20 years of filing false financial statements, which is a crime, are finally starting to catch up to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
A report of professional misconduct was filed with the Missouri Supreme Court on Feb 22, 2011 against Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Within the complaint, a damning history or criminality conducted by Clarence Thomas is recorded.
Here is the summary of the complaint that was filed with the Missouri State Supreme Court.
Summary of Complaint
Clarence Thomas breached his legal duty and violated The Rules of Professional Conduct by knowingly and willfully failing for 20 years to state truthfully on required AO 10 Financial Disclosure Forms that his wife Virginia earned non investment income. Clarence Thomas further labored under a conflict of interest by failing to disclose $100,000 in support of his nomination by the Citizens United Foundation when he sat in judgement of a case involving Citizens United. Finally, he made rulings that his wife benefited from financially and professionally, and, by extension, that benefited him. In short, this unethical and criminal conduct violates the Rules of Professional Conduct, and undermines the rule of law, respect for the law and confidence in the law.
Clarence_Thomas_MO_Bar_Complaint.pdf
There is clear evidence that Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has broken the law. There is even more evidence that Thomas has used his position on our nation's highest court to enrich his own family at the expense of the very notion of impartial justice. If you wanted to see the face of corrupt injustice in America, no better face would be suitable than that of Clarence and Virginia Thomas.
Did you know, in 1991 Citizens United ran an ad on behalf of then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas?
. . . As more facts come to light, it's obvious he failed to disclose quite a bit, including the $100,000 Citizens United spent on his behalf in 1991 to support his nomination. That would be an in-kind contribution which should have been disclosed as such.
A Time Magazine article from 1991 has the details:
Washington-area television viewers were startled last week to see three familiar senatorial faces pop up on their screens above the words WHO WILL JUDGE THE JUDGE? The follow-up question -- "How many of these liberal Democrats could themselves pass ethical scrutiny?" -- was hardly necessary, since the faces were those of Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden and Alan Cranston, all scarred veterans of highly publicized scandals, from Chappaquiddick to plagiarized speeches to the Keating Five.
The ad, produced by two independent right-wing groups, was intended to bolster Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas' confirmation chances by pointing the finger at three liberal Democrats who seemed likely to oppose him. Not coincidentally, the ad was produced by the same people who launched the 1988 Willie Horton spot that branded Michael Dukakis soft on crime but left George Bush open to charges of racism. Anxious not to be associated with such negative campaigning this time around, Bush quickly labeled the attacks on the Senators "counterproductive." Thomas pronounced them "vicious." His chief Senate supporter, Missouri Republican John Danforth, called them "sleazy" and "scurrilous."
Although Bush and chief of staff John Sununu demanded that the ads be pulled, their right-wing sponsors -- L. Brent Bozell III, chairman of the Conservative Victory Committee, and Floyd Brown, chairman of Citizens United -- refused. Calling the campaign a "pre-emptive strike" to counter anticipated anti-Thomas commercials, as well as retaliation for the 1987 spots that helped defeat Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, they vowed to keep running the messages for at least two weeks "until the left agrees to discontinue all its efforts against Judge Thomas." Thus far, that has been a mostly fitful effort at best, but Brown and Bozell appeared to see the flag of revolution rising above it. "Unfortunately," the two men declared in a written statement, "the Administration has no desire to confront the radical left."
So Citizens United pays to produce and air an ad with the stated intention of bullying "the left" into silence over his nomination, and Clarence Thomas fails to disclose that before hearing last year's Citizens United case that corrupted our election process?
crooksandliars.com
Now, let's examine the career of Virginia Thomas. She has made quite a living while working for right wing organizations like The Heritage Foundation where she earned a total of $686,589, which Justice Thomas failed to properly disclose for years as part her income. More recently "Ginni" Thomas began working as a lobbyist. Oddly enough, right around the same time as Ginni's new career took off, the American public was subjected to Ginni Thomas's late night call to Anita Hill nearly 20 years after the controversy surrounding Justice Thomas's nomination took place. Hmmm, coincidence? Because it seems like Ginny was trying to spin away from the fact that her new job creates a clear conflict of interest for her husband.
. . . Ginni Thomas placed her call to (Anita) Hill the morning after the New York Times reported that Virginia Thomas’s new Liberty Central organization accepted “large, unidentified contributions” totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those untraceable dollars came in the flood of right-wing funding following the Citizens United campaign finance decision, in which Justice Thomas voted with the majority. The Times reported that a wide range of legal ethicists said Liberty Central’s financing raises “knotty questions” about a conflict of interest for Justice Thomas.
kaystreet.wordpress.com
It's the bribery we call campaign contributions, stupid. If we were to remove the ability of special interests to bribe our elected officials with in kind donations like secretly funded campaign ads and direct donations to their campaigns much of the corrupt beltway smog would life over night. In an age where the law was broken when we tortured people to create evidence of non existent WMD's in Iraq and no one went to jail for it, in an age when Wall Street has defrauded the public and the government for their own gain and no one went to jail for it, in an age when Corporations have been given the right to use their unlimited funds to influence the public during elections, one man exemplifies the outright perversion of our system of justice to please the whims of the economic royalty that thrives on fleecing the average American, one man symbolizes this corruption of the rule of law to favor the influential super-rich and their corporations like no other. His name is Clarence Thomas.
"Justice Thomas believes that he is above the law even though the Supreme Court building in which he works has carved on its face, 'Equal Justice Under Law,'" said ProtectOurElections.org attorney and spokesman Kevin Zeese. "For months, we have been calling for the Department of Justice to ensure that equal justice is applied to Clarence Thomas. He filed false disclosure forms for 20 years in order to hide his wife's income, he withheld information from litigants in the Citizens United case about that group supporting him with $100,000 during his nomination process, and he and his wife financially benefitted from his decision in Citizens United. This is blatant corruption on a grand scale that, if unpunished, will undermine respect for and confidence in the entire Supreme Court. We again urge the Department of Justice to move quickly to investigate and prosecute Justice Thomas."
protectourelections.org
The Oath of Office that Supreme Court Justices must swear to at the beginning of their terms reads as such . . .
"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
uspolitics.about.com
How can anyone who knows of the unethical history of Justice Thomas and his wife read this oath and feel as though Clarence Thomas has not violated it. His every ruling sides with the rich over the poor, sides with big business over consumers and workers, and the notion that Clarence Thomas is impartial flies in the face of his rulings over the years. Again, if you wanted a portrait of unethical politics and bribery at the highest court in the land, look no further than Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia. In a nation where the people who lied us into war in Iraq go on book tours instead of going to jail, in a nation where the Banksters who defrauded our nation roam free to speculate and rake in huge bonuses, in a nation where the income inequality gap is at an all time high and taxes on the rich and corporations are at all time lows, Clarence Thomas is the portrait of corporate injustice, because if Clarence Thomas is above the law that he is charged to interpret then the law isn't really worth shit, is it?
Currently, Congressman Anthony Weiner has a petition you can sign which would ask Justice Thomas to recuse himself from any SCOTUS case pertaining to health care since there is clearly a conflict of interest at stake where the Thomas family has profited from attacking the new healthcare reform law passed last year. I can't imagine how a husband could be impartial when his wife's income is at stake. I urge you to sign Congressman Weiner's petition demanding that Justice Thomas recuse himself from any cases where there may be a conflict of interest between his rulings and his wife's career.
But there should be more to it than just asking a man who has broken the law as Justice Thomas has done to play nice. Justice Thomas should be held accountable for his criminal failures to disclose his wife's income. Other are held accountable and faced jail time for the same crime. Why should this accountability under the rule of law not apply to Justice Thomas as well?
Simply put, the actions of Clarence Thomas are criminal and unethical. If you needed one face to act as the portrait of the influence of political bribery by special interests on their own behalf to subvert the very nature of our system of justice to suit their own whims, there is a Republican for that, and his name is Clarence Thomas.
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca
Peace and love to all