell was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)

The financial disclosure forms filed by Clarence Thomas show that from 2011 through 2017, Ginni Thomas received a “salary” from the Daily Caller, a right-wing spin organization founded in 2010 by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel. Its creation was announced at a gathering at the Heritage Foundation. The Daily Caller’s affiliated News Foundation has received funding from the Koch Family Foundations and the Charles Koch Institute.

Despite the previous scandal over Clarence Thomas failing to report that Ginni Thomas had received income from the Heritage Foundation, there are no dollar ranges listed on his financial disclosure forms to show the range of “salary” Ginni Thomas actually received from the Daily Caller from 2011 to 2017.

From 2011 through 2020, Clarence Thomas shows that his wife was receiving “salary and benefits” from Liberty Consulting. But again, there is no range of salary and benefits shown. Instead, Liberty Consulting is listed under “Investments” and shows a “book value” of $100,000 to $250,000 in 2019, which then drops to $15,000 to $50,000 in 2020.

Then there isKen Klukowski, the man air-dropped into the Department of Justice just 35 days before Trump’s term ended to work at the elbow of Jeffrey Clark. The Select Committee believes that Klukowski may have been involved in drafting the proposed letter to state officials which falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote totals in those states and the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump.”

Klukowski had been a writer at the right-wing outlet, Breitbart, which was formerly led by former Trump White House advisor, Steve Bannon. Bannon was the long-tenured filmmaker for Citizens United, the nonprofit involved in the history-making case at the U.S. Supreme Court that opened the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns. Bannon made right-wing propaganda documentaries for Citizens United like “Fire from the Heartland,” a glowing tribute to Michele Bachmann; “The Undefeated,” profiling the rise of Sarah Palinto national prominence and the darling of the Tea Party movement; “Generation Zero,” blaming the 2008 financial crash on liberals instead of the Wall Street bank executives who presided over the unprecedented frauds; and ,” demonizing the young people attempting to remove their democracy from the iron grip of the one percent as sinister criminals.

Klukowski got his law degree from George Mason University, one of the largest and longest recipients of Koch money. In just the three most recent years that public 990 tax filings are available, they show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave a total of $46.89 million to George Mason University from 2017 through 2019.

In 2018, New York Times reporters Erica L. Green and Stephanie Saul wrote about how newly-released documents showed that Koch’s money came with strings attached at George Mason University:

“The documents reveal in surprising detail that for years, as George Mason grew from a little-known commuter school to a major public university and a center of libertarian scholarship, millions of dollars in donations from conservative-leaning donors like the Charles Koch Foundation had come with strings attached.

“As early as 1990, entities controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch were given a seat on a committee to pick candidates for a professorship that they funded, the records show. Similar arrangements that continued through 2009 gave donors decision-making roles in selecting candidates for key economics appointments at the Mercatus Center,a Koch-funded think tank on campus that studies markets and regulation. The appointments, which also created faculty lines at George Mason, were steered to professors who, like the Kochs, embraced unconstrained free markets.”

And, finally, there is John Eastman, the Trump lawyer who ranted on the stage before the crowd at the Capitol on January 6 about widespread voter fraud in the election and, according to the Select Committee, played a key role in the attempted coup.

Both Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman are tied to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Mitchell is the Chair of the Board and Eastman is a Director. The New York Times has reported that it was Mitchell who “enlisted John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted specious legal theories claiming Vice President Mike Pence could keep Mr. Trump in power.”

Eastman is also Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) according to its website, a group opposing same-sex marriage. Wall Street On Parade looked into that group in 2011. We found multiple ties to the Koch network’s pursuit of the Citizens United decision at the U.S. Supreme Court.

When Ginni Thomas filed her registration statement for her own tea party group, Liberty Central, Inc., with the state of West Virginia on December 31, 2009, she listed her accountant as Neil Corkery with an address of 8665 Sudley Road, Suite 182 in Manassas, Virginia. According to a UPS store employee located there, there was no other business located at this site; just post office boxes. When Ginni Thomas filed her first IRS 990 form for tax year 2009 for Liberty Central, she listed her tax preparer as Conlon and Associates LLC.

{{ Wellspring Committee, Inc. LEO

8665 Sudley Road, Suite 182, Manassas, Virginia 20110

Overview

Wellspring Committee, Inc. is a business registered with Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC), Clerk's Information System (CIS). The customer account number is #06906903. The business address is 8665 Sudley Road, Suite 182, Manassas, Virginia 20110. The business industry is 0 - General.}:}:

These same two names, Neil Corkery and Conlon and Associates LLC, would end up on the 2009 tax filings of the National Organization for Marriage.

The IRS 2009 tax filing for the National Organization for Marriage, Inc. shows it took in $7.1 million and made five grants totaling $2,105,000. Stand for Marriage Maine received 93 percent of those funds, or $1,960,000. Stand for Marriage Maine waged the successful 2009 repeal of same-sex marriage in Maine, using the same tactics and, indeed, the same ad and marketing firm that was used in the California Proposition 8 battle.

Secret donors washing money through a 501(c)(4) tax exempt organization and then funneling it to a Political Action Committee in Maine brought a request for an investigation to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices by Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate. The Commission initiated an investigation. Stepping forward to represent both the National Organization for Marriage and Stand for Marriage Maine PAC was the law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom.

James Bopp of Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom is (wait for it) the lawyer who represented Citizens United in the lower courts and, hoping to gut campaign financing reform, maneuvered the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom is located in Terre Haute, Indiana. What is the statistical probability of it being sheer coincidence that an Indiana law firm is involved in a nonprofit advocacy group case in Maine involving secret donors; also involved in the Citizens United case before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. involving secret donors; and the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas is using the same Neil Corkery and Conlon and Associates for her Tea Party nonprofit as Bopp’s anti same-sex marriage clients in the Maine case?

We strongly urge the January 6 Select Committee to provide the full, unvarnished truth to the American people.

===

REF IRS

clarence: :{https://www.courtlistener.com/person/3200/disclosure/30783/}::{**clarence-thomas/**}:

Financial Disclosures for J. Clarence Thomas

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Position Organization

Board of Directors Horatio Alger Association

Reimbursements

Dates Location Source Purpose Items

1/27/2020 - 1/30/2020 Gainesville, FL Levin College of Law University of Florida Teaching Transportation, meals, and lodging

1/31/2020 Orlando, FL Federalist Society Florida Chapters Conference Guest speaker Transportation, meals, and lodging

Non Investment Income

Dates Source Income Amount

8/27/2020 George Washington University School of Law -teaching $10,000.00

Spousal Income

Date Source

2020 Liberty Consulting, Inc. - salary and benefits...

---

Positions

Position Organization

Board of Directors Horatio Alger Association

Reimbursements

Dates Location Source Purpose Items

1/28/2019 - 2/1/2019 Omaha, NE Creighton Law School Teaching Transportation, meals, and lodging

3/11/2019 - 3/12/2019 Macon, GA Mercer Law School Teaching Transportation, meals, and lodging

3/29/2019 - 3/30/2019 Malibu, CA Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Speaking Transportation, meals, and lodging

10/2/2019 - 10/3/2019 Hillsdale, MI Hillsdale College Speaking Transportation, meals, and lodging

10/20/2019 - 10/26/2019 New Haven, CT Yale Law School Speaking Transportation, meals, and lodging

Non Investment Income

Dates Source Income Amount

1/17/2019 Scalia Law School - teaching $12,000.00

1/28/2019 Creighton Law School - teaching $15,000.00

8/29/2019 George Washington University School of Law - teaching $1,440.00

Spousal Income

Date Source

2019 Liberty Consulting, Inc. - salary and benefits

Investments...

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/271222875

NO LNX

LIBERTY CENTRAL INC

MANASSAS, VA 20109-2502 | TAX-EXEMPT SINCE MARCH 2010

EIN: 27-1222875

Classification (NTEE)

Alliance/Advocacy Organizations (Public, Society Benefit — Multipurpose and Other)

Nonprofit Tax Code Designation: 501(c)(4)

Defined as: Civic leagues, social welfare organizations and local associations of employees, created to promote community welfare for charitable, educational or recreational purposes.

Donations to this organization are not tax deductible.

More Resources: ArrowGuideStar

Get notifications: Sign up for updates about our data.

Tax Filings by Year

The IRS Form 990 is an annual information return that most organizations claiming federal tax-exempt status must file yearly. Read the IRS instructions for 990 forms.

If this organization has filed an amended return, it may not be reflected in the data below. Duplicated download links may be due to resubmissions or amendments to an organization's original return.

FISCAL YEAR ENDING DEC.

2012

PDF

IRS Filing

Total Revenue

$16,047

Total Functional Expenses $15,467

Net income $580

Notable sources of revenue Percent of total revenue

Contributions $16,047 100%

Program services $0

Investment income $0

Net fundraising $0

Sales of assets $0

Net inventory sales $0

Other revenue $0

Other

Total Assets $14,395

Total Liabilities $60,087

Net Assets -$45,692

Help Keep Nonprofit Explorer Free!

If you have used our data or site in your research or reporting, add credit and a link to Nonprofit Explorer in your story or publication and let us know.

FISCAL YEAR ENDING DEC.

2011

PDF

IRS Filing

Total Revenue

$54,744

Total Functional Expenses $104,642

Net income -$49,898

Notable sources of revenue Percent of total revenue

Contributions $53,036 96.9%

Program services $1,698 3.1%

Investment income $5 0.0%

Bond proceeds $0

Royalties $5 0.0%

Rental property income $0

Net fundraising $0

Sales of assets $0

Net inventory sales $0

Other revenue $0

Notable expenses Percent of total expenses

Executive compensation $0

Professional fundraising fees $0

Other salaries and wages $11,277 10.8%

Other

Total Assets $16,899

Total Liabilities $63,170

Net Assets -$46,271

FISCAL YEAR ENDING DEC.

2010

PDF

IRS Filing

Total Revenue

$950,813

Total Functional Expenses $1,460,194

Net income -$509,381

Notable sources of revenue Percent of total revenue

Contributions $928,941 97.7%

Program services $21,872 2.3%

Investment income $0

Bond proceeds $0

Royalties $0

Rental property income $0

Net fundraising $0

Sales of assets $0

Net inventory sales $0

Other revenue $0

Notable expenses Percent of total expenses

Executive compensation $259,771 17.8%

Professional fundraising fees $0

Other salaries and wages $285,412 19.5%

Other

Total Assets $30,227

Total Liabilities $26,011

Net Assets $4,216

FISCAL YEAR ENDING DEC.

2009

PDF

IRS Filing

Form 990 documents available

Extracted financial data is not available for this tax period, but Form 990 documents are available for download.

===

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/12/politics/12THOM.html?pagewanted=1

cONTESTING THE VOTE: CHALLENGING A JUSTICE; Job of Thomas's Wife Raises Conflict-of-Interest Questions

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published:December 12, 2000

Editors' Note Appended

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said today that she was working at a conservative research group gathering resumes for appointments in a possible Bush administration but that she saw no conflict between her job and her husband's deliberations on a case that could decide the presidency.

The comments from the justice's wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, a former Republican Congressional aide, came as a federal judge in Nashville said Justice Thomas faced a serious conflict of interest as a result of his wife's work for the Heritage Foundation.

The foundation has close ties to the Republican Party and would probably have a say in the hiring of key government officials if Gov. George W. Bush assumed the presidency. In e-mail distributed on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Mrs. Thomas solicited resumes ''for transition purposes'' from the government oversight committees of Congress.

A decision by Justice Thomas to recuse himself could alter the outcome of the case now before the court, which is weighing whether to allow a manual recount of votes in Florida. On Saturday, by a vote of 5 to 4, the court blocked the recount for now. Justice Thomas, who was appointed to the court by President George Bush, Governor Bush's father, was in the majority.

===

$500K CU 2009 no lnx = 2010 w/ gary a name?! but exp 1.2m$? gini 130k, others sm not = 260k$ 285 other sal; rev $928k fee for serv OTHER = 389k$ total exp 1.4m$ quite a bit blk out

david burkhardt manassas va

https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2010/271/222/2010-271222875-07d0287f-9O.pdf

https://www.politico.com/story/**2011/02/**justice-thomass-wife-now-lobbyist-048812

...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.”

But her latest career incarnation is sparking controversy again.

Thomas’s role as a de facto tea party lobbyist and — until recently — as head of a tea

no lnx party group that worked to defeat Democrats last November “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,” said Arn Pearson, a lawyer for Common Cause, the left-leaning government watchdog group.

“It raises additional questions about whether Justice Thomas can be unbiased and appear to be unbiased in cases dealing with the repeal of the health care reform law or corporate political spending when his wife is working to elect members of the tea party and also advocating for their policies.”

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.

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.

Late that year, she establishedLiberty Central, a group she envisioned as forming a bridge between the conservative establishment and the anti-establishment tea party movement. It was a new role and a new measure of prominence for Thomas, and it marked the beginning of a string of headaches for her and her husband.

Legal ethicists asserted that Thomas’s role could compromise her husband’s impartiality, especially since the group is not required to report its donors and could have benefitted from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling last year in which Justice Thomas sided with the majority in a decision that allowed corporations to fund campaign ads, often without disclosing their contributions.

To be sure, other federal judges have politically active spouses, including federal appeals court Judge Marjorie Rendell, whose husband is former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt, whose wife, Ramona Ripston, will step down this month after decades running the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rendell’s political committees were required to reveal all donations. But the ACLU is registered under sections of the tax code that do not require public disclosure of donors, as is Liberty Central — and Common Cause, for that matter.

But the Thomases came under particular scrutiny after POLITICO revealed that, while the Supreme Court was deliberating over the Citizens United case, Liberty Central had received a $550,000 anonymous contribution.

Common Cause, in a letter to the Justice Department, suggested that Thomas should have recused himself from the case and charged 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’s role in founding and leading the group.”

In addition, in a letter to the Judicial Conference, Common Cause pointed out that Justice Thomas had failed to report on his disclosure filings his wife’s income over the past decade, prompting the judge to amend13 years of reports to indicate sources — though not amounts — of his wife’s income.

At first, it didn’t seem that the attention affected Thomas’s efforts to build Liberty Central. She assembled an impressive staff and board, while circulating among major conservative establishment donors with whom she and her husband had long, close relationships.

POLITICO has learned, for instance, that the initial $500,000 contribution came from Dallas real estate investor Harlan Crow,a major GOP donor who held an event for Liberty Central at his home a few months after the group launched. He also once gave Justice Thomas a $19,000 “Frederick Douglass Bible” as a gift and donated $150,000 to build a new wing named for Thomas on a Savannah, Ga., library that Clarence Thomas visited frequently in his youth.

But Thomas and Liberty Central ran into problems after it was revealed in October that she had left a voice mail, requesting an apology from Anita Hill, the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings for the high court in 1991. That prompted another surge of attention and — according to a conservative who knows Ginni Thomas and is familiar with her work at Liberty Central — it “spooked” at least one donor.

About a month later, Thomas stepped down from her leadership post at Liberty Central, and it was announced that the group was merging with another conservative nonprofit group called the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty. Sources told POLITICO that Thomas essentially put Liberty Central on the block because it was struggling to raise enough money to support its big staff and high overhead.

Liberty Consulting filed incorporation papers in Virginia only a day after news broke of the changes at Liberty Central.

reached by phone on Wednesday, Thomas said she was having trouble with the signal, telling a POLITICO reporter: “I would be happy to talk with you, but I really can’t understand clearly what you’re asking, so maybe this is not a good time to talk.”

She did not respond to subsequent voice mail or e-mail messages.

In a December interview with the conservative Daily Caller, though, Thomas said she planned to spend the bulk of her time working as a consultant for Liberty Central and the Patrick Henry Center, and would “help them in any way I can think of, whether it’s lobbying on the Hill or connecting with the grass roots, or helping speak or write or fundraise.”

But lobbying records show no registrations for Thomas, Liberty Consulting, Liberty Central or the Patrick Henry Center.

When asked whether Thomas was being paid through Liberty Consulting as a consultant,Liberty Central general counsel Sarah Field did not answer directly. “She was and continues to be the founder of Liberty Central, and we look forward to working with her and with other passionate conservative activists, and that’s all there is to it,” Field said.

Thomas and her friends reject the suggestion that the call to Anita Hill precipitated Ginni Thomas’s stepping down from Liberty Central — Thomas told The Daily Caller that the story line was “laughable.” She did, however, concede that the call was “probably a mistake on my part,” adding that, if her move to an outside consulting role “has the extra benefit of helping reduce distractions, that’s fine with me.”

And Leonard Leo, an executive at the conservative Federalist Society who is a longtime friend of the Thomases and sits on Liberty Central’s board, told POLITICO in November that the call had no impact on Liberty Central’s fundraising or on Thomas.

“The people that were supportive of Liberty Central were supportive of her,” he said, adding, “I don’t think that they were going to pull back from her at a time when she needed support more than anything else.”

He called the controversy over the Hill call “a nothing burger” for Thomas. “This is a woman who has been through it all. There are few women in Washington who have had to put up with what she has.”

but the source who knows Thomas and is familiar with her work at Liberty Central said her continuing reinvention of herself

— especially so soon after raising big money and assembling a staff for a new nonprofit — has hurt her standing in conservative circles.

“Ginni’s reputation around town is now even more of a fake entitled woman who is only here because of her husband,” the source said. “Now she has opened her own lobbying shop ... not sure how (the) conservative circle will feel when they find that out, or if they’ll care or not.”

So far, they don’t.

Roughly half a dozen aides for new members told POLITICO that their offices received handwritten meeting requests from Thomas the day after they were sworn in, as well as follow-up e-mails requesting a meeting with her — but only one of them had met with her. The rest had no plans to do so.

FILED UNDER: POLITICS, HOUSE REPUBLICANS, DAVID SCHWEIKERT, CLARENCE THOMAS....

===

ref doc 550K$

https://www.politico.com/static/PPM156_liberty_central.html

404 in 2 browser

http://web.archive.org/web/20120225023040/https://www.politico.com/static/PPM156_liberty_central.html

990

diann huber dir

matt schl

bob russell dir

sue hamblen secr

tracy price treas

vt prez

501c4

500k and 50K

lib central inc

5765-f burke ctr pkwy burke va 22015-2264 # 302

ein 27 1222875

703-691-2012

2008

28k $ liabilities?

===

https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/political-nonprofits/summary?id=271222875

Liberty Central

FAIRFAX, VA (Legal domicile: VA)

Parent Organization N/AType Civic Leagues, Social Welfare Organizations, and Local Associations of Employees

Year Founded2009Reported Political Activity to IRS?NoPeriod of Last Report Jan 2010 - Dec 2010IndustryEmployer Listed/Category Unknown

Total number of volunteers None reportedTotal number of employees25

Overall FEC-reported spending from Jan 2010 - Dec 2010$0

Overall Political Spending of all known grant recipients$0Recipient Political Spending Attributable to Donor$0FEC-reported spending since last IRS filingNone reported

Longterm Political Activity RankingN/A

---

https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/political-nonprofits/board-members?id=271222875

2010 bd

Name	Title	Hours per Week
Aldrich, Gary	PRESIDENT	40.00
Edwards, Lee	DIRECTOR	0.20

|Field, Sarah|CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER|40.00|

Forsythe, Hugh	DIRECTOR	0.20
Hamblin, Sue	SECRETARY	40.00
Huber, Diann	DIRECTOR	3.00

|Leo, Leonard|DIRECTOR|0.20|

Price, Tracy	TREASURER	40.00
Reccord, Bob	DIRECTOR	0.20
Rothert, John	DIRECTOR	0.20
Russell, Bob	DIRECTOR	1.50

|Schlapp, Matt|DIRECTOR|0.20|

|Thomas, Virginia|PRESIDENT & CEO|60.00|

Tucker, Billie

DIRECTOR

0.20

===

nyt https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09thomas.html

Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues

Virginia Thomas, left, of the organization Liberty Central, and Diana Reimer, in May lobbying against the health care bill.

By Jackie Calmes

Oct. 8, 2010

RICHMOND, Va.

As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles.

For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group,Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.

It is the most partisan role ever for a spouse of a justice on the nation’s highest court, and Mrs. Thomas is just getting started. “Liberty Central will be bigger than the Tea Party movement,” she told Fox News in April, at a Tea Party rally in Atlanta.

But to some people who study judicial ethics, Mrs. Thomas’s activism is raising knotty questions, in particular about her acceptance of large, unidentified contributions for Liberty Central. She began the group in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and because it is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group, named for the applicable section of the federal tax code, she does not have to publicly disclose any contributors. Such tax-exempt groups are supposed to make sure that less than half of their activities are political.

Mrs. Thomas, known as Ginni, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed without an agreement not to discuss her husband. In written responses to questions, Sarah Field, Liberty Central’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said that Mrs. Thomas is paid by Liberty Central, with the compensation set by the group’s board, and thatthe group has “internal reviews and protections to ensure that no donor causes a conflict of interest for either Ginni or her husband.”

Nonprofit groups with political agendas like Liberty Central are operating in this election cycle under evolving legal and regulatory standards, most notably the ruling last January by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case, which eased restrictions on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions. In that case, Justice Thomas, long an advocate of dismantling campaign finance restrictions, was in the 5-to-4 majority. Wealthy individuals and some corporations, emboldened by the ruling, are giving to such groups to influence the election but still hide their tracks.

Unlike many other conservative nonprofit groups that are pouring donations into television advertising to benefit Republican candidates, Liberty Central has not done so, and it is not clear whether it will.

This month, Liberty Central began what it called its first ad campaign, but the ads were limited to Web sites for the conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin suggesting an effort to build membership for Liberty Central, not elect candidates.The ads link to Liberty Central’s Web site and a video of Mrs. Thomas soliciting 100,000 signatures against the “Obama tax increase” referring to the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts on Dec. 31.

The bigger question for many is how she is financing these activities. Liberty Central reported the initial $550,000 on its 2009 tax return, though the identities of the two donors are redacted.

A federal law requires justices to recuse themselves in a number of circumstances where real or perceived conflicts of interest could arise, including in cases where their spouses could have a financial interest. But the decision to step aside is up to each justice; there is no appeal from the nation’s highest court.

“It’s shocking that you would have a Supreme Court justice sitting on a case that might implicate in a very fundamental way the interests of someone who might have contributed to his wife’s organization,” said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor and director of the Stanford University Center on the Legal Profession.

“The fact that we can’t find that out is the first problem,” she said, adding, “And how can the public form a judgment about propriety if it doesn’t have the basic underlying facts?”

Steven Lubet, who teaches legal ethics at Northwestern Law School, said Mrs. Thomas’s solicitation of big contributions raised potential recusal issues for her husband. But he added, “There’s no reason to think that Justice Thomas would be anything other than extremely careful about it.”

“I think this is the world we live in, where two-career families are the norm and there are no constraints on the political activities of judicial spouses,” Mr. Lubet said.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said: “There’s nothing to stop Ginni Thomas from being politically active. She’s a private citizen and she has all of her constitutional rights.”

But as for the big donors, Mr. Gillers, citing a 1988 Supreme Court decision, said, “She has to tell him because the public is going to assume he knows,” and, Mr. Gillers said, fair-minded citizens could question Justice Thomas’s objectivity as a result.

The Supreme Court’s public information office said Mrs. Thomas had told court officials of her plans but it declined to provide any more information.

“Around the time of the launch of Liberty Central, Mrs. Thomas reviewed her involvement with the Supreme Court legal office. Discussions with the legal office that are part of efforts to obtain legal and ethics advice are not made public,” Kathy Arberg, the court’s information officer, wrote in an e-mail.

In past interviews, Mrs. Thomas has suggested she is being singled out unfairly; other spouses of judges are politically active, she has argued, usually mentioning Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who is married to a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Mr. Rendell has to disclose direct contributions to his campaigns. And parties can appeal to the Supreme Court should his wife not recuse herself when her impartiality is questioned.

Mrs. Thomas’s political work has drawn criticism before from Democrats. In the weeks before a 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court, including her husband, decided the 2000 election for George W. Bush over Al Gore, Mrs. Thomas was compiling résumés for potential appointees to a Bush administration from her job at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, Republican-leaning research group.

Mrs. Thomas’s supporters said she plays an important role as a bridge between grass-roots Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans in Washington. Ryan Hecker, a lawyer in Houston and a prominent Tea Party activist, said he had heard that Liberty Central was “doing a big get-out-the-vote effort” in some Congressional races.Despite the suspicion of many in the Tea Party that Republicans in Washington are trying to co-opt the movement, Mr. Hecker said the “charismatic and very genuine” Mrs. Thomas is not seen that way among activists.

“She’s been there for a long time, but she hasn’t been corrupted by it,” Mr. Hecker said. So she can be “a medium” to get the grass-roots’ views “to the people that matter.”

===

no lnx

Smart v. Stupid

Liberty Central: Repo’d by the Koch brothers?

Virginia Thomas sidelined by new management with Koch brothers ties

Reporter profile

More by Jimmy Zuma

Posted Nov 21, 2010,

Jimmy Zuma

TucsonSentinel.com

Even before the Anita Hill phone message, it had become increasingly clear that Ginni Thomas was a loose cannon. Who knew what might spill out next? So in short order earlier this week, Ginni Thomas was pushed aside and a new Liberty Central leader, an attorney named Sarah Field, said she’s the new spokesperson.

If my attempts to find or contact her are any indication, Fields appears to be a very good secret keeper.

On November 15th, The Washington Post reported that Liberty Central’s long-established publicist (who never returned my emails anyway) said Thomas would be stepping down.

“She'll take a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions.” This came as a surprise to me and other Ginni watchers since – near as we could tell – Liberty Central’s only “mission” consisted of incoherent pep talks at Tea Party rallies and selling something called the “Liberty Foam Visor.” (It aims to make any woman look like that famous French lady on Ellis Island.) The publicist also reported that Liberty Central would be merging with the Patrick Henry Center, a nearby nonprofit promoting the legacy of its namesake.

Later that same afternoon, Sarah Field, now identifying herself as the spokesperson for Liberty Central, debunked the merger rumor but confirmed that Thomas would play a reduced role. She said “The sources of this story appear to be people without full understanding of the facts.” We can probably assume by “sources” she means Ginni Thomas. Coup d'état anyone?

Ms. Field is notable in that her last employer was the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, where she flogged something called the “Science of Liberty.” When I called the Koch Foundation looking for her, they first said they didn’t know her. Then they said I could leave a message for her.

Liberty Central is not really an organization. It exists only in cyberspace. It has one of those websites – newly revamped in a style that screams Astroturf – that aims to obscure by omission. They don’t provide an address or phone number and they make you fill out a form instead of giving an email address. It’s the kind of mysterious website you wouldn’t use to purchase a consumer product. It’s also an unusual approach for a real grassroots organization. The Patrick Henry Center, for example, publishes an address, phone number and email. Generally, grassroots groups do outreach.

Incorporated in Delaware, Liberty Central’s founding documents locate it in a Richmond attorney’s office. On its 2009 IRS 990 tax filing, the listed address is a UPS Store in Burke, Virginia.UPS offers mailbox services there. This address is not properly listed as a “care of” address on tax forms, a violation of IRS rules. Virginia Thomas’ address – as principal officer – is similarly in violation.

Like what you're reading? Support high-quality local journalism and help underwrite independent news without the spin.

A Superpages.com search offers an actual phone number and the address, 10431 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, Virginia (just across the street from the Patriot Café, in case you were wondering.)

This address is a large, windowless building owned by Verizon. Local letter carrier Jason Herald says it’s just a switching center. “Liberty Central,” I asked? “Yea, they’re not there. I’ve gotten several pieces of mail for them. I mark each one ‘Return to Sender’ and send it back.” (Liberty Central really doesn’t want to hear from “the grassroots,” it seems.)

“I was just listening about them on the radio,” he added. About the scandal, it turns out.

So Ginni Thomas is back-benched, replaced by someone with Koch connections. That could just be a coincidence, huh? After all, this is just a small, grassroots organization. They’d be lucky to be able to hire someone with Koch brothers connections, right?

Well, not really. Consider another new hire, H. Lillian Vogl, who joined the team right about the time Think Progress and the New York Times started sniffing around. She’s also an attorney, formerly of Covington and Burling where she did lobbying, according to her resume. C&B represents both Koch Industries and Conoco, a Koch subsidiary. Vogl’s resume seems to indicate that she would be required to register as a lobbyist, but she never did. Whoops.

Think Progress has done a ton of original reporting on the strange links between Justice Clarence Thomas, the Koch Brothers, Citizens United and Liberty Central. We’ve already established that Clarence Thomas (and Antonin Scalia) attended Koch brothers meetings intended to “review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it” and “change the balance of power in Congress this November.”

We’ve established that Liberty Central was set up after the Citizens United decision allowed for it. We know Liberty Central accepted just two donations in 2009, one for $50,000 and one for $500,000.I broke the news that tax filings revealed the organization didn’t spend the money on programs or services. It is highly unusual for a nonprofit to receive such a large gift without a plan or a need.

Now we learn that the new chief operating officer arrived straight from the Koch Foundation, and the new director of policy is from the firm that represents Koch and Conoco. Add in the secretive nature of the organization, it’s unwillingness to explain Koch ties, its unwillingness to name its donors, the issue of 990 filing errors, the fact that it seems to have no real address, and whether its director of policy should be registered as a lobbyist and you have a lot of questions left on the ethics table.

Today, we’ve added three other pieces to the puzzle – Liberty Central doesn’t really exist. It doesn’t really want anyone to find it. And with the backgrounds of these two new leaders, Liberty Central has come full circle – back to the Koch brothers.

It is well past time to drag all of this obfuscation out from under the rock. We are overdue to find out for sure whether our democracy – our rule of law and justice – were sold for the paltry sum of half a million dollars. It’s time to open a criminal investigation.

Sponsorships available

Support TucsonSentinel.com & let thousands of daily readers know

your business cares about creating a HEALTHIER, MORE INFORMED Tucson

I left messages for Sarah Field, both at the Charles Koch Foundation and at a number for Liberty Central that I was able to discover. At press time, neither call was returned.

Jimmy Zuma splits his time between Washington, D.C. and Tucson. He writes the online opinion journal, Smart v. Stupid. He spent 5 years in Tucson in the early ‘80s, when life was a little slower, swamp coolers were a little more plentiful, Tucson’s legendary music scene was in full bloom, and the prevailing work ethic was “don’t - unless you have to.”

===

H. Lillian Vogl is a member of the Government Affairs practice group at Covington & Burling LLP. She analyzes and drafts legislation, writes explanatory and advocacy materials directed toward government officials, and engages in personal outreach to officials in Congress and the agencies on behalf of a wide variety of clients, including the National Football League, Goodwill Industries International, and the National Association of Realtors. In addition, Lillian represents numerous tax-exempt entities on tax compliance and corporate governance issues, and advises for-profit and non-profit clients on taxation of employee benefits. catholic

ref

===

Activism of Thomas's Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics

Oct 8, 2010 — Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has accepted large ... In written responses to questions, Sarah Field, Liberty Central's ...

Justice Thomas and his wife

https://www.telegram.com › local › north › 2010/10/16

Oct 16, 2010 — Sarah Field, an executive of Liberty Central, told The Times that the organization pays Virginia Thomas. Justice Thomas is a beneficiary of ...

Justice Thomas' wife may play less public role - The San Diego ...https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com › sdut-justice-tho...

Sarah Field, Liberty Central's chief operating officer, said in a statement that “several options are on the table” because of the group's effectiveness in ...

Justice Thomas' wife may play less public role - Boston.comhttp://www.boston.com › News › Education

Nov 16, 2010 — Sarah Field, Liberty Central's chief operating officer, said in a statement that "several options are on the table" because of the group's ...

Virginia Thomas' group backs off on calling healthcare law ...https://www.latimes.com › archives › la-xpm-2010-oct-...

Oct 22, 2010 — “Liberty Central assiduously avoids taking a position on the ... so in the future,” said Sarah Field, the group's chief operating officer.

Mrs. Thomas' group pulls health-care-repeal posthttps://www.dispatch.com › story › news › 2010/10/22

Oct 22, 2010 — "Liberty Central assiduously avoids taking a position on the ... so in the future," said Sarah Field, the group's chief operating officer.

Liberty Central: Repo'd by the Koch brothers? | Smart v. Stupidhttps://www.tucsonsentinel.com › opinion › report › 11...

Earlier this week, Ginni Thomas was pushed aside for a new Liberty Central leader, an attorney named Sarah Field. Field.

Mrs. Thomas denies link to Sept. 11 event - Politicohttps://www.politico.com › blogs › ben-smith › 2010/08

Aug 18, 2010 — Any report of her attending is an error," said Sarah Field, director of policy and legal counsel of Liberty Central, which is headed by ...

===

washingtonpost.com > Nation > National News Special Reports > Supreme Court

Virginia Thomas stepping down as head of Liberty Central

By Amy Gardner

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 15, 2010;

Virginia Thomas, political activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has decided to relinquish control of Liberty Central, the conservative group she founded less than a year ago, so that the organization can escape the "distractions" of her media celebrity, a spokeswoman said.

"She'll take a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions," said spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll of CRC Public Relations in Alexandria. "After discussing it with the board, Mrs. Thomas determined that it was best for the organization."

Carroll declined to elaborate, but a source not authorized to speak publicly about the details said Liberty Central will be merging with the Patrick Henry Center, a Manassas-based conservative organization founded by Gary Aldrich, a former FBI agent who wrote a tell-all book about life inside the Clinton White House.

But late Monday afternoon, a spokeswoman for Liberty Central disputed the report. "There are many opportunities being presented to Liberty Central, but there is no agreement at this time," Sarah Field, chief operating officer and general counsel for Liberty Central, said in an e-mail. "The sources of this story appear to be people without full understanding of the facts." She declined to elaborate.

Thomas started Liberty Central in May as a grass-roots organizer and educator and intended for it to serve as a clearinghouse of policy and candidate information for conservative activists and tea party groups.

More recently, however, she has been in the news as a result of a recent phone call she made to Anita Hill, the lawyer who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings. Virginia Thomas rekindled a long-ago controversy by leaving a voice mail message at Hill's Brandeis University office seeking an apology.

"Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas," said the message left last month, according to a transcript provided by ABC News. "I just want to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband."