ginnI 5
---
MERRI OK
CRC 600K$ 2023 CROWDSOURCERS
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REMINDER
3x but key $#? 550k$ crow
ref politico ginni
https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/justice-thomass-wife-now-lobbyist-048812
By Kenneth P. Vogel, John Bresnahan and Marin Cogan
02/04/2011
She started as a congressional aide in the 1980s, became a midlevel Republican operative, then briefly left politics, reemergingin 2009 as founder of a tea party group before steppingdown amid continued questions about whether her actions were appropriate for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice.
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 websiteusing 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 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 assertedthat 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.
404 990 27 pp conlon
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wayback
https://www.politico.com/static/PPM156_liberty_central.html
Common Cause, in a letter to the Justice Department, suggestedthat 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 letterto 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, requestingan 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 mergingwith another conservative nonprofit group calledthe 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 filedincorporation 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 interviewwith 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.
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“What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement”
September 10, 2023, 2:42 pmcampaign finance, chicanery, Supreme Court
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.…
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legal af 2024
437,849 views Oct 17, 2024
Lisa Graves of Court Accountability Action and Michael Popok expose that the root of the current corruption and ethical scandals involving Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni go back as far as 2000, when Ginni Thomas then working for the Heritage Foundation was working on the GW Bush transition team if he won the presidency, as Clarence voted to, what else, have Bush win the presidency in Bush v. Gore. Court Accountability Actionhttps://www.courtaccountability.org/
leeja miller https://www.precedentproductions.co/contact-us
CHANNEL https://www.youtube.com/c/leejamiller/videos?app=desktop
GINNI 9/24 ~SCOTUS REFORM 1ST LIB INST SHACKLEFORD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0axZlH1okOc
RUSH LIMB 3RD WEDDING
Thomas to the bench despite being
9:09
legally required to do so Clarence
9:11
Thomas failed to report Jenny's income
9:13
from the Heritage Foundation year after
9:15
year to the tune of a total of $680,000
9:18
year after year Thomas checked a box
9:21
saying none in a section of the
9:23
disclosure that asked for information
9:24
about spousal income none around that
9:26
same time in 2002 jinny converted to
9:28
Catholic ISM her husband's faith and.
...8:11
Army in the 90s she was able to stir the
8:13
pot further at one point authoring a
8:15
memo and sending it to multiple
8:16
committees in the US House of
8:17
Representatives asking them to dig up
8:20
examples of dishonesty or ethical lapses
8:22
in the Clinton Administration she was
8:24
present during the hearings on the
8:26
Clinton ethics controversy and it wasn't
8:28
subtle her Memo was so obviously
8:30
partisan and inappropriate for the wife
8:32
of a sitting Supreme Court Justice that
8:34
Democrats blew it up and posted it on an
8:35
easel for everyone to see in the middle
8:37
of a hearing Virginia Democrat Jim Moren
8:40
objected to the presence of Mrs Clarence
8:42
Thomas in that bright blue dress in 2000
8:44
Jenny Thomas took a job at where else
8:46
the Heritage Foundation Think Tank an
8:48
author of project 2025 acting as the
8:51
White House liaison for the think tank
8:53
and assisting with the collection of
8:54
resumés for presidential appointments
8:57
even as her husband presided over Bush V
8:59
Gore four the case that determined the
9:00
outcome of the 2000 presidential
9:02
election in favor of Republican and
...
10:26
2011 she became a special correspondent
10:28
for Tucker Carlson's Fox News show the
10:30
wife of a sitting Supreme Court Justice
10:33
meddling in campaign finance and making
10:35
public appearances on the largest
10:36
right-wing propaganda machine in the
10:38
country jinny is also good friends with
10:40
Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society I
10:42
did a whole video about him who in 2011
10:44
and 2012 instructed kellyanne Conway's
10:47
polling Company to pay Liberty
10:49
Consulting
10:51
$80,000 but Bill the payments to Leo's
10:54
judicial education project and
10:56
explicitly told Conway not to mention J
10:59
in the payments and all this time as
11:01
Clarence is serving on the highest court
11:03
in the land and jinny is working
11:04
tirelessly for the interests of big
11:06
businesses and billionaires they're also
11:08
taking lavish trips on yachts and
11:10
private jets paid for by those same
11:12
billionaires who interests jinny is so
11:14
Keen to protect harlon Crow whose
11:16
father's company Forbes once called the
11:18
largest landlord in the United States
11:20
didn't just take them on occasional
11:22
trips though they are close friends he
11:24
bought Clarence a $199,000 Bible paid
11:26
for an 18800 lb bronze sculpture to
11:29
memorate Thomas's favorite teacher at a
11:31
cemetery in New Jersey purchased
11:33
clarence's mother's house installed a
11:34
gate fixed the roof and allowed her to
11:36
continue living there he paid for
11:38
clarence's adopted Grand nephew's
11:40
$100,000 private school tuition Crow
11:42
paid
500K TO FOUND LOBBY GP...
12:52
she's a Maverick a rebel fighting an
12:54
invisible enemy the haters who are the
12:57
haters unclear anyone who's ever been
12:59
like hey Jenny maybe tone it down a bit
13:01
maybe stop brazenly disregarding the
13:02
Norms that protect I don't know the
13:04
Integrity of the highest court in the
13:05
land those all get lumped in with the
13:07
same voices that said to her that she
13:09
shouldn't marry a black man that women
13:10
can't do anything that she had to be a
13:12
sweet demure smiling Justice's wife in
13:14
her black and white worldview all of
13:16
that is lumped together along with
13:18
conspiracy theories that she likes to
13:19
share on her Facebook page about George
13:20
Soros and school shootings into one
13:23
monolithic enemy out to get her and her
13:25
way of life all nuances lost to Blind
13:28
bigotry and fear so she found an easy
13:30
and natural home among the Trump
13:32
supporters that eventually paved the way
13:34
to January 6th 2021 in the days after
13:37
the 2020 election Jenny was serving on
13:38
the board of the council for National
13:40
policy an organization representing the
13:43
interests of far-right Christian
13:44
nationalists and Republican activists
1991 PRESSURE // MEADOWS FAKE ELECTORS EMAIL EASTMAN
...17:28
not about Clarence Thomas of course the
17:30
two are one being and amalgam so it is
17:33
about both but let's talk about jinny
17:34
once more it was revealed yesterday that
17:36
in a call with donors to First Liberty
17:38
Institute a religious rights legal
17:40
activism group that describes itself as
17:43
the largest legal organization in the
17:44
nation dedicated exclusively to
17:46
defending religious liberty for all
17:48
Americans confusingly though this group
17:50
has been actively fighting against
17:51
efforts to reform the Supreme Court
17:52
which isn't about religious freedom but
17:54
which in a roundabout way will
17:56
absolutely help their exclusive
17:57
dedication to religious freedom because
17:59
actually enforcable ethics rules on the
18:01
Supreme Court would preclude the six
18:03
Catholic conservative justices from a
18:05
lot of cases it was revealed in that
18:06
call that Jenny Thomas personally
18:08
emailed the head of first Liberty
18:10
Institute farri right attorney Kelly
18:12
Shackleford saying that their opposition
18:14
to court reform has benefited some
18:16
judges saying in classic Boomer all caps
18:18
you guys have filled the sales of many
18:20
judges can I just tell you thank you so
18:22
so so much the first Liberty Institute
18:24
has repeatedly had cases before The
18:26
Supreme Court most recently the
18:28
religious freedom case about that
18:29
football coach who forced his public
18:30
school students to pray at games and a
18:32
case about a baker in Oregon who refused
18:34
to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding
18:35
Justice Thomas has never recused himself
18:38
for anything related to jinny's behavior
18:40
as it stands it's up to each individual
18:42
Justice to determine whether or not to
18:44
recuse themselves which is a laughable
18:46
level of self-policing and removal of
18:48
the current justices through impeachment
18:50
especially Alo and Thomas is pretty much
18:52
impossible representative Alexandria
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“What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement”
September 10, 2023, 2:42 pmcampaign finance, chicanery, Supreme Court
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.…
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an? 6 25 GUK
...
Walter leads the Capital Research Center, “a secretive organization that won’t disclose its donors while attacking others for lacking transparency”, the CIP alleges.
“His organization’s fiscal arrangements appear designed to shield activities from public scrutiny, yet he positions himself as a watchdog exposing liberal ‘dark money’.”
In 2023, according to the memo, Walter helped funnel nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas’s group while his organisation had business before the supreme court, creating conflicts of interest.
Walter also has a history of making or defending offensive statements about race, gender and sexual orientation. He publicly defended a university professor accused of making racist statements, said average Americans have “disgust at homosexual practice” and in the 1990s mused that one good thing from the Monica Lewinsky scandal might be “that feminism will die, that sexual harassment laws will fizzle”.
:{:{The memo adds: “This hearing represents weaponized government oversight at its worst, with Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene assembling hate group leaders, conspiracy theorists, and dark money operatives to attack civil society organizations while the very people crying about government waste have pocketed billions in federal contracts and subsidies.”}:
---
ggl 6 25
[### Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly ...
_The Washington Post_
https://www.washingtonpost.com › ... › Investigations](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/03/28/ginni-thomas-crowdsourcers-anonymous-donations/)
Mar 28, 2023 — In 2019, anonymous donors gave the think tank Capital Research Center ... Its president is Scott Walter, a former aide to President George W.
[### Scott Walter
Capital Research Center
https://capitalresearch.org › person › swalter](https://capitalresearch.org/person/swalter/)
Scott Walter is president of Capital Research Center. He served in the George W. Bush Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
Missing: ginni | Show results with: ginni
[### Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of assembling 'rogues' ...
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › jun › marjori...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/04/marjorie-taylor-greene-hearing)
5 hours ago — Walter leads the Capital Research Center, “a secretive organization that won't disclose its donors while attacking others for lacking ...
[### Fix the Court
Capital Research Center
https://capitalresearch.org › tag › fix-the-court](https://capitalresearch.org/tag/fix-the-court/)
In the second quarter of 2023, CRC reported on new investigations into the groups targeting Clarence Thomas ... Scott Walter Testifies to a Senate Judiciary ...
---
AOC big ginni clarence crits
https://www.alternet.org/rank-corruption-aoc-calls-for-clarence-thomas-impeachment-following-bombshell-report-on-megadonor-gifts/
---
an ah 9 24
many critics of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that in light of his wife Ginni Thomas' efforts to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results, he needed to recuse himself from Trump v. the United States. But Justice Thomas refused, and he was among the six GOP-appointed justices who, in that case, ruled that U.S. presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts but not for "unofficial" acts.
In a biting opinion column published on September 4, the Washington Post's cites Ruth Marcus as a "persuasive reason" why the High Court "does need an enforcement mechanism."
"Just when you think Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas can't do any more to cast disrepute on the institution where her husband has served as a justice for more than three decades — just when you think that perhaps, just perhaps, the justices and their spouses have been chastened by the torrent of bad publicity — there she goes again," Marcus argues. "The latest bombshell from ProPublica and Documented involves Thomas' gushing, all-caps thank-you e-mail to the conservative First Liberty Institute."
READ MORE:'Friendly crowd': Here are 5 takeaways from Fox News' Trump townhall
The Post columnist continues, "This is not just any conservative organization — it's one that litigates extensively before the Supreme Court, on some of its most contested cases involving religious liberty and LGBTQ+ rights. And Thomas' e-mail was not just some generic note of appreciation. It was to praise First Liberty for its fierce, and deep-pocketed, fight against — wait for it — proposals to reform the Supreme Court and strengthen ethics enforcement against the justices."
Marcus warns that Ginni Thomas "isn't just lobbying to 'Stop the Steal' — she's trying to Stop the Reform of her husband's own institution."
"So much for separate careers," Marcus laments. "Ginni Thomas' own behavior around the 2020 election, and Clarence Thomas' conduct in accepting, and failing to disclose, thousands of dollars' worth of gifts from wealthy conservatives helped trigger the push for Court reform in the first place. Now, we know, Ginni Thomas is a behind-the-scenes player seeking to frustrate any changes — and a grateful…. beneficiary of First Liberty's efforts on the Thomases' behalf."
Marcus adds, "This would be wildly inappropriate if First Liberty were a run-of-the-mill ideological organization, but the group isn't only that. It's a frequent litigant before the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts."
READ MORE:Ex-Rep. Liz Cheney endorses Kamala Harris citing 'danger that Trump poses'
*Ruth Marcus' full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).
===
an pro p 924
ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.
Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”
Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.
[JUDGE SHOPPING?] NOPE SCOTUS
Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”
Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.
On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)
After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.
Ginni Thomas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
First Liberty Institute did not directly respond to ProPublica and Documented’s questions about the recording. Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”
The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed.
On the donor call, Shackelford voiced strong opposition to various court reform proposals, including the ones floated by Biden, as well as expanding the size of the court. All of these proposals, Shackelford said, were part of “a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court.” This effort was led by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases,” he said.
This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” She later wrote, “The nation’s eyes are on you now. … Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.” (Thomas said in 2022 she regretted sending the inflammatory messages to Meadows.)
Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, faced scrutiny for flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The flag flew outside the Alito home as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear a case related to the 2020 election. (Samuel Alito told The New York Times he had no role in flying the flag. He said his wife did it in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”)
The push to change how the court functions grew after a series of ProPublica stories showed that wealthy Republican donors have showered Thomas and Alito with free gifts and travel that they failed to disclose. Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas amended past disclosure reports, and the Supreme Court adopted the ethics code, its first ever.
Thomas and Alito have said they weren’t required to disclose free flights or hospitality from friends.
First Liberty has been at the forefront of a decades-long and successful effort to expand the First Amendment rights of religious groups, even as those interests can collide with other constitutional principles like maintaining the separation of church and state or providing equal protection for protected classes.
In the last several years, First Liberty has notched big victories. In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives ruled in favor of several Maine families represented by First Liberty and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, when it struck down the state’s ban on using public funding to pay for religious schooling.
Days later, the six conservatives ruled again in favor of a First Liberty plaintiff — in this case, a former football coach at a Washington state public high school who had been fired for praying on the field after games. The conservative majority said the coach had been wrongly removed from his job, a decision hailed by religious groups and criticized by some experts who said it would now be more difficult for public schools to keep education separate from religion.
First Liberty has also represented a bakery in Oregon whose owners refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing their religious beliefs; religious groups that opposed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and nearly three dozen Navy SEALs and military members who refused to be vaccinated for the virus on the basis of their faith. In all the cases, First Liberty’s plaintiffs won partial or full victories in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.
Shackelford, who is First Liberty’s president and CEO, has led the group for nearly three decades. His influence extends into the broader conservative movement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former First Liberty attorney, once called Shackelford a mentor. Shackelford has served as vice president of the Council for National Policy, an umbrella group that brings together conservative leaders and deep-pocketed donors.
He also works closely with Ziklag, the secretive network of ultrawealthy conservative Christians that aims to “take dominion” over every major sphere of influence in American culture. According to internal Ziklag newsletters obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Shackelford has participated in Supreme Court prep sessions and appeared on strategy conference calls organized by the group.
On the July 31 donor call, Shackelford kept the focus squarely on the mounting calls to reform the Supreme Court. In addition to Biden’s proposals, several groups, including prominent liberal legal outfits, have proposed other changes including term limits and stronger ethics guidelines. And earlier in July, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law said it had received a $30 million gift from the private-equity investor Jim Kohlberg to create a new project that will “seek reform of the Supreme Court.”
Shackelford described all of this — Kagan’s speech, Biden’s announcement, the $30 million donation — as if it was a coordinated effort. “They’re doing everything in their power,” he told the donors. “They’re hitting from every direction.” The “extreme left,” he explained, was “upset by just a few cases, but that’s all they need to say, ‘We’re ready to totally’ — they would call ‘reform’ or ‘restructure’ the court — but almost everything they propose would actually destroy the court.”
He aimed his fiercest criticism on the donor call at Kagan. “That is incredible, somewhat treasonous, what Kagan did,” Shackelford said. “The chief justice rules the court. They’re trying to keep the other branches’ hands off of them. And then you’ve got Kagan from the inside really being somewhat disloyal and somewhat treasonous in what she’s doing.”
Shackelford accused ProPublica of being part of a campaign to “delegitimize or get rid of the court.” He said that the ethics lapses unearthed by ProPublica’s reporting were “false” and “baseless,” even though they helped spark the creation of a new ethics code and led to Thomas filing new financial disclosure forms, in effect admitting that he had failed to disclose certain gifts.
ProPublica stands behind all of the stories in its “Friends of the Court” series. Donors do not have access to stories ahead of their publication, and they have no say over coverage decisions.
Turning to what his donors could do to help, Shackelford said that prayer was at the top of the list. “This is a spiritual battle,” he said. “Because the evil that will occur if we lose the rule of law is beyond, I think, what any of us can even think through.”
But First Liberty needed more than prayer — it also needed money. “We need resources to be able to do a bunch of the things that will make a difference between now and the next six months. And that turned out to be key last time,” he said, referring to a similar instance in 2021 and 2022.
Near the start of the Biden presidency, he said, First Liberty raised $3 million to run a campaign that sought to block efforts to add more justices to the high court and to reform or eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Getting rid of the filibuster then would’ve removed the 60-vote procedural hurdle that currently exists for most types of legislation.
According to Shackelford, First Liberty conducted polling, ran advertisements, worked with social media influencers and urged Congress to oppose these changes. In particular, Shackelford said, his group focused its activities on convincing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to oppose filibuster reform.
In the end, both senators did just that. “We stopped this from happening,” Shackelford said. (Spokespeople for Manchin and Sinema did not respond to requests for comment.)
But now, he went on, First Liberty needed more money if it wanted to mount a similar campaign to stop Supreme Court reform. He mentioned the Brennan Center’s recent $30 million gift and then asked, “Where’s our, you know, $10 million guy or gal?”
And to anyone who wondered about the odds that Supreme Court reform would actually happen, Shackelford responded: “I don't know. I mean, 25%? 30%? Whatever it is, it’s amazing how big that is when you consider that our country will be over and the rule of law will be over.”
Before the call ended, Shackelford wanted his “very top supporters” to know that they had the support in this fight from key figures in high places. He said that a First Liberty staffer based in Washington, D.C., had recently been in a meeting with Ginni Thomas. Afterward, Thomas sent the email that praised First Liberty for joining the fight against Supreme Court reform.
“‘Great to meet through the meetings today,’” Thomas wrote, according to Shackelford, who read the email aloud to the donors. “‘I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the Supreme Court,” she said, adding, “Many were so depressed at the lack of response by R’s and conservatives” to recent court-reform proposals. The rest of Thomas’ email, Shackelford said, was the all-caps gratitude.
Do you have any information about the Supreme Court and efforts to block court reform that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/katharine-gorka-1a595919/
ginni LI 5 24
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an no lnx
It's time to hold co-conspirator Ginni Thomas accountable
Ginni Thomas speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, (Gage Skidmore)
Thom Hartmann April 15, 2024
Now that Republicans on the Supreme Court have forced a pause in Donald Trump’s federal trial for trying to overthrow the government of the United States and install himself as dictator for life, Jack Smith and his team may have a little time on their hands.
Respectfully, I’d suggest this may be a great time to dust off his identification of Trump’s six main co-conspirators and roll out indictments against each of them. None were president so, even if Trump did have “total immunity for life,” they are all vulnerable to immediate prosecution.
Of the six co-conspirators who’re called out in Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump, the media have figured out the identities of five of them with a pretty high level of certainty. They’re believed to be Rudy Giuliani (#1), John Eastman (#2), Sidney Powell (#3), Jeffrey Clark (#4), and Kenneth Chesebro (#5).
READ: The most corrupt Supreme Court in the world and the Trump coup
The sixth one is more ambiguous, perhaps intentionally by Smith’s team because of the potentially explosive political ramifications: many people believe it’s Ginni Thomas, the notorious wife of the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in over a century. Other possibilities include Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Moscow-born Boris Epshteyn, or Roger Stone.
Co-conspirator #6 is identified by Smith as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” Ginni Thomas owns her own political consulting firm and was an open advocate of the fraudulent elector scheme.
Thomas also had access to the private phone numbers and emails for multiple Senators and members of the House who she reached out to between the time Trump was declared the loser of the November 3, 2020 election (November 7th) and the insurrection attempt on January 6, 2021. As Jack Smith wrote:
“Co-Conspirator 6 attempted to confirm phone numbers for six United States Senators whom the Defendant [Trump] had directed Co-Conspirator 1 [Giuliani] to call and attempt to enlist in further delaying the certification.”
And, sure enough, it appears that’s exactly what Ginni Thomas was up to.
Two days after the election, but before it had been called for Biden, she sent a YouTube video titled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN” to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Pieczenik was a far-right crackpot who’d previously claimed that Sandy Hook was a ‘false flag’ operation, but this video (which has since been taken down) claimed the election was stolen.
Thomas wrote to Meadows about the video:
“I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible??? Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.”
She followed that up with a second message to Meadows:
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
But Ginni Thomas was just getting started.
On November 19th, hours after Sidney Powell held a press conference to claim the election was stolen via voting machine fraud, Thomas texted Meadows:
“Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark. The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits. Monica Crowley may have a sense of this [from] her Nixon days.”
After Meadows replied, Thomas wrote:
“You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all. Lots of intensifying threats coming to ACB [Amy Coney Barrett] and others.”
As court case after court case went against Trump, and Republican officials in swing states like Georgia were speaking out loudly to say that Trump had, indeed, lost the election by a huge margin, Thomas continued her pressure campaign. On November 24th, she texted Meadows:
“I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.”
In January, after Vice President Pence refused to block the counting of Electoral College votes for Joe Biden (and it was obvious to the whole world that Trump had lost by 7 million votes), she texted a somewhat having-it-both-ways message:
“We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!! Amazing times. The end of Liberty.”
The indictment says that co-conspirator #6 was involved in the fake elector scheme. Thomas’ involvement in that scheme apparently started immediately after the election. As The Washington Post noted:
“New documents show that Thomas indeed used the platform to reach many lawmakers simultaneously. On Nov. 9, she sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
“The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to ‘stand strong in the face of political and media pressure’ and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was ‘yours and yours alone.’ They had ‘power to fight back against fraud’ and ‘ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,’ the email said.”
But that was just the opening. Thomas spent weeks aggressively pushing the message that the election was stolen from Trump and the lawmakers must find a way to keep Trump in the White House.
On December 13th, Thomas blasted out an email to 22 members of the US House and one US senator. It referenced a video that called on lawmakers to ignore voters and simply make Trump president for a second term. It read:
From: Ginni Thomas noreply@freeroots.com
Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2020 10:20 AM
To: Russell Bowers
Subject: Lawmakers, Please Watch This Video!
Dear Representative Bowers,
As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections - and we need you to exercise that power now! Never before in our nation's history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures. That's why the nation's eyes are now on you. Before you choose your state's Electors, I ask you to do two things:
(1) Please watch this 2-minute video! youtube.com/watch?v=2--_yte_SiE
(2) And then, please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead. Thank you,
Ginni Thomas
Indicting these six Trump co-conspirators would not only keep the story of their openly criminal (and arguably traitorous) activity in the front of the nation’s consciousness, it would also satisfy the simple demand of justice that criminals — particularly criminals who tried to take down our government — are held to account.
And even if Ginni Thomas is not co-conspirator #6, her case still requires a serious examination by the FBI and DOJ. She was clearly — by her own words — in the thick of the fake elector scheme, which was a blatant felony.
This would also inform the Republicans on the Supreme Court, who just tied a metaphorical rope to Jack Smith’s ankle and tossed the anvil on the other end into a lake, that we’re all paying attention to their treachery.
Smith and the Department of Justice are not without tools and resources right now. The question is whether they’re willing to do battle with a group of people who are openly working to manipulate the system to the benefit of Trump and his fascist cronies.
It’s time for Smith and company to up their game.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
A 'zealous election denier’s' secret meeting with Ginni Thomas is now coming to light ›
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'Flag-waving' liberal Norman Lear, now 100, warns against the 'threat of authoritarianism' America faces ›
Expert: Clarence Thomas could face 'criminal prosecution' by not paying taxes on gifts ›
'I remember Hitler,' says 91-year-old Republican behind Trump eligibility case ›
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===
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an 1 24
north Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a far-right MAGA Republican and election denier known for his anti-gay, anti-transgender and anti-Muslim views, appears to be the frontrunner in North Carolina's 2024 GOP gubernatorial primary.
Robinson has never backed down from the Big Lie, maintaining that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump — a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked. And he has been unwavering in his devotion to Trump on the campaign trail.
In an article published on January 11, the Daily Beast's Sam Brodey describes newly obtained documents that "shed light on the extent of his private ties to the movement to contest, overturn, and delegitimize Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 election."
The "zealous election denier," according to Brodey, met with far-right GOP activist Ginni Thomas — a major election denier who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — "weeks after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Biden's inauguration."
"According to a copy of Robinson's official schedule, which was produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, the lieutenant governor had a meeting with (Ginni) Thomas on March 30, 2021," Brodey explains. "But Robinson didn't just speak with Thomas that afternoon; the calendar note indicates he met with Thomas and a group she helped run called Frontliners for Liberty.
Initially a Facebook group that described itself as 'a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies,' according to CNBC, Frontliners for Liberty morphed into a key organizing venue for far-right activists nationwide working desperately to keep Trump in power — even after Trump was out of office."}:
Brodey adds, "Ultimately, Thomas' group was influential enough for it to draw the scrutiny of the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6. "
The Daily Beast reporter notes that although it's "unclear exactly what Robinson and (Ginni) Thomas discussed in their March 2021 meeting," Robinson has "continued to cast doubt on the election through his rhetoric."
READ MORE:'Start reading some of those quotes': Republican defends Hitler’s and Stalin's writings
"As recently as December 2023," Brodey observes, "Robinson was also downplaying the violent attack on the Capitol, telling a local GOP club that it was 'this minor little thing,' according to audio of the remarks obtained by The Daily Beast…. As Robinson asks voters for the power to lead one of the country's perennial battleground states, the news of his 2021 meeting with Thomas and the Frontliners adds to his record undermining an election many Republicans accept they lost and hope to leave behind."
When he defeated Democratic Yvonne Lewis Holley in North Carolina's lieutenant governor's race in 2020, Robinson became the first African-American to win that position in his state. Robinson, however, has been a very polarizing figure in North Carolina politics, often drawing criticism from both Democrats and Never Trump conservatives for the many inflammatory statements he has made.
The North Carolina Democratic Party has described Robinson as "homophobic, anti-Semitic, and downright unhinged."
"Predictably," Brodey observes, "Robinson's campaign for the North Carolina governorship has made the state's GOP establishment uneasy and delighted the MAGA base."
READ MORE:North Carolina Republicans aren't only anti-freedom but they’re openly racist as well
*Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).
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REF
https://www.thedailybeast.com/north-carolina-guv-frontrunner-mark-robinson-had-secret-meeting-with-ginni-thomas-after-jan-6?ref=home?ref=home}:
Publicly, the Trump-loving lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, has embraced the role of a zealous 2020 election denier.
In April 2021, for instance, Robinson told a crowd that President Joe Biden “stole the election.”
“Yeah, I said that,” Robinson added for effect.
Days before making that declaration, however, Robinson was privately meeting with one of the highest-profile election deniers in the country: Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Now, as Robinson ramps up his campaign for North Carolina’s governorship in 2024, documents obtained by The Daily Beast shed light on the extent of his private ties to the movement to contest, overturn, and delegitimize Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election—and it’s clear Robinson is an unabashed, unapologetic election denier running in the same circles as other Republicans showing no repentance for stirring up an insurrection.
In fact, Robinson met with Thomas weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Biden’s inauguration.
According to a copy of Robinson’s official schedule, which was produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, the lieutenant governor had a meeting with Thomas on March 30, 2021.
But Robinson didn’t just speak with Thomas that afternoon; the calendar note indicates he met with Thomas and a group she helped run called Frontliners for Liberty.
Initially a Facebook group that described itself as “a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies,” according to CNBC, Frontliners for Liberty morphed into a key organizing venue for far-right activists nationwide working desperately to keep Trump in power—even after Trump was out of office.
Ultimately, Thomas’ group was influential enough for it to draw the scrutiny of the House Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6. In December 2020, Trump attorney John Eastman spoke to the group, at Thomas’ invitation, to update them regarding his legal challenges to Biden’s victory. A court-obtained meeting agenda shows Eastman was slated to discuss “state legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.”
It’s unclear exactly what Robinson and Thomas discussed in their March 2021 meeting—or exactly who else joined. Since there was no location specified on Robinson’s schedule for the meeting, it may have taken place virtually. Spokespeople for Robinson and Thomas both did not return requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
Even after Biden was inaugurated and the MAGA legal challenges deflated, Thomas and allied far-right activists in her Frontliners group continued to work to undermine the election outcome, according to a *Washington Post*report—important context for her meeting with Robinson.
Robinson also continued to cast doubt on the election through his rhetoric, if not in any formal government action. (Trump narrowly beat Biden in North Carolina in 2020.) In addition to his April 2021 comments, Robinson[
] VID ] (https://youtu.be/NkdLquU8xVU) at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference to claim that Biden didn’t win the election.
Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina arrives at a rally for U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC).
At the gathering, Robinson told activists that 83 million people couldn’t have possibly voted for Biden. “I don’t think 83 million people know who Joe Biden is,” he said. “Joe Biden doesn’t know who Joe Biden is.”
As recently as December 2023, Robinson was also downplaying the violent attack on the Capitol, telling a local GOP club that it was “this minor little thing,” according to audio of the remarks obtained by The Daily Beast.
Robinson’s Trumpian instinct of pushing boundaries in his speech, and reveling in his fans’ acclaim afterward, has been a major factor behind his meteoric rise in North Carolina politics. In 2020, Robinson won the state’s lieutenant governorship with no prior political experience, and he first gained notoriety on the right in 2018, after a pro-gun speech at a Greensboro city council meeting went viral.
Now, Robinson appears to be the GOP favorite to take on Democratic candidate Josh Stein, even though Robinson may be—or potentially because—he’s positioned himself as the most extreme Republican in the field.
As Robinson asks voters for the power to lead one of the country’s perennial battleground states, the news of his 2021 meeting with Thomas and the Frontliners adds to his record undermining an election many Republicans accept they lost and hope to leave behind.
Predictably, Robinson’s campaign for the North Carolina governorship has made the state’s GOP establishment uneasy and delighted the MAGA base. Trump has said he plans to endorse Robinson in the Republican primary. In fact, at a fundraiser he hosted for Robinson in December, the ex-president declared his ally was “better” than Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the GOP primary, Robinson faces businessman Bill Graham, who has won the endorsement of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). If he were to win the primary, Robinson would likely face Attorney General Josh Stein in November. North Carolina is poised to host the most competitive governor race of 2024, with incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper (D) term-limited from running again.
The lieutenant governor’s strident election denialism is just one reason why many operatives—in both parties—believe he could prove toxic in a general election matchup. Few major statewide politicians have amassed a rhetorical record as incendiary and broadly offensive as Robinson.
On his very active Facebook page and elsewhere over the years, Robinson has made a range of comments disparaging Jews, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and women. The deeply homophobic politician has claimed that God “formed” him to fight against LGBTQ rights and has called LGBTQ people “filth.”
In 2018, Robinson said the comic book character Black Panther was created by an “agnostic Jew” to “pull the shekels out of your schvartze pockets”—respectively referring to the Israeli currency and a Yiddish slur for Black people.
In 2020, Robinson conducted an interview with the fringe militant pastor Sean Moon, and expressed his agreement at Moon’s articulation of the conspiracy theory that a cabal of Jewish bankers controls the world. Both debacles earned Robinson the rebuke of Jewish groups, including the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Previously, Robinson also accused Ellen DeGeneres of being a “top-ranking demon,” blamed Bill Cosby’s conviction on sexual assault charges on the Illuminati, mocked the teenage survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and made fun of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, after he survived a violent attack at his home.
Robinson has essentially never apologized for any of his controversial past statements. He did allow that his remarks on Jews and the Black Panther were poorly phrased, but he has vehemently denied any suggestion they were antisemitic.
In some respects, Robinson has cranked up the volume on his rhetoric since launching his campaign for governor—particularly when it comes to the 2020 election and Jan. 6.
In addition to his comments calling Jan. 6 a “minor little thing,” he has vociferously defended Trump’s efforts to undemocratically remain in power. In a December interview on Newsmax, Robinson said efforts to hold Trump accountable were “despicable.” The former president who was impeached for inciting the violence at the Capitol, Robinson said, “did absolutely nothing wrong, in fact, did everything right for the country.”
Adulation for Trump is one quality that Robinson shares with Thomas, who became an integral figure in the sprawling efforts to keep the former president in office.
A well-known right-wing activist married to an icon of the conservative legal movement, Thomas seemed to descend further into a fever swamp of fringe conspiracies before and after the 2020 presidential election.
The Jan. 6 committee obtained texts sent between Thomas and her friend Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff, which showed her expressing hope in online predictions that the Bidens, election officials, and journalists would be sent to Guantanamo Bay. She also urged Meadows to do more to support Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud to keep him in office.
Not a great deal is known about Thomas’ Frontliners for Liberty group, other than the fact that it began on Facebook and that Thomas was the administrator of the group page. According to CNBC, it had at least 50 members who Thomas described as “grassroots state leaders.”
On March 6, 2021, Thomas and the Frontliners hosted conservative pundit C.L. Bryant for a speech.
“There is a robbery that is going on in this country right now,” Bryant said, according to The Washington Post. “In fact, I say it to you and I’ll say it loud and clear, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I won’t bite my tongue. I do believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
Three weeks later, Thomas and her group had their meeting with Robinson.
# Sam BrodeyDeputy Politics Editor
@sambrodeySam.Brodey@thedailybeast.com
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an 12 23
even after she testified before the January 6 Select Committee in 2022, far-right GOP activist Ginni Thomas continued to embrace the Big Lie and maintained that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump — a claim that conservative then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and others on the Committee repeatedly debunked.
In an article published by Politico on December 21, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori lays out the implications that Trump's legal problems have for Ginni Thomas and her husband, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Two of the four criminal indictments that Trump is facing are related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results —one being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia.
According to Khardori, there is both good news and bad news for the Thomases where Trump's indictments are concerned.
The good news for the Thomases, Khardori writes, is that Ginni Thomas probably doesn't have any legal exposure. The bad news is that Trump's prosecutions could seriously "embarrass" and humiliate the Thomases.
"If Trump proceeds to trial in the Justice Department prosecution and is found guilty of the alleged offenses, then Ginni Thomas will come off looking even worse for immersing herself so thoroughly in his lies, for repeating his bogus conspiracy theories and for lobbying White House and state officials to do his corrupt bidding," Khardori explains. "Justice Thomas would go down in history as a Supreme Court justice whose spouse participated in an unprecedented, illegal and corrupt effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in this country."
Khardori, however, seriously doubts that Ginni Thomas has any "criminal liability" and argues that a "far likelier scenario" is that she actually believes Trump and his allies' claims of election fraud but did not break any laws in the process.
But that lack of "liability," Khardori writes, doesn't mean that Justice Thomas shouldn't recuse himself from any Supreme Court cases involving Trump and the 2024 election. Trump is claiming that Smith's election interference case against him should be thrown out because he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021 and therefore, enjoys "immunity" from prosecution — a claim that Smith totally disagrees with and is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to evaluate as soon as possible.
READ MORE:Chutkan slams Trump in latest ruling rejecting immunity argument: No 'divine right of kings'
"Justice Thomas should recuse himself because Ginni Thomas — an apparent true believer in Trump's election-fraud claims — is a victim of Trump's alleged crimes," Khardori argues. "That means that both Ginni Thomas and Justice Thomas have a direct reputational stake in the outcome of the proceedings — one that further calls into serious question the justice's ability to render an independent decision strictly on the merits of either case."
READ MORE:George Conway tears apart 'logically weak' dissents in Colorado Supreme Court's Trump ruling
*ReadAnkush Khardori's full op-ed for Politico at this link.
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no lnx 9 23
It’s time to investigate Ginni Thomas
Ginni Thomas in 2017 (Gage Skidmore
Thom Hartmann
September 05, 2023
Want to get Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court? The best route to do so may be through his wife, Ginni.
There’s history here, and it’s really worth knowing.
Back in March, I shared with you the story of how Senator Strom Thurmond torpedoed LBJ’s plan to make Abe Fortas Chief Justice — Fortas was then the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court — by running the “Abe Fortas Film Festival,” showing porn movies to men in the Senate on a continuous basis for weeks.
Thurmond dragged the process out long enough that Johnson’s term expired and Vice President Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon (who’d committed treason to win the White House by cutting a deal with the Vietnamese to turn down the peace treaty they’d negotiated with LBJ). Once Nixon became president, he put Warren Burger on the Court and into that top slot.
But that’s only part of the story, and the rest of it, particularly in light of the most recently unearthed nakedly corrupt behavior by Clarence Thomas, brings forward a possible solution to the unwillingness of the Supreme Court to police themselves and Congress’s inability to begin impeachment proceedings.
No Supreme Court justice in history has been either prosecuted or removed by impeachment. (Samuel Chase was impeached in the House in 1805, but the Senate failed to convict and remove him from office.)
But Richard Nixon figured out how to get one off the bench — specifically, the ultra-liberal Abe Fortas — and there’s a lesson in that experience for us today.
While Nixon’s motives back then were entirely partisan and corrupt, the Court today faces a genuine crisis of confidence that shakes Americans’ trust in their government. And credibility is the only tool the Court has to enforce its decisions, as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in Federalist 78:
“[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
“The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.
“The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” (emphasis Hamilton’s)
The revelations about three decades of Clarence Thomas’ corrupt behavior have been coming fast and furious in the past few weeks, on top of the shocking revelations laid out last April about billionaire Harlan Crow’s spending millions, starting in 1994, to cement his “friendship” with and apparent influence over the justice.
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ProPublica discovered that Crow had showered millions in gifts and luxury vacations on the Thomas’, bought Clarence’s mother’s home and lets her live there rent-free, and put the boy they were raising as their son through high-end prep schools. Since then, America has also learned that Crow also appears to be profiting mightily from Thomas’ tie-breaking votes on the Court.
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For example, Thomas was the tie-breaking vote to gut federal protections for half the wetlands in America, putting the most ecologically diverse and fragile ecosystems in the country up for commercial and residential development.
Lever News is reporting that this accomplishes a goal that Crow’s companies and the trade associations they’re members of have been working toward for years, perhaps even decades.
They’ve spent millions on lobbying, court battles, and submitting Amicus (Friend of the Court) briefs in federal courts, including specifically advocating for the outcome Thomas assured with his tie-breaking vote in last week’s Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency case.
Earlier, Paul Blumenthal had written for Huffington Post about how Crow’s company might benefit if the Clean Water Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, in part because they had some huge development projects that were apparently waiting on the ability to pave over, build on, or erect next to wetlands that had federal protection:
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“In 2022, Crow Holdings Industrial sought authorization from the Army Corps of Engineers under the Clean Water Act for a warehouse development in Georgia that would result in ‘cumulative adverse impacts to 6.87 acres of wetland.’”
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Since the Sackett decision, those wetlands are presumably no longer a concern for Crow’s company. Time to make some money!
This is just one of literally dozens — and perhaps hundreds — of decisions Thomas voted on that might have either affected Crow’s companies, affiliated entities and trade groups, or comported with Crow’s political perspective.
But while simple corruption like this would probably get a state court judge impeached or even thrown in jail, it apparently isn’t enough to draw fire from either the Justice Department (the only agency with the power and authority to take on the Supreme Court) or Congress (via impeachment).
Trying to overthrow the government of the United States, however, may be another matter altogether. And that’s where Clarence’s wife Ginni may be vulnerable.
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When Richard Nixon wanted to get rid of Abe Fortas, embarrassment (via the “Fortas Film Festivals”) wasn’t enough: Fortas defended his vote to legalize pornographic movies and ignored the critics.
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But then Nixon ordered his attorney general, John Mitchell, to convene a grand jury to investigate a bogus allegation that Fortas’ wife had engaged in a tax-avoidance scheme.
She was a lawyer with a prestigious DC firm and an obscure rightwing source had alleged the proof of her involvement in the tax scheme could be found in her safe. It made for lurid headlines, even though she happily emptied the safe for her bosses in the law firm.
Mitchell then began pulling together the grand jury and Fortas — knowing the old saw that “a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich” — put an end to the entire charade by resigning from the Court.
As Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean, who was there and knew the players, wrote in his book on the era (The Rehnquist Choice):
“Did the Justice Department have the goods on Fortas? Not even close. Mitchell’s talk was pure bluff. … Lyndon Johnson’s Justice Department had investigated this question [back when Fortas was nominated for Chief Justice in 1968] and found nothing improper…. Reopening of the matter by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department was purely a means to torture Fortas.”
Nixon’s persecution of Abe Fortas’ wife was as bogus as his war on drugs, both being done for purely political reasons (as I mentioned yesterday).
With Ginni Thomas, though, the story is quite different.
One of the crimes for which Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, et al are being investigated is defrauding the federal government (and the voters) by fielding a slate of false or phony electors to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden and award it to Donald Trump.
The Washington Post obtained copies of messages Ginni Thomas sent to more than half the Republican legislators in Arizona and multiple ones in Wisconsin encouraging them to do just that. She wrote:
“As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections - and we need you to exercise that power now! Never before in our nation’s history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.”
Asking them to watch a video purporting to prove the election was stolen (that’s since been deleted from YouTube for violating their terms of service), Thomas concluded her message with:
“[P]lease consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”
The Post also, in a separate article, documented multiple clear violations of ethics norms committed by the Thomas couple, some of which may rise to the level of violations of law.
Additionally, it’s possible Ginni Thomas was involved in the organization of January 6th, although she has denied it publicly. Only an investigation by an agency with subpoena power like a grand jury could determine the truth.
As The New York Times Magazine noted in February of last year:
“Dustin Stockton, an organizer who worked with Women for America First, which held the permit for the Ellipse rally, said he was told that Ginni Thomas played a peacemaking role between feuding factions of rally organizers ‘so that there wouldn’t be any division around January 6.’
“‘The way it was presented to me was that Ginni was uniting these different factions around a singular mission on January 6,’ said Stockton, who previously worked for Bannon.”
A federal grand jury investigation of Ginni Thomas would serve several purposes.
— First, it would demonstrate that there can be consequences for blatant corruption by members of the Supreme Court and their families, thus serving as a deterrent to corrupt practices by other or future justices.
— Second, it could shed light on some of the behind-the-scenes actions around the January 6th attempted insurrection and the effort to overturn the election through the criminal fake elector scheme.
— Third, it may provoke Clarence Thomas to finally pack it in and leave the Court, as his predecessor Abe Fortas did back in the day.
Given his apparent fear of appearing partisan, it’s unlikely Attorney General Merrick Garland would take an action like this on his own or directly through the DOJ. After all, he dithered and ignored Trump’s clear criminality for almost two full years until he was shamed into doing something by the public January 6th Committee hearings.
But, if there’s enough public pressure, it may provoke him to appoint a surrogate, a special counsel, to convene a grand jury and begin the necessary investigations.
And it’s entirely possible, after Jack Smith sends Donald Trump to prison (please, G-d!), that he’ll have some time on his hands which could be well spent sticking around Washington, DC…
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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.
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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 firefor reportedly receiving undisclosed gifts.
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Leo made the arrangements through former Trump Administration official Kellyanne Conway, according to the Washington Post's report.
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"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 landmarkvoting rights case."
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.
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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."
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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.”
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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.
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In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between 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.
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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.
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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.
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no lnx
Democrats must do all they can to expose 'corrupt' Clarence Thomas and 'destroy his reputation': journalist
Alex Henderson April 11, 2023
During the 1990s, far-right Justice Clarence Thomas often found himself at odds with both Democrats and fellow Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had more than her share of disagreements with Thomas, and Ronald Reagan appointees Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor were likely to part company with Thomas when it came to right-to-privacy decisions, abortion and gay rights.
Thomas' closest ideological ally on the High Court during the 1990s was Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. They were the socially conservative justices who were the most likely to side with the religious right, and their critics — a mixture of liberals, progressives and right-wing libertarians — regarded them as the Court's lunatic fringe.
But in 2023, the High Court on the whole is way to the right of where it was during the Bill Clinton years. Thomas has much more influence among his fellow justices than he did in the past, and he is more controversial than ever. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) calls for Thomas' impeachment, she has a variety of reasons — from his wife Ginni Thomas' efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to ProPublica's damning report that Justice Thomas, "for over 20 years," has "been treated to luxury vacations by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow."
READ MORE: Revealed: Clarence Thomas' luxury lifestyle 'is being subsidized' by a billionaire GOP megadonor
In a scathing article published by The New Republic on April 10, journalist Michael Tomasky emphasizes that Democrats should do everything they can to "destroy" the "reputation" of Justice Thomas — who he describes as "one of the most influential associate justices in modern history" as well as "the most plainly corrupt" one.
“ProPublica's report last week is jaw-dropping," Tomasky writes. "In the end, it shows this: Thomas used to report his gifts from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow…. Rather than stop accepting the gifts, he just decided to stop reporting them — which ProPublica says is against the law. Can he be impeached? Not now, with the GOP in control of the House. If that changes, sure, they can try, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have suggested."
Tomasky continues, "Of course, he would be acquitted in the Senate, where two-thirds are required to convict…. But that's no reason for Democrats not to do it. In fact, as I suspect AOC understands, the way partisanship works today in this country, that's precisely an excellent reason to do it."
The journalist argues that even though the U.S. is probably stuck with Thomas, it's important to make sure that his reputation suffers as badly as possible.
READ MORE: Ex-GOP rep. slams 'slimy and unethical' Clarence and Ginni Thomas business enterprise
"Destroy his reputation," Tomasky recommends. "If nothing else, ensure that he goes down in history the way he deserves: as one of the most unqualified Supreme Court justices ever, who has gone on to leave as light an intellectual footprint as someone serving three-plus decades could leave. Make him — and his wife, Ginni, who is also completely without scruples in the way she, as the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, entangles herself in our public life — a metaphor for every insidious thing the far-right wing has done to this country."
By attacking Thomas' reputation, the New Republic journalist argues, Democrats need to make him a symbol of everything that is "corrupt" and "reactionary" about the modern Republican Party.
"Journalists started the job; Democrats have to finish it," Tomasky writes. "They may never remove Thomas from the bench, but they can drive home a story that most Americans already seem to believe anyway: that Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the Supreme Court and the country, and the worship of this man on the right is one of the greatest symbols of their contempt for standards, the law, precedent, and democracy."
READ MORE: How Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion suggests other rights may be vulnerable after Roe: analysis
Read The New Republic’s full article at this link.
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https://www.alternet.org/clarence-thomas-2659749180/
an 4 23
no lnx in orig?
'A flagrant violation': More legal, ethics experts slam Clarence Thomas over bombshell corruption allegations
David Badash andThe New Civil Rights Movement April 06, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under fire after a bombshell ProPublica report detailed the expensive vacations he’s been given, gifts of a Republican megadonor, for more than two decades, without disclosing certain portions of them – which legal experts say he is required by federal law to do.
At issue are important questions of ethics and law.
The vacations, revealed in ProPublica’s extensive and detailed report Thursday, from a legal standpoint appear to be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in total. From an ethical standpoint, some say, they have cost the institution of the Supreme Court further repetitional damage.
Justice Thomas at times was accompanied on these lavish trips by his wife Ginni Thomas, the far-right activist and lobbyist who worked behind the scenes to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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Together or apart, one person who joined them on these all-expenses-paid trips to private resorts via private jets and private yachts was the gift-giver: billionaire Dallas real estate magnate and GOP mega donor Harlan Crow.
READ MORE: For Decades Clarence Thomas Has Accepted Luxury Vacations from a GOP Megadonor Without Disclosing Them
ProPublicarevealed the details of one of Thomas’ almost yearly trips.
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“In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef,” ProPublica reports.
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“If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.”
Justice Thomas “has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.”
Crow, who financially supports right wing causes, in 2011, according to Politico, contributed $500,000 to help Ginni Thomas start her consulting group, “Liberty Consulting, which boasts on its website using her ‘experience and connections’ to help clients with ‘governmental affairs efforts’ and political donation strategies.”
The ProPublica report includes an image of a painting that hangs at Crow’s private lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, in the Adirondacks that features shows Crow and Justice Thomas “smoking cigars at the resort. They are joined by lawyers Peter Rutledge, Leonard Leo and Mark Paoletta.”
READ MORE: Students Across the Country Walk Out of School to Protest Gun Violence After Nashville as TN House GOP Moves to Expel Dems
Leonard Leo is a vice president of The Federalist Society and sits on its board. The Federalist Society was the right-wing clearing house for most of Donald Trump’s federal court appointees, including his three Supreme Court nominees, and Leo is seen as the man behind those picks.
Meanwhile, legal experts are responding to the bombshell report, confirming ProPublica’s assertion that Thomas’ “failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.”
Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, an attorney who writes about the courts and the law and wrote a book on the Roberts Supreme Court, calls Justice Thomas’ actions “corruption.”
Stern observes that “federal law DOES require justices to disclose most gifts of value.”
“It’s clear that Thomas brazenly violated this law many times. We should call this what it is: corruption,” he says.
“Just to be clear here,” Stern adds, “it was a flagrant violation of federal law for Thomas to accept this wildly expensive luxury vacation without reporting it as a gift—his conduct isn’t just unseemly, it’s illegal.”
READ MORE: ‘They Had an Insider on SCOTUS’: Legal Experts Stunned by Bombshell Clarence Thomas Was Seen as ‘Key’ by Trump Lawyers
The award-winning investigative reporter for The New Yorker, Jane Mayer, pointing to ProPublica’s report, says: “This is why public trust in the Supreme Court is cratering.”
Leah Litman, Assistant Professor of Law and The University of Michigan School of Law, says, “no one is doing a better job at making the case that the Supreme Court is broken than … the Court and its Justices.”
Top national security attorney Brad Moss offers this exercise: “Change the name of the Justice to Kagan or Sotomayor, and the name of the donor to Soros. Then think about how Fox would react.”
Imani Gandy, Editor-at-Large covering courts and the law for Rewire News Group, does not mince words.
“Clarence Thomas should be impeached,” she says. “He broke the law.”
Attorney and former Biden deputy cabinet secretary, Cristóbal Alex asks, “How do you impeach a Supreme Court Justice?
“Besides being married to someone who conspired to overthrow our government, Justice Thomas has accepted what appears to be millions of dollars in undisclosed gifts,” Alex notes.
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https://www.alternet.org/clarence-thomas-2659747910/
an 4 23
no lnx
in the wake of the latest bombshell report revealing incriminating details about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' luxurious lifestyle, legal experts are weighing in with critical remarks and concerns as calls for accountability increase.
According to the new report:
"For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has asalary of $285,000, he has vacationed on [Harlan] Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks."
READ MORE: Clarence Thomas opposes a 'landmark precedent' guaranteeing defendants the right to counsel: legal columnist
The report also emphasized: “The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Now, legal experts have taken to Twitter with ethical concerns as they've pointed out the many issues with Thomas' conflicts of interest.
"There’s been a lot of talk by MAGA Republicans this week about the judge in NYC," former Trump administration official Olivia Troye tweeted. "If you want to talk about a judge & their family let’s talk about Justice Clarence Thomas & his wife Ginni…"
"Our country is poisoned from within," tweeted former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.). "Ethics be damned. And with his wife, Ginni, being a major GOP influencer with multiple organizations that funnel and accept money in GOP circles—and certified Q quack—Clarence Thomas should not be allowed anywhere near a judicial decision.…"
READ MORE: How Clarence Thomas went from a 'fringe figure with extremist views' to the Court’s 'center of gravity': report
Calls have also increased for Thomas to be impeached from the Supreme Court or held accountable amid reports on the latest findings.
"Google 'Clarence Thomas RV' and you'll find endless puff pieces about him and Ginni being ascetics who spend their free time with the common folk," Max Kennerly tweeted. "Turns out their vacations were really on private planes and superyachts — trips they concealed in violation of federal law."
"What is the penalty for violating the disclosure law? Would the DOJ need to first file a criminal complaint?" Chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon also asked.
According to a new report from The Washington Post, Supreme Court disclosures will likely hold justices accountable going forward.
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"Supreme Court justices and all federal judges must provide a fuller public accounting of free trips, meals and other gifts they accept from corporations or other organizations, according to revised regulations quietly adopted this month," the report notes.
The latest controversy followsThomas' own remarks insisting that the Supreme Court was being "bullied" following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. At the time, Thomas also raised concerns about Americans disrespecting the government, a remark Truthout's Sharon Zhang described as a form of "glaring hypocrisy" given the Supreme Court justice's reputation.
The judicial system “can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want,” Thomas said, implying that the opposing views toward institutions “bode ill for a free society.” Per the report, Thomas also said, "Young people are especially guilty of disrespecting government institutions like courts."
Pushing back against the remarks, Zhang wrote:
Thomas’s comments sparked ire among abortion rights supporters, who pointed out the glaring hypocrisy of telling people to simply live with decisions made by 9 unelected judges with lifetime appointments who are not subject to any oversight. As political commentators pointed out, Republican attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election are a prime example of people not being able to live with an outcome they don’t like — but Thomas has yet to condemn the anti-democratic campaign and coup attempt, perhaps because of his wife Ginni Thomas’s involvement in those events.
READ MORE: Here Are 5 of Clarence Thomas’ Worst Decisions - And Proof Judge Brett Kavanaugh Is Cut from the Same Cloth
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ref badash 11/22
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/11/they-had-an-insider-on-scotus-legal-experts-stunned-by-bombshell-clarence-thomas-was-seen-as-key-by-trump-lawyers/
Washington Post bombshell revealing Trump attorneys saw Justice Clarence Thomas as the key to getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election is leaving several legal experts stunned.
The Post reports eight emails “ordered released by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of California, include correspondence between Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and others discussing various legal strategies to convince Republican members of Congress to object to the official certification of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.”
In one email “from Chesebro to Eastman and several others sent on Dec. 31, 2020, Chesebro argued that [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas would ‘end up being key’ to asking the high court to overturn then-President-elect Joe Biden’s win in contested states.”
The Post states the email also says, “they should ‘frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt.'”
Politico’s Kyle Cheney sums up the scheme.
“Chesebro made the plan explicit: Get any remotely favorable ruling from a federal judge — not to win outright but to embolden GOP state legislatures, Congress or Pence to reverse the results.”
Politico‘s reporting includes copies of the redacted emails, and adds: “Chesebro contended that Thomas would be ‘our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.'”
“I think I agree with this,” Eastman replied.
“Eastman,” Politico notes, “an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, once clerked for Thomas and had corresponded with his wife, Virginia, in the weeks before Jan. 6.”
READ MORE: Ginni Thomas Attempts to Influence Overturn of Election Even Wider Than Previously Known
“[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5,” Chesebro wrote in one email, “ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress.”
Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) blasted both the Supreme Court Justice and his far right wing activist wife, Ginni Thomas.
“They had a damn insider on SCOTUS who they thought would help them overthrow our democracy,” Signorelli tweeted. “He’s married to a deranged MAGA cult member. He won’t even recuse himself.”
Former Harvard Constitutional Law professor Laurence Tribe blasted Chesebro.
“We now learn that Ken Chesebro saw Justice Thomas as Trump’s ‘only chance’ to stop the 2020 election from being duly certified. Such abhorrent abuse of an attorney’s license to practice law should be strictly disciplined and perhaps criminally prosecuted,” he tweeted.
Attorney and writer Rachel Solar, pointing to the Politico article asks: “When is it enough???? His wife is an insurrectionist He refuses to recuse He’s the Trump election-denial go-to? Come on.”
Journalist Helen Kennedy goes one step further.
“Hey look! It wasn’t just critics of the Supreme Court who thought Clarence Thomas was corrupted – Trump’s lawyers said so too in secret emails just revealed.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/03/28/ginni-thomas-crowdsourcers-anonymous-donations/
ref
a little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years, a Washington Post investigation found.
The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively shielded from public view details about Crowdsourcers’ activities and spending, information it would have had to disclose publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organization, experts said.
The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy. The funding is the first example of anonymous donors backing her activism since she founded a conservative charity more than a decade ago. She stepped away from that charity amid concerns that it created potential conflicts for her husband on hot-button issues before the court.
Thomas’s activism has set her apartfrom other spouses of Supreme Court justices. She has allied with numerous people and groups that have interests before the court, and she has dedicated herself to causes involving some of the most polarizing issues in the country.
In 2020, she privately pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election, and she sent emails urging swing-state lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory in awarding electoral votes. When those efforts were revealed by The Post last year, they intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the election and attempts to subvert it.
In recent months, the high court has faced increasing scrutiny over a range of ethical issues, including the lack of transparency surrounding potential conflicts of interest and a whistleblower’s claimthat wealthy Christian activists sought access to justices at social gatherings to shore up their resolve on abortion and other conservative priorities.
In a brief statement to The Post, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer for Ginni Thomas, said she was “proud of the work she did with Crowdsourcers, which brought together conservative leaders to discuss amplifying conservative values with respect to the battle over culture.”
“She believes Crowdsourcers identified the Left’s dominance in most cultural lanes, while conservatives were mostly funding political organizations,” Paoletta wrote. “In her work, she has complied with all reporting and disclosure requirements.”
He wrote: “There is no plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to Justice Thomas.”
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.
In 2019, anonymous donors gave the think tankCapital Research Center, or CRC, $596,000 that was designated for Crowdsourcers, according to tax filings and audits the think tank submitted to state regulators. The majority of that money, $400,000, was routed through yet another nonprofit, Donors Trust, according to that organization’s tax filings. Donors Trust is a fund that receives money from wealthy donors whose identities are not disclosed and steers it toward conservative causes.
The documents do not say how or whether the money was spent. It is not clear how much compensation, if any, Ginni Thomas received.
CRC, which bills itself as an “investigative think tank,” is dedicated to uncovering anonymously funded influence campaigns by unions, environmental groups and other left-leaning nonprofits. Among its trustees is Edwin Meese III, the conservative elder statesman and former attorney general in the Reagan administration. Its president is Scott Walter, a former aide to President George W. Bush.
Around the time CRC agreed to channel the anonymous donations to Crowdsourcers, CRC signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to hear a case that conservative groups hoped would rein in fuel emission regulations in Oregon, records show. The court voted not to take up the case. As is routine, the votes of the individual justices were not disclosed.
Paoletta wrote that “Ginni Thomas had no knowledge of nor any connection whatsoever to an amicus brief CRC joined.”
Walter did not respond to requests for comment.
Meese said in a brief telephone interview that CRC’s trustees agreed to the arrangement because Crowdsourcers “was a group that had similar objectives and it was felt it would be helpful to them.” Such arrangements are common among other nonprofits, experts said.
Former CRC chairman Michael Franc told The Post that it was “a courtesy for this group so that it could get going without having to start up on its own, something to ease the ability of this group to raise and use their money.”
Walter proposed the Crowdsourcers arrangement to the think tank’s board members and mentioned Ginni Thomas’s involvement, Franc said.
Seeking ‘culture warriors’
On May 18, 2019, Thomas told influential right-wing donors and activists about Crowdsourcers in a private meeting, video from the event shows. The left, she said, was pushing “cultural Marxism” and “eroding the pillars of our country.”
“We have some culture warriors, but we have a lot more to do,” Thomas said at a meeting of the Council for National Policy in Northern Virginia, according to the video, which was obtained by the nonprofit watchdog Documented and has been previously reported. “Conservatives and Republicans are tired of being the oppressed minority."
[pix vid]
May 18, 2019, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, presented Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty in McLean, Virginia. (Video: Council for National Policy via Documented)
The concept for Crowdsourcers had taken shape during discussions with “35 of the best thinkers about what the left is doing,” she said.
Mitchell, chair of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, speaks at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Camp Hill, Pa., in April 2022. (Matt Rourke/AP)
O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on March 4. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Thomas said partners in the effort included Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that submits amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in election law cases. Mitchell planned to establish a political action committee to “protect President [Donald] Trump,” according to a slide Thomas displayed during the closed-door meeting. James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas — known for hidden-camera stings that aim to embarrass liberals — would lead an effort to “protect our heroes,” she said. And Richard Viguerie, a pioneer in conservative direct-mail campaigns, would head up an effort to “brand the left,” she said.
Mitchell said in a brief phone interview that she did not know anything about Crowdsourcers and that nothing ever came of the political action committee.
“Ginni has asked me over the years to do a lot of different things,” she said. “I always try to respond.”
O’Keefe and Viguerie did not respond to requests for comment.
Thomas described herself as having a key role in bringing Crowdsourcers together. “I’m not the answer person. If anyone knows me, you know this. I’m merely a convener,” she said. “I find the talent and I put them in a room and I help them talk to one another.”
She said the group was “now under” the Capital Research Center, though she did not mention the funding. It is not clear exactly when in 2019 the anonymous donations were made.
Crowdsourcers had held its first meeting four months earlier at the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Va., a 340-acre bucolic retreat with equestrian facilities. Attendees at the January 2019 meeting gathered for dinner and met in a conference room the next day, splitting into several groups — each dedicated to a theme such as politics, education or family — to brainstorm ways to counter the left, said a person who attended and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private event.
Members communicated through a private Google group, emails obtained by The Post show. The emails contained warnings not to share information that would reveal the identities of the group’s members. “ABSOLUTELY … DO NOT FORWARD EMAILS FROM HERE WITHOUT REMOVING ALL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION FROM THIS LISTSERV,” warned one.
In February 2019, Thomas’s assistant emailed the Google group announcing the addition of new members, including Charlie Kirk, president of the pro-Trump student group Turning Point USA; Larry Solov, chief executive of Breitbart News; and Allen B. West, a former Republican congressman from Florida. Thomas replied, “WELCOME new leaders!!!”
Both Thomas and her assistant used email addresses belonging to her for-profit consulting business, Liberty Consulting.
In that same message, Thomas wrote that she had been trying to raise money for Crowdsourcers. “We had many great meetings with interested donors, but we don’t yet have specific funding yet, so prayers still needed,” she wrote.
She added that Crowdsourcers’ next biweekly conference call would include a presentation from Steve Hantler, an adviser to Bernie Marcus, a Home Depot co-founder and major conservative donor. Hantler is listed as the “principal officer” in a nonprofit group called the Job Creators Network Foundation, its tax filings show. The group has in recent years asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program.
Hantler declined to comment. Spokespeople for Kirk and West did not provide comment for this story. A spokeswoman for Solov said that “sometimes Breitbart people get put on informational lists ... to know what people are thinking and doing.”
By late 2019, Crowdsourcers had engaged Tim Clark, who spearheaded Trump’s 2016 campaign in California, to serve as its national director.
In an email obtained by The Post, Clark issued an invitation to a March 2020 public launch of the group. He made clear that Crowdsourcers did not have the money to pay for members’ travel and lodging for the event, which was to be held in Washington.
The launch was scheduled for March 6, 2020. “Culture Summit 2020 will focus on the Left’s escalating war across American culture and how we go on offense to better preserve America’s liberties for another generation,” read the invitation obtained by The Post.
It’s not clear whether the meeting — which would have taken place just as the nation was beginning to grapple with the spread of the coronavirus — was held as planned.
Clark did not respond to a request for comment.
A ‘temporary accommodation’
CRC’s funding relationship with Crowdsourcers continued through the end of 2021, records show. The relationship was described in CRC tax filings as a “fiscal sponsorship arrangement.” Under such agreements, an existing charity houses a start-up group with a similar mission until the smaller group gets off the ground.
In its tax filings, the think tank wrote that it provided “fiduciary oversight, financial management and other administrative services to help build the capacity” of Crowdsourcers. The filings describe Crowdsourcers as an “informal, unincorporated nonprofit association which serves as an incubator for ideas across a network of conservative leaders, cultural entrepreneurs, and cultural influences.”
Franc, the former CRC chairman, said the idea “didn’t seem like it was particularly controversial” when it was presented to the board for approval. “It was maybe putting some money in one of our accounts to make it easier to access it,” he said. “It was presented to us as a courtesy, something that was more of a temporary accommodation.”
Franc said the think tank had no role in raising the $596,000 that it channeled to Crowdsourcers.
Crowdsourcers was never established as an independent nonprofit group, according to a search of an IRS database.
Philip Hackney, a former IRS attorney who is now an associate law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said such arrangements are not uncommon or improper. He said they do allow the start-up group to avoid having to disclose information that independent nonprofits must reveal in annual tax filings, such as its officers or details about its spending.
“You would be able to keep names and salaries off of any documents,” he said.
Indeed, Thomas’s title in Crowdsourcers is not a matter of public record and could not be determined.
CRC’s annual audits show that the $596,000 dedicated to Crowdsourcers was “released” from donor restrictions over three years, meaning donors’ conditions on how it could be spent had been satisfied or lifted, experts said.
About $207,000 for Crowdsourcers was released in 2019, $85,000 in 2020 and the remaining $303,000 in 2021, the audits show. CRC’s most recent tax filing in 2021, obtained by Documented, said it had ended its agreement with Crowdsourcers at the close of that year.
An intersection with the court
[pix Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation in Washington in October 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)]
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In 2019, the year the funding arrangement began, a trade group that represents industrial companies, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, had unsuccessfully sued Oregon over a program that regulates how fuels are produced and transported.
On Feb. 8 of that year, CRC joined free-market groups including the Cato Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation in an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reconsider lower court decisions upholding the program.
It was the only time CRC, founded in 1984, has filed a brief with the court in recent decades, according to Supreme Court records dating to 2001.
For the court to hear a case, at least four justices must agree.
On May 13, 2019, the court declined to hear the case.
The fact that CRC filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court around the same time it was supporting the work of Crowdsourcers does not on its own present a conflict of interest that would have required Clarence Thomas to recuse himself, according to Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University. If Ginni Thomas was paid for her work with Crowdsourcers — either directly or through her consulting firm — then there could be a recusal issue depending on the size and timing of the payment, Gillers said.
All federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, are required to recuse themselves in certain circumstances, including when they or their spouses have a financial interest in a party before the court or when a reasonable person might question their impartiality. But because the Supreme Court sits atop the judiciary, there is no higher court to review each justice’s recusal decisions.
Gillers said ordinary Americans might find it puzzling that “one half of a married couple is at the ramparts on political issues that then get translated into legal issues that her husband has to decide.” But there is no rule prohibiting that, he said, and it’s not clear how one could be crafted.
Ginni Thomas has long maintained that she and her husband keep their careers separate. “I can guarantee that my husband has never spoken to me about pending cases in the court. It’s an ironclad rule in our house,” she told congressional investigators last year who were examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. “Additionally, he’s uninterested in politics, and I generally don’t discuss with him my day-to-day work in politics.”
Controversy over Ginni Thomas’s political activism dates back to at least 2010, after she founded the nonprofit Liberty Central to harness the energy of the then-burgeoning tea party movement. Though she described Liberty Central as “nonpartisan” and focused on the principles of the Founding Fathers, she spoke even then about “activating a community of grass-roots patriots” to wage a cultural war.
“It’s time to wake up and refocus. Just like in a farm setting we need to till the ground, plant the seeds, tend the crops and pray for rain before we can harvest the crops,” she said that year in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “The left has been tending their crops, you guys. It has occurred in high schools, in K-12 textbooks, in colleges and Hollywood and mainstream media in our churches and in government. We’ve been asleep.”
Ginni Thomas launched Liberty Central with an anonymous donation of $500,000 and another of $50,000, sparking questions about potential conflicts of interest for her husband. (Months after the launch, Politicoreported that the $500,000 investment had come from Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate magnate and major donor to conservative candidates and causes who had also given Clarence Thomas a Bible worth $19,000 that had once belonged to Frederick Douglass, according to the justice’s financial disclosures.)
Amid those questions, Ginni Thomas stepped away from Liberty Central in November 2010. She went on to establish Liberty Consulting. Because Liberty Consulting is a for-profit firm, it is subject to fewer public reporting requirements. Little is known about the firm’s clients, besides those that have listed payments to Liberty in required disclosures.
A nonprofit called the Center for Security Policy, which filed an amicus brief with the court in 2017 in support of the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, reported in its tax filings that it paid Liberty Consulting a total of $236,000 in 2017 and 2018, the New Yorker first reportedlast year. A political action committee run by Viguerie, the Crowdsourcers member and direct-mail pioneer, also reported paying Liberty $5,000 in 2018 for “video production.”
As a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas must list sources of his wife’s income on annual financial disclosure forms, but not the amount. Since 2018, he has reported that Liberty Consulting was the sole source of income for his wife, and that the firm paid her a salary and benefits.
Clarence Thomas is not required to report the firm’s clients.
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prog mag an 2 23
Under the guise of the regressive legal theory of “originalism,” the United States Supreme Court Republican-appointed majority has issued a series of ultra-right rulings on such vital issues as voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, and campaign finance. The end goal appears to be nothing less than the dismantling of the last vestiges of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement.
But in addition to being reactionary, is the court also guilty of corruption? The answer depends on how we define and think of corruption.
In the strictest legal sense, the justices appear to be in the clear. Under federal law, “public corruption” is defined as “a breach of the public’s trust by government officials who use their public office to obtain personal gain,” asking for or receiving anything of value in exchange for an official act. In a 2016 decision reversing the bribery conviction of former Virginia GOP Governor Bob McDonnell, the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of public corruption to require strict proof of a “quid pro quo”—a swap of money or another benefit in return for a specific governmental favor.
But from a larger moral and political perspective, the court’s Republican majority is far from innocent. We expect all federal judges—and particularly those at the top of the judicial pyramid—not only to be law-abiding but to be free of political bias and conflicts of interest. We expect them to honor the enormous faith we have placed in them to use their lifetime appointments to be forthright stewards of justice and democracy.
That faith has been breached time and again.
Ethical Cannon 2A of The Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires those who don the robe to “respect and comply with the law,” and “to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Cannon 2B further advises that a “judge should not allow family, social, political, financial, or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment.”
There also is federal statute, found at Title 28, section 455 of the United States Code, that requires judges to disqualify themselves when they have a personal bias or prejudice toward a party,or when the judge or their spouse has a financial interest in a proceeding, or they or their spouses have “any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome” of a proceeding before them.
The problem is that the Code of Conduct does not apply to the Supreme Court.And there is no mechanism for enforcing the disqualification criteria against a sitting justice. The Supreme Court stands alone as the only tribunal in the nation without any ethical accountability beyond impeachment, which for all practical purposes is an ineffective remedy. (Only one Justice in our entire history has been impeached—Samuel Chase in 1804—and he was acquitted by the Senate.)
The most obvious offender is Clarence Thomas, who has gotten away with flagrant misconduct as a result of this lack of accountability. Under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, all high-ranking federal officials are required to file yearly financial disclosure statements for themselves and their spouses to safeguard against conflicts of interest. But for many years, Thomas failed to report his wife Ginni's earnings on the mandatory annual financial disclosure forms that he signed under penalty of perjury, indicating that his spouse had no non-investment income. In fact, she was steadily employed in high-level jobs as a policy analyst and an outspoken conservative activist.
According to Common Cause, Ginni—who is also a lawyer—received more than $686,000 between 2003 and 2007 working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, claiming incredulously that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, Thomas amended his financial disclosures, which can now be examined on the OpenSecrets.org website.
Thomas again generated headlines when he refused to recuse himself in cases involving the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, despite Ginni’s prominent role as an organizer of the “stop the steal” campaign.
Thomas is not the only justice with a spouse whose work has raised conflict-of-interest questions. According to The New York Times, Chief Justice Roberts’ wife Jane has made millions in her career as a recruiter for high-profile law firms, some of which litigate cases before the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice, however, has never recused himself from a matter involving his wife’s recruits and has never disclosed her client list on his annual financial reports.
Additional potential conflicts of interest have surfaced around donations made to the Supreme Court Historical Society,a non-profit charity founded in 1974 to promote and celebrate the court’s legacy. Over the past two decades, the society reportedly raised more than $23 million from corporations, law firms, and other groups. The donors, in turn, receive special access to the Justices, who regularly attend the society’s annual black-tie dinner as well as lectures and other functions the society sponsors.
Among those who have attended society events and helped raise donations on its behalf is the Reverend Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister and anti-abortion crusader.In a June 2022 letter to Chief Justice Roberts and in later interviews with The New York Times, Schenck claimed he was told in advance of the court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which held that the owners of for-profit corporations may lawfully refuse to fund health insurance coverage for employees for contraception on religious grounds. The source of the leak, Schenck alleged, was Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Hobby Lobby majority opinion.
Alito also has been at the center of the scandalous leak last May of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which Alito wrote, overruling Roe v. Wade.
---
---
an me 2 23
a new report is shedding light on the increased calls for code of conduct guidelines to be put in place for U.S. Supreme Court justices, which would hold them to the same professional standards as judges in lower courts.
"Every time allegations are made about ethical lapses on the Supreme Court, the same question is asked: Why, unlike federal judges in lower courts, do the nine justices not have a binding code of conduct?" MSNBC's Lawrence Hurley wrote.
According to Hurley, those calls increased drastically due to the controversy involving Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas is facing scrutiny for her involvement in former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"Until now, the justices have held firm, even though district court and appeals court judges are bound by ajudicial ethics code," he wrote. "Among other things, it requires judges to 'avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.' If judges breach the code, they can be investigated and reprimanded via a separate complaint process."
The growing calls for a code of conduct come as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) prepares to reintroduce a legislative proposal. In a recent statement, Murphy expounded on the issue as he called for "increase transparency" and more forms of accountability.
"It’s a simple, nonpartisan solution to increase transparency, enforce accountability, and start to rebuild public confidence in the court," Murphy said in a statement.
While justices have argued there are certain codes in place, Hurley pointed out the issues with that writing, "The justices say they follow the spirit of the code, introduced in 1973, but they have never formally adopted one of their own. There is also no procedure that allows for complaints to be investigated short of the drastic step of impeachment."
---
---
https://january6th.house.gov/
report docs
https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6th?path=/browsecommittee/chamber/house/committee/january6th/collection/CRPT
---
https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/january-6th-committee-final-report?path=/gpo/January%206th%20Committee%20Final%20Report%20and%20Supporting%20Materials%20Collection/Supporting%20Materials%20-%20Transcribed%20Interviews%20and%20Depositions
ginni https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000923619/
4 SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE
5 JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL,
6 U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
7 WASHINGTON, D.C.
11 INTERVIEW OF: VIRGINIA L. THOMAS
Thursday, September 29, 2022
present: Representatives Luria, Aguilar, Schiff, Lofgren, Murphy, Raskin, and
23 Cheney.
2 Appearances:
5 For the SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE
6 THE JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL:
, PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER
SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL
CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL
- SENIOR COUNSELOR TO THE VICE CHAIR
PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER
mARK R. PAOLETTA
18 CRISTINA M. SQUIERS
19 BRANDON STRAUSS
20 SCHAERR JAFFE
21 1717 K STREET NW
22 SUITE 900
23 WASHINGTON, DC 20006
first, I just want to thank the committee for your patience as I recovered from my
17 hip replacement surgery and your patience of scheduling this.
18 Second, I'm here voluntarily to answer questions about my activities regarding the
19 2020 election, which I think you'll find were minimal and mainstream.
20 However, as my counsel has expressed, I am concerned that there may be more
21 than a few questions about my husband's work, which I do not believe is within the scope
22 of this committee's jurisdiction...
moreover, while I have a law degree, I am not licensed to practice law, nor have I
2 ever practiced law, nor have I worked on any litigation at the Supreme Court or any court
3 for that matter. I work only in the political lane.
4 As Justice Breyer just said last week, it is 2022 and women have professional and
:{5:{ separate careers from their judicial spouses, and I appreciated that.}:
6 Since my husband became a judge in 1990, my husband has only worked in the
7 legal arena, not politics. I can guarantee that my husband has never spoken to me
8 about pending cases in the Court. It's an ironclad rule in our house.}:
9 Additionally, he's uninterested in politics, and I generally don't discuss with him
10 my day-to-day work in politics, the topics I'm working on, who I'm calling, who I'm
11 emailing, who I'm texting, or who I'm meeting.
12 Regarding the 2020 election, I did not speak with him at all about the details of my
13 volunteer campaign activities, and I did not speak with him at all about the details of my
14 post-election activities, which were minimal in any event.
15I am certain I never spoke with him about any of the legal challenges to the 2020
16 election,as I was not involved in those challenges in any way. And I do know he was
17 completely unaware of the texts that I had with Mark Meadows until this committee
18 leaked them to the press while my husband was in a hospital bed in March fighting an
19 infection.
20 Let me also add, it's laughable for anyone who knows my husband to think I could
21 influence his jurisprudence. The man is independent and stubborn, with strong
22 character traits of independence and integrity.
23 And I'm now happy to answer any of your questions...
...Frontliners is a group of State leadersthat we created, a number of
7 us helped form, who were part of (c)(4)s in the grassroots conservative movement.
8 And through their help, whether it's Heritage Action or Tea Party Patriots or
9 Freedom Works or such, we identified valuable conservative activists in most of the States
10 who would enjoy coming together weekly on a Zoom call to talk about things that were
11 interesting to us.
12 Q Okay. And you said it was made up of State leaders. So State legislators,
:{:{13 State officials. Is that right?}:
14 A No. They were more grassroots activists. They were grassroots activists.
}:
15 I don't think we had any State legislators in that group.
:{:{}:
}:
[
According to a photo posted on Twitter, at aFrontliners event in October, Rep. Paul A.
[Shown the presence of] Gosar (R-Ariz.). Marissa Hamilton, recognized on LinkedIn as the grass-roots director of FreedomWorks, tweeted another photo the same day, apparently from the same incident. It included an image of three other Republican members of Congress who were instrumental in advancing lies about the 2020 election: Louis Gohart [gosar?] (Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.).
“Congressman” @replouiegohmert Congress women @mtgreenee and Congress women @laurenboebert Feather @freedomworks Frontliners for Liberty,” according to one version, the tweet read reserve Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Hamilton did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did spokespersons for Goser, Gohmert, Greene and Boebert.]
:{:{}:
}:
Okay. And how did the group originate? Did you form the group?
I was part of it. We all thought it was a good idea, that we were missing
18 the input and connection to State leaders as we met weekly since 2011 with national
19 leaders at Groundswell. So it was a bit connected to the Groundswell group. It was
20 Frontliners and Groundswell were a little bit related.
Okay. And what was your role with the group?
I would say I was an instigator. I was a leader. I was helping them set
23 agendas where I could, helping them connect people, helping look for State leaders that
24 were missing that I knew of. It was kind of like that...
1 Ms. Paoletta. Okay.
:{2:{ Mrs. Thomas. There's a few congressional staff, but mainly it's (c)(3)s, (c)(4)s,}:
3 and leaders of (c)(3)s and (c)(4)s on the center-right.}:
4 BYMR.-
Q Can you explain what (c)(3)s and (c)(4)s are?
6 A Nonprofit organizations who get charitable status through the IRS who work
7 on public policy.
8 Q Okay. And among them, are there some Members of Congress that are
9 part of this?
No, we don't have any Members of Congress.
How would you describe the activities of Groundswell during the
12 post-election time period? So after November 3rd of 2020.
13 A I'm glad you asked. That's one of the misconceptions that I hope to correct
14 today.
15 The truth is, that a lot of people don't know, isI stepped back on November 9th,
16 which was a Monday, I believe. And until sometime in January 2021, I didn't attend the
17 regular weekly meetings that I went to, whether it was Groundswell or Frontliners or CAP
18 or anything else. And I did that because I don't do the legal lane, and so much of it had
19 shifted from the political lane to the legal lane.
20 And what I find is that it's just I'm not as valuable in those instances, and a lot of
21 my friends feel a little bit chilled in discussing Supreme Court work with the wife of a
22 Supreme Court Justice.
23 So for a number of reasons, I stepped back, and I didn't attend those meetings.
24 So I'm glad to clarify that. I don't think people knew that...
:{:{ How about CNP Action? Did you continue to remain involved with that}:
2 organization in the post-election timeframe?
No, I did not.}:
And was it in the same -- November 9th, is that when you stepped back from
5 that work as well?
6 A I don't know if I specifically told them that that was when I was stepping
7 back, but I didn't go to the CNP meeting. There was a CAP summit for conservative
8 leaders that I did not attend in November.
9 So basically I was missing in action from the meetings. And people don't seem to
10 realize that, and I think that can inform your committee.
11 Q It is helpful to understand your role in that timeframe.
12 I also think it would be helpful to understand a little bit more about the thought
13 process and why it was that you felt on November 9th that you should step back from
14 those discussions.
15 A Right. I appreciate answering that...
[why get involv in stop steal?]
... was involved in political campaigns since 1976. I've been to many
23 national Republican conventions. And in this instance, the State of Virginia, the 11th
24 District, elected me as a delegate from my State to go to the Charlotte national
25 convention. I was very active with Trump rallies, with the Trump campaign, in the sense
20
1 that going torallies and going -- being on the ground in Virginia.
2 And so based on that and the things I was hearing from friends across the
3 movement, it was quite exciting that there was a new coalition coming together to
4 support President Trump, many more Democrats than we had ever seen in any other
5 elections, in my opinion.
6 And so for those reasons, I was an activist. I was an ordinary citizen activist in
7 Virginia, not paid by anyone to do what I was doing, but I was active with the Trump
8 campaign and thought he was winning.
9 Q And in the post-election timeframe, did you continue to stay involved in
10 efforts to question or challenge the results of the election?
:{11 A I wouldn't necessarily phrase it that way. :{What I was doing was seeing that}:
12 it was the State legislators who had power to decide if there were problems in their
13 election.
14 And so I participated in a mass communication device called FreeRoots that has}:
15 been I'm sure the subject of some of the conversations you guys have had and the media
16 has been interested in.
17 I joined with thousands of people to push a button that sent an automatic email to
18 some State legislators that I did not choose. I did not edit that letter.
19 And so, if that was what you would put in that category of things, doing something
20 about the fraud and irregularities at the State level in a timely manner, I wanted to get at
21 those because I thought the election was not going the right way....
A You know, I appreciate the question.
I honestly didn't focus on alternative electors. That wasn't part of what I was
3 focused on. It was really kind of more basic.
22
:{4 :{Maybe I hadn't attended enough meetings to be more educated at the time, but I}:
5 was only focused on those most likely to get at the fraud and irregularity in their State
6 elections.}:
7 Q Do you recall having any discussions with anyone prior to the election about
8 the role that State legislators might play in the post-election timeframe?
I don't remember anything specifically.
You've mentioned the FreeRoots emails that you didn't draft and you pushed
11 a button to send that.
12 Were you involved in any other efforts in the post-election timeframe to call
13 attention to problems with the election or to try and do something about the result of the
14 election?
:{:{I can't think of anything specifically. Is there something you're thinking of?}:
For example, did you have any conversations with anyone in the Trump
17 campaign regarding --}:
-- what their strategies were to challenge the election?
No, I did not.
21 Q Any members of the Trump administration regarding efforts to challenge the
22 result of the 2020 election?
:{23 A :{No, except, you know, I can certainly look at those wonderful Mark}:
24 Meadows texts that were made public by the committee, unfortunately, that certainly}:
25 showed I was --
I'm sorry.
That's okay. I was certainly hoping that they would challenge the election
3 until the truth could be found out if there was evidence of State problems in the election.
4 Q Anyone other than Mark Meadows that you communicated with within the
5 Trump administration regarding your concerns about the election?
6 A Oh, I probably --Jared Kushner I sent an email to hoping to buck him up on
7 the team. I probably sent something to Jared. I can't think of anyone else.
Do you remember what you sent to Jared Kushner?
I probably sent him an email that I then forwarded to Mark, just showing
10 that I was trying to buck him up and encourage him to stand firm until all the evidence is
11 in. That's, I think, what my hope was. I don't know the specifics.
Why did you reach out to Mr. Kushner?
I just knew he was part of the inner circle.
Do you still have that email to Mr. Kushner? He's not listed in item nine,
but I think that would be responsive to our request. Do you still have the email that you
16 sent to him?
Ms. Paoletta. Well, it was not in her documents.
Mrs. Thomas. Yeah.
Ms. Paoletta. So I'll leave it at that. But I think it -- as Mrs. Thomas just said,
20 she forwarded it to Mark Meadows, so it wasn't -- but anyway, it wasn't in Mrs. Thomas'
21 documents when we searched through the documents. Okay...
1 election?
2 A I've thought about that. The only one I can think of maybe is Johnny
3 McEntee, who I had been working with for second term personnel matters, to improve
4 personnel. That's the only one I can think of. But none of the rest.
5 I mean, Paul Tellerwas on various listservs with me, and I don't think I wrote to
6 him specifically about this. But that's all I can remember.
7 Q Did you have any communications with Vice President Pence in the
8 post-election timeframe regarding questions or concerns or words of encouragement
9 regarding the 2020 election?
10 A Not that I can recall.
11 Q And you mentioned Mr. Teller. Did you understand Mr. Teller to have a
12 role in the administration?
13 A Paul Teller would -- was a friend and ally and came to a lot of our meetings.
14 He's a part of our Groundswell meeting. And so I would see Paul at all the meetings that
15 I typically go to. So I get emails from him based on the listservs.
16 Ms. Paoletta. But you knew he worked for the Vice President.
17 Mrs. Thomas. Yeah. I knew he worked for the Vice President. Yeah. He set
18 up meetings sometimes for conservatives to come in.
19 Mr.- What do you recall discussing or communicating with Mr. Teller
20 about regarding the election in the post-election timeframe?
21 Mrs. Thomas. I don't remember any conversations I had. I assumed -- you
22 know, I assumed he was interested in reporting back to the Vice President on how various
23 people felt.
24 AndI felt like there might have been a division happening between President
25 Trump and Vice President Pence. And I think I was being quiet and watching what was....
1 them on your phone?
...
Ms. Cheney. No questions. Thank you.
BYMR.-
Q Ms. Thomas, I want to back up a little bit. You referenced conversations
11 with -- you may have had with Johnny McEntee. What do you recall discussing or
12 communicating to Mr. McEntee regarding the election in the post-election timeframe?
:{13 :{A I really don't have specific memory of anything I would have been}:
14 communicating. It was an emotional time. I was probably just emoting, as I clearly
15 was with Mark Meadows somewhat. I don't remember.}:
16 Q You -- okay.
17 Did you communicate with Donald Trump, Jr., in the post-election timeframe
18 about concerns or questions you had about the 2020 election?
No.
Do you have any sort of relationship with Don Jr.?...
28
1 that --
2 Ms. Paoletta. That would have been back in, what, like 2018, 2017, somewhere
3 around there?
4 Mrs. Thomas. Yeah. It must have been right after, sometime between 2016
5 and probably 2018.
:{6So I did interview him for a Daily Caller leader series for my program, :{but other}:
7 than that, no, I don't have a relationship with him.}:
8 BYMR.-
9 Q I was asking about Department of Justice officials.
10 Do you have -- did you have any communications with anyone who was then at
11 the Department of Justice in the post-election timeframe regarding concerns or questions
12 you had regarding the 2020 election?
13 A No, I did not.
Do you know Jeffrey Clark?
No.
Do you know Ken Klukowski?
I do.
:{:{How do you know Mr. Klukowski?}:
He's in a lot of my meetings. He's in CAP meetings. He's in Groundswell
20 sometimes. And I like him.}:
21 Q Did you have any conversations with Mr. Klukowski in the post-election
22 timeframe regarding the 2020 election?
Not that I remember, not that I can recall. No.
{{
As mentioned earlier, Blackwell was also involved in the scheme to pressure Pence to overturn the election. On Dec. 28, 2020, Blackwell sent an email to several right-wing insiders urging that Pence and his staff get a briefing from “John and Ken”—that is, John Eastman and Ken Klukowski. Eastman, a lawyer who pushed illegal schemes to keep Trump in power, has had a long professional association with Klukowski, a former director of FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty who after Trump’s loss was parachuted into the Justice Department office of Jeffrey Clark, who was plotting to drag the DOJ into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
}:
}:
How about Members of Congress? Did you have any conversations with
25 Members of Congress in the post-election timeframe regarding concerns you had about
...
Mr. Schiff. Can you explain a little bit more about what causes you to regret
Mrs. Thomas. It was just an emotional time, Congressman.
Mr. Schiff. I'm just trying to understand, is it something about the content of
10 them that you now disagree with or what?
11 Mrs. Thomas. Yes. It was the content of them I'm not comfortable with....
41
1 grassroots citizens who were worried about election fraud and hoping that Congress on
2 January 6th would be able to have a discussion, as many Democrats tried to challenge in
3 previous years electoral challenges by States that they thought were not accurate [in court not congress?] . And
4 so I just thought it was a mainstream activity.
Mr. Raskin. Very good. Thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr.- Can I ask just a question to follow up on Mr. Raskin's prior question?
Mr.- Sure. Go ahead.
BYMR.-
Q Is it fair to say that your view of the existence of fraud at the time was based
11 on what other people said and not your own consideration of the actual evidence?
That is true.
And have you ever read a report titled "Lost, Not Stolen"?
No.
Okay. That's a report that was written by a number of prominent
16 conservatives, including Senator John Danforth, Professor Michael McConnell, Judge
17 Michael Luttig, and a number of others....
46
1 A Yes. Well, that's a big part of why we had some people, includingJohn
2 Eastman and Chuck DeVore, come to Groundswell meetings. There were two groups
:{3 that created, it was called, the :{79-day project, and it was briefed to our groups, about}:
4 what would happen by the left if they lost the election. And they had tried to war-game
5 out what that was.}:
6 And so that was something that our groups were focused on, what could happen if
7 Biden lost.
Did you participate in the 79-day project?
No. We just brought them in to brief groups.
Did they -- "they," you mean Mr. DeVore and Mr. Eastman?
Yes.
And did they brief groups -- and I want to talk about which groups in a
moment, but did they do these briefings before or after the exercise that they did, this
14 sort of war-gaming exercise that they did?
I believe it was after, when they had a written report.
Do you know people who participated in that exercise besides Mr. DeVore or
17 Mr. Eastman?
18 A I don't remember. I know it was the Texas Public Policy Foundation and
19Claremont, but I don't know if it went -- I don't know the specific people who were
20 involved. It seemed extensive and well-thought-out to me.
21 QDid Cleta Mitchell participate, to your knowledge?
22 A I don't know.
23 Q Did you ever talk to her about it?
24 A I don't remember anything about her. She may have been at when we had
25 those briefings, but I don't remember her participating as a participant in that....
1 Q Which of the groups were you referring to when you said that Mr. DeVore
2 and Mr. Eastman briefed you on the results of their war-game exercise?
3 A I believe they talked to the Groundswell meeting. I don't know if they did
4 the Frontliner group or not.
5 Q And you believe that discussion with the Groundswell group was after the
6 exercise but before the election?
Yes.
:{Q:{ Do you remember discussions at that meeting regarding what efforts might}:
be taken to address fraudulent activity that took place in the election causing Mr. Biden
10 to be declared the winner?}:
No,I don't -- I don't remember that.
:{:{Did Mr. Eastman or Mr. DeVore or anyone else discuss this notion of State}:
13 legislators taking some responsibility or taking some action to challenge or change the
14 result of the election?
15 A No. I don't -- I don't remember that. I mean, I wasn't down in the details.}:
I just remember -- at this point in time, I just remember there was generally a briefing
about that war-game activity.[PROUD BOY MILITIA MARTIAL LAW?]
{{
beware BS
https://www:{.claremont.:(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}:org/**79daysreport.**pdf
...Purportedly aiming to make sense of this fraught election year, in early August, the Transition
Integrity Project (TIP) released a report suggesting that President Donald Trump would not
likely leave office without an unprecedented struggle. The TIP, a self-proclaimed “bipartisan”
group of some 100 people, was entirely composed of those utterly opposed to President Trump.
Their purpose wasn’t so much gaming out plausible post-election scenarios as much as it was to
:{:{generate breathless propaganda suggesting that no matter the outco}::{me, Pres}::{ident}::{ }::{Trump would}:
refuse to leave the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, Inauguration Day.}:
:{:{}:
TIP’s effort marks a lost opportunity, one that the Claremont Institute in partnership with the
Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), sought to remedy with their own simulation of election
night and what might be a highly charged and competitive aftermath—a contest after the contest.
For the task, Claremont and TPPF assembled a taskforce of 35 people, and over the course of
seven days, these Constitutional scholars, along with experts in election law, foreign affairs, law
enforcement, and media, made decisions as to how they would react to fast-moving events. The
entire operation was coordinated by a retired military officer experienced in running hundreds of
wargames.}:
:{:{}:
:{:{The Claremont}::{-}::{TPPF effort produced a detailed roadmap of the likely challenges at the state}:
level, how those might be adjudicated in the state and federal court, how domestic unrest and
foreign adventurism might intensify, and, in the unlikely event that the Electoral College cannot
determine a winner, how a President and Vice President could be constitutionally determined.}:}:
:{:{}:
The team foresees three basic scenarios, one of which was gamed out in detail:}:
:{:{}:
• A clear victory for President Trump, winning 32 states and 322 Electoral College votes,
better than the 304 Trump won in 2016, but, due to the massive use of mail-in ballots,
especially in the five states in which counting cannot commence until Election Day,
victory likely won’t be formally declared until days or weeks after election day as
Trump would only have 248 Electoral votes known for certain.}:
• A clear victory for Vice President Biden, winning 26 states and D.C. for a total of 342
Electoral College votes. Again, because of the six states that cannot count mail-in
ballots until Election Day, even in this scenario, victory won’t be known for certain as
Biden may only have 268 Electoral votes late into election night.
:{:{}:
• An ambiguous result, with several states’ final election results delayed and subject to
intense court fights resulting in a struggle right up to the Jan. 6 joint session of
Congress where the Electors’ ballots are unsealed. Uncertainty could extend even
beyond this as decisions for both the presidency and vice presidency are battled out in
Congress and before the U.S. Supreme Court.}:
:{:{:{It is this last scenario that the team simulated}::{ }::{in detail}::{. The key takeaways from the effort}:
:{:{include...PROUD BOYS MILITIA SUPPORT NATL GUARD MARTIAL LAW?]}:
}:}:}:
...Comparing the TIP wargame to the Claremont-TPPF simulation
In August, the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) issued a report regarding the “results” of its
“wargame” conducted over the summer. The “wargame” was conducted by about 100 Democrats
and so-called “Never-Trump” Republicans, allowing it to be characterized as “non-partisan.”
TIP’s four scenarios were:
}}:
18 Mr. Paoletta. And- I'm sorry, you're talking about before the election,
19 right?
Mr.- Yes.
Mr. Paoletta. Okay. Sorry.
BYMR.-
23 Q Did you know Mr. DeVore prior to this briefing that he gave regarding the
24 79-day project?
25 A If I did, I don't remember.I may have met him at different things...
1 didn't focus on Chuck DeVore until this occasion.
How about Mr. Eastman? Had you known Mr. Eastman for some time?
Yes. He was a clerk for my husband back in the early days, and he's an
4 active participant with the "Thomas clique" clerks that gather and -- by Christmas and
retreats, et cetera.
6 Q And I called him "Mr. Eastman." I think he goes by "Dr. Eastman."
7 Had you had discussions with Dr. Eastman -- outside of this meeting at
8 Groundswell regarding the 79-day project, had you had discussions with Dr. Eastman
9 prior to the election about potential avenues that could be pursued if former Vice
10 President Biden was declared the winner?
:{11 A :{I don't remember that. I mean, I don't remember any conversations with}:
12Johnabout that. But I think I was just trying to facilitate him presenting what the
13 war-gaming effort showed as to what the left could do if they lost and how they could -- I}:
14 just don't remember specifics about the 79-day project. I'm -- you can read it. I don't
15 remember it.
Mr.- Can I just ask --
Mr.- Yeah.
Mr.- -- when you say "what the left would do when they lost," did you
mean what policies they would put in place or did you mean what they would do with
20 respect to the actual election?
21 Mrs. Thomas. What they would do to challenge the election.
22 Mr.- Okay.
23 Mrs. Thomas. Like, how they would throw it into the House, et cetera. The
things that probably came up later. So, yes, it was -- I mean, you should read it. I don't
25 remember the specifics...[DaugHerty, hair "agree"]
here was a big decision.
And you say, "Eric Bergeris on the case with a group of us."
Uh-huh.
Who's Eric Berger?
Eric Berger is somebody who created Free Roots, the grassroots mass
52
6 communication device. And he was working on, with someone who started a campaign
7 on FreeRoots, something that would message to State legislators.
8 Q And what did you mean when you said that he was "on the case with a
9 group of us"?
10 A I believe he was working on a FreeRoots campaign that people in
11 Groundswell and other groups could use to help focus on State legislators and their role
12 in identifying fraud and irregularity in their elections.
Q Okay.
So the email chain was started at 6:00 a.m. -- at least the excerpt that we have
15 here -- was started at 6:00 a.m. on Friday the 6th. Your response is at 11:00 a.m.
16 Had you had conversations with Mr. Berger and others before 11:00 a.m., or 11:09
17 a.m., on the 6th about the need to activate the FreeRoots messaging and so forth...
Yes.
{{ see hoffman fake electors: Thomas is a member of the Council for National Policy, a network of prominent conservative activists, some of whom helped press claims of election fraud. She recently said she attended the pro-Trump rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thomas sent the emails via freeroots.com, a website meant to give political organizers an efficient means of conducting email campaigns. The email address of the sender in Thomas’s emails is displayed as “Ginni Thomas@freeroots.com>.”
A representative of FreeRoots did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The Nov. 9 email carried the subject line, “Please do your Constitutional duty!” In addition to pushing the lawmakers to appoint electors, the email asked for a meeting to discuss pursuing an “audit” of the vote.
Under the U.S. Constitution, states appoint presidential electors “in such manner” as the legislatures direct. Historically, some state legislatures appointed electors directly, but in the modern era states have delegated that responsibility to voters. In urging Arizona lawmakers to “choose” electors after Biden had already prevailed, Thomas’s messages claimed lawmakers could intervene in that process.
The records obtained by The Post do not show any response from Bowers, whose refusal to help overturn Biden’s victory in Arizona made him the target of a recall campaign. When Trump’s legal team pressed to replace Biden electors with Trump electors, Bowers released a public statement explaining that they were asking legislators to do something forbidden by state law.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him,” it said. “But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
A spokesman for Bowers told The Post that hundreds of thousands of messages were sent to the speaker’s office in the post-election period. “Speaker Bowersdid not see, much less read, the vast majority of those messages, including the form email sent by Mrs. Thomas,” said the spokesman, Andrew Wilder.
Bolick is married to Clint Bolick, an associate justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, who worked with Clarence Thomas early in his career and has said he considers the justice a mentor.
Shawnna Bolickwrote back to Ginni Thomas on Nov. 10, 2020, “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” She gave Thomas guidance on how to submit complaints about any of her experiences with voter fraud in Arizona.
:{:{Bolick, who is now seeking the Republican nomination to be Arizona’s secretary of state, told The Post that she received tens of thousands of emails in the months after the election and responded to Thomas in the same way she responded to everyone else.}:
Thomas replied: “Fun that this came to you! Just part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes!!!”}:
In the reply, Thomas’s personal email address is visible, and it matches an address she has used previously, The Post confirmed. Under her message is an unusual tag line that has appeared in other emails that are confirmed to have been sent by Thomas, including in 2021 to the staff of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R): “Sent from Ginni’s iPhone, a by-product of entrepreneurial free market capitalism. Competition, hard work, innovations and lack of government interference make great things possible! God bless America!”
Thomas was then serving on the board ofCNP Action, the political advocacy arm of the Council for National Policy. CNP Action was using its influence in Republican circles at the time to try to keep Trump in office. On Nov. 13, 2020, CNP Action held a workshop titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” featuring, among other speakers, Cleta Mitchell, according to an agenda that researcher Brent Allpress provided to the left-leaning watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, which published it that same month. Mitchell, a lawyer, assisted Trump in his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.
After that workshop, the group circulated guidance to focus efforts on legislators in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities at a time such as this,” read the guidance, which was also obtained by Allpress and first published by the Center for Media and Democracy. It said to push for new electors “in states where constitutional rights have been violated and evidence of substantial fraud has been established.”
:{:{The guidance advised visiting the website everylegalvote.com “to report fraud and take action.”}:
Visitors to the site could click a button and be taken tofreeroots.com, according to webpages preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. That landing page urged visitors to press the “take action” button to “email every swing House and Senate leader in one easy click.”}:
Because that landing page is no longer online, it is no longer possible to click through on the link. But language in Thomas’s first email aligns closely with language that appears in a preview when a FreeRoots link that was archived several days after that email is shared on messaging platforms.
The site everylegalvote.com initially said that it was produced in partnershipwith United in Purpose,a nonprofit group known for gathering and deploying data to galvanize conservative Christian voters. That organization has hosted the luncheons where Thomas presents her “Impact Awards.”
But the reference to United in Purpose was deleted within days. It was replaced with language identifying three “Founding Sponsors”: the Texas security firm Allied Security Operations Group, the Texas nonprofit group Liberty Center for God and Country, and the online talk show “Economic War Room.”
Representatives of United in Purpose and the three sponsors of everylegalvote.com did not respond to messages seeking comment. All three sponsors have promoted election-fraud claims, according to previous Post reports.
In the month after the election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans filed dozens of lawsuits challenging the outcome. By early December, Eastman and Giuliani were telling lawmakers in key swing states won by Biden that they had the authority and even the obligation to disregard the vote and select their own electors.
“Your argument is that essentially we have a failed election that would require the legislature to step in and assign electors. Am I correct?” a Georgia senator asked Eastman during a Dec. 3 hearing.
“Yes,” Eastman said.
The Dec. 13 emails repeated the claim that legislators could “choose” electors.
“As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections — and we need you to exercise that power now!” the email said. “Never before in our nation’s history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.”
The two-minute video it linked to, titled “A Word To Heroic Legislators,” has since been removed from YouTube for violating community guidelines. The video’s Web address, which is visible in the email, was included in a December 2020 newsletter written by activistGeoffrey Botkin, who appears to be the person featured in the video.
Botkin, who has published numerous podcasts and videos about the election and other matters, wrote in the newsletter that he had uploaded “A Word To Heroic Legislators” to another video hosting service. The video remains visible there.
“I’m asking you to stand up and lead heroically,” Botkin says in the video, urging lawmakers to appoint electors.
“We have to admit, legally and politically it’s way too late for other people to do it. Clever lawyers or the Supreme Court, they cannot now come to the rescue,” he continues. “This is a moment, a unique moment in American history, demanding that state legislators set America back on her foundations by using a power that you may never have known that you had — but you do have it.”
Botkin did not respond to a message seeking comment.}}:
Who's Mr. Daughtry?
He is an author of a book called "Sleeping the Waking Giant" about
4 grassroots conservatives. He lives in North Carolina. He's a member of Groundswell.
54
5 I've used him some times to be a facilitator at retreats that I've had on a number of cases.
6 He's very good at communication ideas.
:{7 Q :{And he notes some concerns from a messaging standpoint about this}:
8 approach that's advocated in Mr. Horowitz's article and then sort of endorsed by the}:
other folks that we've just read from.
10 Is that sort of a fair characterization of what he's saying in his email?
I guess so.
And then you forward his email, or the chain including his email, to Mr.
13 DeVore and Dr. Eastman at, it looks like, 2 o'clock mountain time on the 6th.
14 Do you see that?
Yes.
:{:{Why were you bringing Mr. DeVore and Dr. Eastman into this conversation,}:
17 if you recall?
18 A I don't recall. I don't know.}:
23 us."
Mr. Paoletta. You don't recall.
Mrs. Thomas. Yeah. I don't recall.
BYMR.-
You say in the email, "Tim Daughtry (see below) works on messaging w....
1 was released?
:{A:{ Not that I remember.}:
Q Are you affiliated with a group called CNP Action?}:
A Yes.
Q Were you in December of 2020?
A I may have been, but I didn't -- again, I took a step back, so I wasn't involved
in what they were doing. Did they create this?
My understanding is that they did.
:{:{Okay. It was something I didn't see. I didn't -- I wasn't participating with}:
10 CNP Action at that time.}:
Q And that was part of your sabbatical you mentioned.
A Yes.
Q So, from November 9th going through mid-January, you stepped back from
14 CNP Action's efforts regarding the election?
A Among others that I stepped back from, yes.
Q Yes.
:{:{Do you know -- have you ever talked to Ms. Mitchell about this document, by any}:
chance? Cleta Mitchell.
19 A I don't have any memory of it.}:
20 Mr. Paoletta. And, just to be clear, you don't have any memory of this document
21 at all.
22 Mrs. Thomas. Right.
23 Mr. Paoletta. Okay. So --
24 Mrs. Thomas. The first I remember seeing it was when you guys brought it to...
62
1 Q Yeah, I think I understand. Yeah. They were -- okay. I'll leave it at that.
:{2 :{So let me ask you, though, about Cleta Mitchell. Did she work with you during}:
3 the time that you were more involved with CNP Action? Did she work with that group?
A She was not, to my knowledge, a member of CNP Action.}:
Am I wrong? Was she a member?
I don't remember her being a CNP Action member. It was a group of six or seven
people, I believe, and I don't remember her in those meetings.
8 Q Do you recall having any discussions -- and if I asked you this already, I
:{9 apologize. :{Do you remember having any discussions with Cleta Mitchell in the}:
10 aftermath of the 2020 election about potential fraud in the election?
11 A I knew she was upset about Georgia. I know she was very active in what
12 was happening. And I may have heard somehow -- and I don't know how I heard it, but I
13 may have heard her talking about what she was doing in Georgia and that she was upset.
14 That's all I remember.}:
:{When you say you may have heard,:{ did you talk to her directly?}:
I don't think so. I think she was presenting at something that I may have
17 heard. I just can't remember.}:
:{18 Q :{Ms. Mitchell has testified under oath to this committee that she spoke with}:
19 you about what was going on in Georgia after the election and that you asked her about
20 the claims of fraud that were being made there.}:
21 Is that accurate?
22 AI don't have any memory of it. So maybe she has a better memory than I
23 do.
24 Q You don't recall any specific discussions with her or even general discussions
25 with her about what she was finding in Georgia and what the lay of the land seemed to be...
1 there with respect to the fraud claims?
No. I don't remember.
:{:{Did you ever speak with Ms. Mitchell about State legislatures choosing}:
4 electors in the Presidential election?
I don't remember that.}:
Okay.
63
7 This document -- and I know that you said you hadn't seen it before we provided it
8 to your counsel -- includes -- there are some bullet points about potential theories and
arguments regarding the role of State legislatures. But then there are several pages of,
sort of, summaries of fraud claims in some of the contested States.
Do you see that part of the document?
Mr. Paoletta. Yeah, the first time she ever saw this was on Tuesday. So -- and I
13 think she'd never seen it,I'd never seen it, so we didn't spend a lot of time on it.
Mrs. Thomas. And I didn't read it.
Mr. Paoletta. Yeah.
16 BYMR.-
17 Q Okay. Well, if you just look at the State-specific pages, so starting on
18 page 4 through the end --
Uh-huh.
:{-- :{have you seen any documents like this, meaning summaries by State, or in}:
21 a particular State, listing the fraud allegations that supposedly took place in those States
22 with regard to the 2020 election?
No.}:
So, going to Mr. Raskin's question earlier about particular claims of fraud,
this document lists several of them, but you've not seen documents like that,
...
1 compilation of fraud claims in various jurisdictions.
Right. It looks like a valuable document, but I hadn't seen it until Tuesday.
Do you knowJenny Beth Martin?
I do.
:{:{Did you ever discuss with Ms. Martin any efforts to overturn the results of}:
6 the 2020 election?
7 A Again, I go to the premise of your question. Anything I was doing was
looking for fraud and irregularities in the election, not to overturn it.}:
9 I don't remember any specific conversations with Jenny Beth about what actions
:{ she was doing.:{ She was active with Cleta, I think, in Georgia. That's all I remember.}:
And was she also active in CNP Action?
}:
Yes.
:{:{}:
}:
:{:{{{}:
}:
since the inception of this latest incarnation of the Stop the Steal campaign on Nov. 4 by lead organizerAli Alexander, who himself was a member as recently as 2017, according to membership rollsobtained by the watchdog group Documented, it has received support from CNP members. In fact, the tacit support of key CNP members for challenging the 2020 presidential election results may have been theimpetusfor Alexander’s decision to begin the campaign to overturn the results of the presidential election by peddling disinformation.
Formed during the Reagan administration, CNP holds closed-door meetings and instructs members to not discuss the council’s work or its membership, though, over the years, membership rolls have been leaked to the press. Those rolls have shown the organization to be home to a couple hundred marquee names in the conservative movement, Christian right, and right-wing fringe: Current members include Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Tony Perkins of the religious-right Family Research Council; former members include Trump’s former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
The CNP has a close relationship with the Trump White House—so much so, that at the superspreader Rose Garden event to celebrate the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “there were more Council for National Policy members present there than there were members of the White House staff and members of Congress combined,” said Anne Nelson, author of the “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” a book about the CNP. And on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump gave a big speech to the Council for National Policy, calling it as his “flagship address,” a rare public event for the council, Nelson said.
Nelson describes the CNP’s main role as providing “coordination, rather than direction” to its members, which include executives of such right-wing outlets the Salem Media Group and The Daily Caller.Ginni Thomas, Nelson points out, is on the board of governors of CNP Action, the lobbying arm of the secretive organization. In May 2019, Thomas and Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell provided an update on the Conservative Action Project,CNP’s 501(c)(4) arm that holds weekly meetings, and laid out their strategy for the coming year with aslide presentation to CNP members, which included messaging about building a robust infrastructure on the right and protecting Trump.
In the days leading up to the Jan. 6 mayhem, and on the day itself, the connection between CNP and Stop the Steal—and the campaign’s influence on the White House—became more apparent.
On Dec. 30, Right Wing Watch posted areportabout alettersent by the Conservative Action Project to Senate Republicans urging them to “contest the electoral votes” from “Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona”—the battleground states Biden won. That letter may have not mentioned Stop the Steal by name, but it asked senators to do exactly what Stop the Steal was demanding of Republican members of Congress: to reject electoral votes in favor of Biden.
Those signees includedCleta Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer (who was on theinfamous phone call when Trump asked that Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes”); Tom Fitton, an CNP executive committee member whose Judicial Watch group constantly spouts voter fraud conspiracy theories; Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and columnist for The Washington Times; Tony Perkins, former CNP president and leader of the Family Research Council; Kenneth Blackwell,former Ohio secretary of state and member of CNP Action’s board of directors; and William L. Walton, current CNP president. All were revealed as CNP members in a leak of CNP’s September2020 membership directory.
ADec. 10 letter posted on the Conservative Action Project website,reported by Alex Kotch at Exposed by CMD, asked state legislatures in battleground states to “exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump,” and that the House and Senate only recognize the electors of those states that do so. Again, this was the same demand state legislators and Congress members were hearing from Stop the Steal activists. Kotch reports that the letter links to a document that, according to metadata embedded in the file, was created by none other than Cleta Mitchell, calling for a “constitutional remedy” to reject votes for Biden. The signatories included some of the same names that appeared on the Dec. 30 letter, in addition to Ed Martin, a leading Stop the Steal organizer and CNP member whom Alexander has thanked for his“mentorship” in organizing the Stop the Steal campaign.
Two days before the Jan. 6 rally, CNP member Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth-oriented group Turning Point USA, shared a video from Women for America First’s Kylie Jane Kremer advertising the rally and told his followers that his organizations, TPUSA and Students for Trump, had funded more than 80 buses to attend the rally. “The historic event will likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history,” Kirk wrote. “The team at @TrumpStudents & Turning Point Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president,” he said in the since deleted tweet,uncovered by Daily Dot. Kirk’s Students for Trump co-chair is Ryan Fournier, a Stop the Steal organizer who spoke at the Jan. 5 rally on the same stage where speakers advocatedrebellion.
While a viral claim that Ginni Thomas funded the buses herself appearsto be false, Ginni Thomas has been linked to the group in the recent past, serving on Turning Point USA’s advisory council in 2019, along with fellowCNP members Foster Friess, Adam Brandon, and former Ohio congressman Bob McEwen.
On Jan. 5, speakers took to Freedom Plaza for a Stop the Steal rally designed to prime attendees for the big day. Among the speakers wasPeter Navarro, a fringe right-wing economist whospoke at the May 2019 CNP meeting. and who serves as an assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. On the stage at Freedom Plaza, Navarro peddled voter fraud conspiracy theories and urged activists to stay angry,declaring to the assembled crowd, “We will take this back.”
On Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas told her Facebook followers to watch the event convened by groups working in concert with the Stop the Steal campaign, dubbed the “Save America Rally,” on the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting, one of the few networks to cover the gathering. The massive rally, at which Trump would incite his supporters to bring their wrath to the Capitol, was led by the groups March for Trump and the Kremers’ Women for America First.
Amy Kremer, who was listed as a member in a2014 CNP membership directoryobtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was among the first speakers. Jenny Beth Martin, the CNP executive committee secretary whom Trump thanked in his speech to CNP this summer, was another. She brought with her Simone Gold, who is nowsought by the FBI after she appeared to be part of the crowd thatstormed the Capitol following her speech on the main stage, as seen on social media.
After the Capitol insurrection, Ginni Thomas either deactivated or deleted her Facebook account, likely unhappy thatreporters noted her enthusiasmfor a movement what would launch a riot. Josh Hawley, one of the senators who led the charge to contest electors’ votes in the Senate,charged ahead even as other lawmakers backed off in light of the violent consequences wrought by the disinformation campaign designed to delegitimize the outcome of the presidential election. “Shadow Network” author Nelsonnoted that, throughout his career, Hawley was groomed by CNP affiliates.
}:}:
:{:{}:
}:
How aboutRussell Ramsland? Was he involved with CNP Action?
I don't think so.
Do you know Mr. Ramsland?
I know the name, but I don't know him.
Have you ever had any conversations with him about the 2020 election?
Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Paoletta. Who is he?
BYMR.-
Q Russell Ramsland, I think, ran for Congress in Texas many years ago. And
:{22 he was involved with a group called -- or he became involved with a group called:{ Allied}:
23 Security Operations Group, and they were active in investigating claims of fraud relating
24 to Dominion voting machines.}:
25 A Okay. I didn't know him. I don't know....
:{1 news and seeing emails. But, beyond that, I don't -- :{I felt like I was pulled out. I was}:
2 looking at Thanksgiving and getting ready for a crowd coming to my house, et cetera.}:
3 Q So, on November 13th, there's a text message in the exhibit that we've
4 looked at previously from you to Mark Meadows that says "Sidney Powell" --
5 Mr. Paoletta. I'm sorry- What was the --
6 Mr.- Yeah, let me -- that would be helpful.
Mr. Paoletta. What's the --
Mr.- It's November 13.
Mr. Paoletta. Yep. November 13. Okay, the -- 1975?
Mr.- Yes.
Mr. Paoletta. Okay.
Mr.- At the bottom of page 1.
Mrs. Thomas. All right.
BYMR.-:
:{15 Q It says,":{Sidney Powell and improved coordination now will help the cavalry}:
16 come and fraud exposed and America saved." You suggested that Mr. Meadows should
17 help Ms. Powell be "the lead and the face."}:
18 Do you see that?
A Yes.
Q What caused you to believe that Sidney Powell's presence or efforts would
21 help the cavalry come and fraud exposed -- I assume you mean "be exposed" -- and
22 America saved?
23 A Yes. Thank you for that question.
24 I must have been watching enough things where she was communicating in TV
25 shows or press conferences whereI had confidence in her because of what she had done
[for flynn]...
as -- I don't know. I'm sorry these texts exist. I don't know.
2 Q Okay. On the next page -- I won't go through all of them. They're, sort of,
3 of the same general sentiment.
Uh-huh.
And Mr. Meadows responds -- this is in the last -- it's white here in the
:{6 exhibit indicating that it came from him. It's number- He responds, ":{This is a}:
7 fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the king of kings triumphs.
8 Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I stake my career on it, or at
9 least my time in D.C. on it."}:
10 Do you see that?
Yes.
And then you responded just a few minutes later, "Thank you. Needed
13 that, this plus a conversation with my best friend just now. I will try to keep holding on."
14 And you sent that message at a little before 11 p.m. on the 24th.
15 Do you recall who you were referring to when you said you had just had a
16 conversation with your best friend?
It looks like it was my husband.
Do you remember what you talked to Justice Thomas about that made you
19 feel better and allowed you to say "keep holding on"?
20 A I wish I could remember, but I have no memory of the specifics. My
21 husband oftenadministers spousal support to the wife that's upset.So I assume that
22 that's what it was. I don't have a specific memory of it.
23 Q What makes you think now, as you read it, that you're referring to your
24 husband when you say "my best friend"?
25 A Because that's what I call him, and he is my best friend. ...
e with the listservs that I'm on.
2 Q And was that your -- was it your practice to send emails to groups of people
3 where you would create the groups in a blind copy entry and note that it would only
4 be -- it would only show that it was being sent to you?
A Sometimes. Sometimes I did that.
Q And was that a way to sort of protect the confidentiality of all the recipients
7 of the email?
Probably. Yes, probably.
In the first -- before sort of the text of the email, there's a part that's in red
10 and underlined. It says, "Do not forward this."
Uh-huh.
:{:{"This is for you to ingest and take action with others, please. Do not}:
13 forward (unless you take off my name, please)."}:
14 Did you write that?
A Looks like I did.
Q Why were you asking that the email not be forwarded unless your name was
removed?
18 A I can't remember why I would have. I mean, I guess people are just
19 sensitive about emails like this that would move around, and I probably was. I mean, I
20 don't -- I don't remember specifically.
Mr. Paoletta. Do you do that normally with emails?
Mrs. Thomas. Sometimes for mass emails like this I would.
Mr. Paoletta. I mean, apart from the election ...
No.
Do you remember where it came from?
It looks like I cut and pasted it from the people with FreeRoots, whether it
4 was Kevin Freeman or whether it was Eric Berger, or somebody in Groundswell may have
5 passed it on to me, that it was an action item that we were trying to amplify.
{{ OGE energy? Kevin D. Freeman, CFA - Congress.gov
https://www.congress.gov › house › witnesses › H...
Kevin D. Freeman is considered one of the world's leading experts on financial terrorism and economic warfare. He has written.
}}:
6 Q Okay. Going, again, back in -- sort of out of sequence -- but back in time on
7 this document -- or not time, but space -- point 3, which is at the bottom of page 1-- and I
8 referenced this earlier in one of the questions when we were talking about
9 Representative Gohmert.
12 (heroes)"?
Right.
Do you see that last point 3, "We have a few Members of Congress
Yes.
Okay. Do you remember where you got the information regarding the
Members of Congress who were joining the ground game efforts that you reference in
16 this part of the email?
No, I have no idea.
You say, "Ask your Members, State legislators, and GOP leadership in States
19 to join, either in person or, like Lindsey Graham did, send money to the Trump effort."
20 Did you draft that language for this email, or is that a cut-and-paste from
somewhere else, if you remember?
I don't remember.
Do you remember knowing or how you found out or learned that Lindsey
24 Graham had given money to Trump, to the Trump effort?
25 A No. Honestly, the first time I focused on it is here with you. No, I don't...
but it looks like something I did.
Q Yeah, I understand.
Okay. Thanks.
BYMR.-:
Q I want to move to exhibit 4. And I realize you're not -- I don't see your
6 name on this. I don't know that you were copied on it. It refers to a Groundswell
99
7 meeting in December, which I believe was onDecember 1st. And that was during your sabbatical.
I wouldn't have been there.
Okay. So do you have any knowledge or understanding of whatMr. van
11 Spakovsky is asking Mr. -- or Dr. Eastman for in this email?
No. No.
:{:{It references a memo with the title "Constitutional Authority of State}:
14 Legislatures to Choose Electors" that it appears Dr. Eastman presented at that
15 Groundswell meeting on December 1st.}:
16 Were you aware that there was such a presentation?
I don't remember that. It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't remember it.
And it wouldn't surprise you --
Mr. Paoletta. You weren't at the meeting.
Mrs. Thomas. I wasn't at the meeting.
Mr. Paoletta. Yeah. She wasn't at the meeting.
Mrs. Thomas. And it wouldn't surprise me that Groundswellers would invite
John into the meeting for such a discussion...
1 first remembered it or became -- refreshed her recollection on it.
Mr- Understood.
Mr. Paoletta. Okay.
BYMR.-:
Q Do you have, though -- did it jog a memory for you as to how it was that
6 during this sabbatical timeframe you were reaching out to Dr. Eastman to ask him to
7 speak at a gathering?
101
8 A Yes. I appreciate that question because, you know, taking a sabbatical from
9 meetings doesn't mean that I -- I think I said this earlier. I didn't necessarily stop helping
10 my friends invite people into some of those meetings.
11 That was the -- I typically -- in the past, if I'm not on sabbatical, I typically am the
12 one who does a lot of the agenda context and give people how much time they have and
13 what the topic is that they want -- people would want to hear from.
14 But I wasn't playing that role then unless I was asked to. And it looks like I may
15 have been asked to bring John into the Frontliner meeting in this instance.
16 Q You reference an interview that you heard or were aware of that John -- I
17 assume you mean Dr. Eastman there --
Uh-huh.
-- being interviewed by Larry O'Connor.
Yes.
Do you remember anything about that interview or what Dr. Eastman was
22 discussing in the interview with Larry O'Connor in this timeframe?
23 A I don't remember the specifics. I know Larry O'Connor is very proud to be a
24 part of the January 6th President's full committee because of this email. He jokes about
25 it on air. But I don't remember...[manning, teller mark short]
...Ms. Thomas, what can you tell us about the circumstances that led to this email
18 on November 10th from you to Shawnna Bolick?
19 A Well, I honestly think it's more helpful to look at the next two exhibits, 15
:{20 and 16, that were :{automatically generated from the FreeRoots campaign when I clicked}:
21 the button, and it went to unknown State legislators.}:
22 You know, one was on November 9th. One was on December 13th. I don't
23 remember -- I didn't remember there were more than one of them, but there must have
24 been several since those are two different dates.
25 What happened was Shawnna Bolick is somebody who I generally know, [CLINT CLARENCE CLERKS?] and she...
[v did not know her, she replied to spam? freeroots?
...112
1 [1:05 p.m.]
2 BYMR.-:
3 Q So let me -- I'm going to back you up a little bit and ask you to give me a little
4 bit -- give us a little more detail on some of that.
5 So, every legal vote.
Uh-huh.
I think you said someone in Texas was involved in that.
Right.
Was that Catherine Engelbrecht?
No. That was Kevin Freeman. It was not the name of his organization. It
was just the name of the campaign on Free Roots. So it didn't have to be the name of an
:{ organization. :{But it sounds like Catherine Engelbrecht's group; I hear what you're}:
saying.}:
14 Q Okay. So Mr. Freeman -- I just want to understand the FreeRoots process.
15 Mr. Freeman would've crafted a -- or did craft a message?
16 A I assume so. I don't know who crafted the message, but he sponsored the
campaign on FreeRoots.
18 Q And how is it that it came to your attention and you had a button that you
19 could press that would send it to the various representatives that you described?
20 A You, too, could have pushed the button. All you needed was the link that
21 was readily available in other emails that I send around, right, that we've talked about.
So you use that link, and it said, "Do you want every legal vote to count?" Or, I
:{23 don't know, it says in here what the text was. :{And, again, I didn't scrutinize and look at}:
24 every word to see if I agreed with the sentence or the wording. I said, "Those are what
25 my friends are doing. Gosh darn it, I'm going to join in that groundswell," and I pushed...}:
4 BYMR.-:
5 Q I wanted to ask you about three cases. And from our prior discussion, I
6 think I can predict what your answer is, but just to make sure the record is clear.
7 One case is a case brought by the State of Texas against a number of States. Did
8 you have any involvement in the State of Texas filing a lawsuit related to the 2020
9 Presidential election?
None at all.
Okay.
12 And another case was brought by Representative Gohmert against Mike Pence,
13 which was filed in the Eastern District of Texas. Did you have any involvement in that
14 litigation at all?
None at all.
And then a third case was brought by President Trump, his campaign, against
17 the secretary of state of Pennsylvania. Did you have any involvement in that case at all?
None at all.
Okay.
20 Let me turn to exhibit 19, and we'll look at exhibit 19 and 20 kind of together.
21 But these are emails from Paul Teller to you, and they are forwarding statements from a
22 number of Members of Congress about Congress's role on the 6th....
ould you look at exhibit 18? This looks like a text message from Jake
18 Hoffman to Kylie Kremer.
Right.
And he mentions in the first line, "Hi, ladies. Ginni Thomas and Stephanie
Coleman gave me your number and suggested I reach out." And he goes on to mention
:{that:{ he's one of the official Trump Presidential electors in Arizona. And it looks like he's}:
}:
asking to speak at the events on January 6th.
:{:{}:
}:
:{24 :{Do you recall having a conversation with Jake Hoffman?}:
25 A Not about this. I mean, I don't remember -- until I got this from th...}:
124
1 committee, I didn't know that this happened. I didn't remember that I was connecting
him to Kylie Kremerabout his desire to be a speaker.
3 Q Okay.
:{:{4 And can you tell us a little bit about what role, if any, you had in relation to the}:
5 rally on the 6th at the ElIipse?
6 A I'm glad you asked. I had no role in organizing, coordinating, speaking.
just went as an ordinary citizen that day.}:
Q Okay.
A And so the media has gotten that one wrong too.[mark earlier tried to get her to not say?]
Q And did you have any role in organizing any events or rallies on January 5th,
11 the day before...
1 Stephanie Coleman. I'm just wondering about your prior connection to Kylie Kremer.
:{2 A I:{ knew Amy Kremer from back in 2011 or 2012, but -- and Kylie, no, I}:
3 didn't -- I don't know how I had her number. I do have a lot of numbers of people.}:
I understand.
But she's not a close friend. I don't remember how I would've even
connected them. But I clearly did.
7 Q Yeah. Okay. And no specific communication with either Kremer about
the events on the 5th or 6th?
A Right.
Q Okay. Thanks.
BYMR.-:
Q And it sounds like -- did you know Jake Hoffman before this event?
A Yes. He's a friend.
:{Q:{ Okay. And did you, during the November/December of 2020 timeframe}:
have discussions with him about his role as an elector at all in the State of Arizona?
16 A No. I forgot that he was an elector. He's a State delegate. He's
17 oftentimes a speaker for us at Groundswell. And, no, he's just a great guy.}:
18 Q Okay.
19 I'd like to move on, then, to the day of the 6th, unless you guys have any other...
1 Mrs. Thomas. I guess I'd only say one more thing, and that is: Violence on both
2 sides is abhorrent, and the more you guys focus on just one side, it can do significant
3 damage to our country, I believe.
:{4 And, certainly,:{ I'm living with Senator Schumer having said some things on the}:
5 steps of the Supreme Court that unleashed a lot of things that have us living with
6 Marshals right now. I think the summer of 2020 [BLM?] has a lot of communities who felt}:
violence by left-wing activists.
8 And when you don't show that same kind of focus that you guys are focusing on
9 the violence in the Capitol on January 6th, I am afraid of what happens -- the corruption,
theerosion of confidence in equal justice.
11 That's the last thing I'd like to say to you
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an me 2 23
a new report is shedding light on the increased calls for code of conduct guidelines to be put in place for U.S. Supreme Court justices, which would hold them to the same professional standards as judges in lower courts.
"Every time allegations are made about ethical lapses on the Supreme Court, the same question is asked: Why, unlike federal judges in lower courts, do the nine justices not have a binding code of conduct?" MSNBC's Lawrence Hurley wrote.
According to Hurley, those calls increased drastically due to the controversy involving Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas is facing scrutiny for her involvement in former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"Until now, the justices have held firm, even though district court and appeals court judges are bound by ajudicial ethics code," he wrote. "Among other things, it requires judges to 'avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.' If judges breach the code, they can be investigated and reprimanded via a separate complaint process."
The growing calls for a code of conduct come as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) prepares to reintroduce a legislative proposal. In a recent statement, Murphy expounded on the issue as he called for "increase transparency" and more forms of accountability.
"It’s a simple, nonpartisan solution to increase transparency, enforce accountability, and start to rebuild public confidence in the court," Murphy said in a statement.
While justices have argued there are certain codes in place, Hurley pointed out the issues with that writing, "The justices say they follow the spirit of the code, introduced in 1973, but they have never formally adopted one of their own. There is also no procedure that allows for complaints to be investigated short of the drastic step of impeachment."
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