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real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 19, 2022 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

wow oh wow, a minister comes clean and is outing the supreme court justice alito for leaking court information as a whistle blower. bet this one will not be front pages of the right wing owned media...



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html


Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach


Quote:

Years before the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark contraception ruling was disclosed, according to a minister who led a secretive effort to influence justices.

Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

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By Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker
Nov. 19, 2022
Updated 9:23 a.m. ET
As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights.

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right. Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But the leak of the draft opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion was disclosed in the news media by Politico, setting off a national uproar. With Hobby Lobby, according to Mr. Schenck, the outcome was shared with only a handful of advocates.

Mr. Schenck’s allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck’s allegation.

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The evidence for Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps. But in months of examining Mr. Schenck’s claims, The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.

Mr. Schenck, who used to lead an evangelical nonprofit in Washington, said he learned about the Hobby Lobby opinion because he had worked for years to exploit the court’s permeability. He gained access through faith, through favors traded with gatekeepers and through wealthy donors to his organization, abortion opponents whom he called “stealth missionaries.”

The minister’s account comes at a time of rising concerns about the court’s legitimacy. A majority of Americans are losing confidence in the institution, polls show, and its approval ratings are at a historic low. Critics charge that the court has become increasingly politicized, especially as a new conservative supermajority holds sway.

In May, after the draft opinion in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was leaked in what Justice Alito recently called “a grave betrayal,” the chief justice took the unusual step of ordering an investigation by the Supreme Court’s marshal. Two months later, Mr. Schenck sent his letter to Chief Justice Roberts, saying he believed his information about the Hobby Lobby case was relevant to the inquiry. He said he has not gotten any response.

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

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Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law and corporations’ ability to claim religious rights.

Justice Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, denied disclosing the decision. He said that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights, and did not dispute that the two couples ate together on June 3, 2014. But the justice said that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.”

ImageJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr. with his wife, Martha-Ann. An evangelical minister said he learned of the ruling in the Hobby Lobby contraception case from a woman who dined with the couple.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. with his wife, Martha-Ann. An evangelical minister said he learned of the ruling in the Hobby Lobby contraception case from a woman who dined with the couple. Credit...Alex Edelman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mrs. Wright, in a phone interview, denied obtaining or passing along any such information. A representative for Hobby Lobby would not comment. Beyond sharing Justice Alito’s statement, a spokeswoman for the court declined to answer questions about Mr. Schenck’s account or its investigation.

Mr. Schenck was not present at the meal and has no written record of his conversation with Mrs. Wright. But The Times interviewed four people who said he told them years ago about the breach, and emails from June 2014 show him suggesting he had confidential information and directing his staff to prepare for victory. In another email, sent in 2017, he described the disclosure as “one of the most difficult secrets I’ve ever kept in my life.”

The court deliberates about the fundamental rights of Americans — like access to contraception and abortion — behind closed doors. Mr. Schenck’s campaign offers insights into the court’s boundaries and culture, and into efforts to draw the justices closer to communities that are devoted to particular outcomes in critical cases.

In interviews and thousands of emails and other records he shared with The Times, Mr. Schenck provided details of the effort he called the “Ministry of Emboldenment.”

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Mr. Schenck recruited wealthy donors like Mrs. Wright and her husband, Donald, encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs. He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions. He ingratiated himself with court officials who could help give him access, records show.

All the while, he leveraged his connections to raise money for his nonprofit, Faith and Action. Mr. Schenck said he pursued the Hobby Lobby information to cultivate the business’s president, Steve Green, as a donor.

Understand the Supreme Court’s New Term
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A race to the right. After a series of judicial bombshells in June that included eliminating the right to abortion, a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives returns to the bench — and there are few signs that the court’s rightward shift is slowing. Here’s a closer look at the new term:

Legitimacy concerns swirl. The court’s aggressive approach has led its approval ratings to plummet. In a recent Gallup poll, 58 percent of Americans said they disapproved of the job the Supreme Court was doing. Such findings seem to have prompted several justices to discuss whether the court’s legitimacy was in peril in recent public appearances.

Affirmative action. The marquee cases of the new term are challenges to the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. While the court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, a six-justice conservative supermajority may put more than 40 years of precedents at risk.

Voting rights. The role race may play in government decision-making also figures in a case that is a challenge under the Voting Rights Act to an Alabama electoral map that a lower court had said diluted the power of Black voters. The case is a major new test of the Voting Rights Act in a court that has gradually limited the law’s reach in other contexts.

Election laws. The court will hear arguments in a case that could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures independent power, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules in conflict with state constitutions. In a rare plea, state chief justices urged the court to reject that approach.

Discrimination against gay couples. The justices will hear an appeal from a web designer who objects to providing services for same-sex marriages in a case that pits claims of religious freedom against laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The court last considered the issue in 2018 in a similar dispute, but failed to yield a definitive ruling.

It is unclear if Mr. Schenck’s efforts had any impact on legal decisions, given that only Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas proved amenable to the outreach, records show, and they were already inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade. That decision was only reversed this year after the addition of new conservative justices altered the court’s ideological makeup. But Mr. Schenck said his aim was not to change minds, but rather to stiffen the resolve of the court’s conservatives in taking uncompromising stances that could eventually lead to a reversal of Roe.

Mr. Schenck, 64, has shifted his views on abortion in recent years, alienating him from many of his former associates, and is trying to re-establish himself, now as a progressive evangelical leader. His decision to speak out now about the Hobby Lobby episode, he said, stems from his regret about the actions that he claims led to his advance knowledge about the case.

“What we did,” he said, “was wrong.”

Image
Mr. Schenck in Washington. He used to lead a secretive effort to influence the justices but has since changed his views.
Mr. Schenck in Washington. He used to lead a secretive effort to influence the justices but has since changed his views.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times

‘Pushing the Boundaries’
When the Hobby Lobby case was argued before the Supreme Court in March 2014, Mrs. Wright and her husband watched from a select spot: seats in the courtroom reserved for guests of Justices Scalia and Alito.

“We were invited to use seats from Nino and Sam,” she had written to Mr. Schenck days earlier, using nicknames for the justices. “Wow!”

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In the interview, Mrs. Wright said she used such seats “all the time” because “Nino and my husband were very good friends.” She was eager to hear the Hobby Lobby arguments, she added, because she had an interest in “all cases related to biblical issues.”

Her ties were the result, in part, of years of effort by Mr. Schenck.

Image
Donald and Gayle Wright got involved with Mr. Schenck’s organization “to have a major impact on the attitudes and actions of those in a position to shape and interpret our laws,” they wrote in a newsletter.
Donald and Gayle Wright got involved with Mr. Schenck’s organization “to have a major impact on the attitudes and actions of those in a position to shape and interpret our laws,” they wrote in a newsletter.

He had long been an ends-justify-the-means anti-abortion provocateur. During the 1992 Democratic convention, he plotted a stunt to accost future President Bill Clinton with an aborted fetus in a container. He was repeatedly jailed for blocking access to abortion clinics. He helped pay Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of the 1973 ruling establishing abortion rights, for speaking appearances years later opposing the decision. (She later said she had been paid to lie.)

But no matter how much attention those tactics yielded, Roe v. Wade, one of the most consequential decisions in the past half-century, stood in the way of efforts to end the right to an abortion.

Historically, the court does not like to get too far out ahead of public opinion, and justices do not lightly overturn longstanding precedents. So in 2000, Mr. Schenck launched “Operation Higher Court”— an attempt to reach the justices directly.

Justices are given lifetime appointments to promote independence and buffer them from lobbying and politicking. But Mr. Schenck wanted the conservatives on the court to hear from people who would hail them as heroes if they seized the opportunity to strike down Roe one day. The goal, he said in an interview, was to “embolden the justices” to lay the legal groundwork for an eventual reversal by delivering “unapologetically conservative dissents.”

Image
Mr. Schenck praying at the Supreme Court in 2014 with David Cortman, a lawyer for Conestoga Wood Specialties, which challenged the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptives coverage requirement in a case that was consolidated with Hobby Lobby’s.
Mr. Schenck praying at the Supreme Court in 2014 with David Cortman, a lawyer for Conestoga Wood Specialties, which challenged the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptives coverage requirement in a case that was consolidated with Hobby Lobby’s.

He wanted to gain access himself — but because he was a controversial figure, he also recruited couples who were less likely to draw notice. His leading players were Mrs. Wright and her husband, a real estate developer and philanthropist from Centerville, Ohio. They got involved in his work “to have a major impact on the attitudes and actions of those in a position to shape and interpret our laws,” they wrote in a 2001 newsletter.

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From 2000 to 2018, when he left Faith and Action, Mr. Schenck raised more than $30 million in pursuit of that goal. His donors ranged from evangelicals with little political involvement to the American Center for Law & Justice, a conservative legal group that was founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson and litigates abortion and religious freedom cases. (Faith and Action paid Mr. Schenck an average annual salary of about $83,000, plus a housing allowance.)

Mr. Schenck has recounted some aspects of his initiative to Politico and Rolling Stone. But he has spoken exclusively with The Times about the alleged Hobby Lobby breach and provided far more detail and documentation about his efforts — including correspondence with donors, anti-abortion activists, court officials and justices.

To remain as close to the court as possible, Mr. Schenck purchased a building across the street and began working the court’s employees.

One of his targets was Perry Thompson, an administrator. Mr. Schenck befriended him by preaching at a church where Mr. Thompson served as pastor in his spare time. He leaned on Mr. Thompson to get coveted seats for oral arguments and decision days. In characteristically hyperbolic fashion, Mr. Schenck described him in a fund-raising appeal as “God’s ‘secret agent’” at the court. Mr. Thompson did not respond to requests for comment.

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“I exploited my friendships,” Mr. Schenck said. “The bad is on me.”

Image
Mr. Schenck praying at the Supreme Court in 2016 as Justice Antonin Scalia lay in state. Second from the left is Perry Thompson, a Supreme Court administrator whom Mr. Schenck befriended.
Mr. Schenck praying at the Supreme Court in 2016 as Justice Antonin Scalia lay in state. Second from the left is Perry Thompson, a Supreme Court administrator whom Mr. Schenck befriended.

He also encouraged his donors to become patrons of the court’s Historical Society. Four of them, including the Wrights, became trustees, giving at least an estimated $125,000, records show.

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That helped him draw close to the society’s executive director, David T. Pride. In November 2011, Mr. Pride took Mr. Green of Hobby Lobby to the chief justice’s annual Christmas party at Mr. Schenck’s request. In an email, Mr. Schenck described Mr. Green’s parents, already Faith and Action donors, as potential big givers to the society: “Family is worth about $3b.”

Mr. Pride responded, saying he would escort Mr. Green into the party. He added: “We should consult about what you might like me to promote on your behalf to Mr. Green. Do you have a particular project or the like that you’d like me to talk up? Or should I just extol your many virtues to him?”

A few months later, the Hobby Lobby owners began discussions about joining efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.

Mr. Pride, now retired, said he was happy to help Mr. Schenck “do some fund-raising with the Greens.”

“Anytime a member of the society — and Rob was a member, and also a close friend — wanted help, I always did what I could,” Mr. Pride said in an interview.

Mr. Schenck’s overtures met with a mixed response. Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s longtime swing voter, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, were “polite but standoffish,” Mr. Schenck said. (Once, after he included a photo of himself with the chief justice in fund-raising material, he received a letter of rebuke.)

But Mr. Schenck said he visited Justices Scalia and Thomas in chambers, where he shaped his prayers as political messaging, using phrases like “the sanctity of human life” to plea for an end to abortion. (Peggy Nienaber, who worked with Mr. Schenck, was recently recorded saying that the group had prayed with justices at the court.)

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The Rev. Rob Schenck with the newly confirmed Justice Alito in 2006, at a welcome reception in the Supreme Court building.
The Rev. Rob Schenck with the newly confirmed Justice Alito in 2006, at a welcome reception in the Supreme Court building.

Mr. Schenck also asked Justice Scalia to meet privately with the Rev. Frank Pavone, an incendiary anti-abortion activist who ran Priests for Life, a nonprofit that has been involved in issues before the court, as have Mr. Schenck and Faith and Action.

“As I am sure you will appreciate, my position does not permit me to assist in the work of Fr. Pavone’s organization,” Justice Scalia wrote in a letter, adding, “I will be happy to meet him, however, at a time he can arrange with my secretary.”

Father Pavone did not respond to requests for comment.

Supreme Court justices mostly police themselves, which Mr. Schenck said he exploited. While they are subject to the same law on recusals as other federal judges, they are not bound by the ethics code that applies to the rest. (Chief Justice Roberts has said they “consult” it.) Under court norms, they can socialize with lawyers or even parties with interests before them, as long as they do not discuss pending cases.

“I saw us as pushing the boundaries of appropriateness,” Mr. Schenck said.

Still, the ethics code requires judges to avoid any impression that outsiders are in a “special position” to influence them. It is this provision that the meetings Mr. Schenck arranged seemed most designed to test, according to judicial ethics experts.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said in an interview that because the court’s reputation was essential to its institutional legitimacy, justices must take care to “appear to be playing a different role than politicians.” Meeting with a well-known anti-abortion activist could create the appearance that the “person is getting a private opportunity to lobby the justice.”

Though the court does not require justices to disclose meetings with interested parties, there have been periodic controversies, such as when Justice Scalia hunted with Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004 while a case involving his office was pending.

Worried about disclosures, Mr. Schenck gave his “stealth missionaries” close instruction. The justices were more likely to let their guard down at the Historical Society’s annual dinners, he advised recruits in a 2008 “orientation briefing,” because they assumed attendees had been “properly vetted.”

“See a justice — boldly approach,” he told the couples, according to a briefing document reviewed by The Times. If given the opportunity, bear witness to “biblical truth,” but don’t push it, he said. “Your presence alone telegraphs a very important signal to the justices: Christians are concerned about the court and the issues that come before it.”

Image
With Justice Clarence Thomas at the U.S. Capitol soon after the release of Justice Thomas’s 2007 memoir.
With Justice Clarence Thomas at the U.S. Capitol soon after the release of Justice Thomas’s 2007 memoir.

Kaitlynn Rivera, who worked for Faith and Action from 2013 to 2015, confirmed many details Mr. Schenck provided, including about the donor couples and his relationships at the court. To supporters, the minister boasted about his group’s connections, but he regularly warned them to keep quiet because he “knew the public at large would be upset by that kind of access,” she said in an interview.


Tracking the States Where Abortion Is Now Banned
The New York Times is tracking the status of abortion laws in each state following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Among the couples Mr. Schenck recruited were Christ and Dolly Lapp, of Lancaster County, Pa., now deceased. They befriended Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, and hosted them at a restaurant they owned there, according to a letter Mr. Schenck wrote for a fund-raiser held at the site.

But no donors drew closer to the justices than the Wrights. Mr. Wright often hunted with Justice Scalia, according to the businessman’s obituary, and the couple socialized with the Alitos, Scalias and Thomases. They hosted the Alitos at their retreat near Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the Alitos had the Wrights for dinner at their home in Alexandria, Va.

Records show that Mrs. Wright, who said in the interview that her interest in the court stemmed solely from her involvement in the Historical Society, regularly reported her contacts with the justices to Mr. Schenck.

“Don and I have been invited to a private party in Virginia to celebrate Nino’s 80th,” she wrote to him in a January 2016 email, referring to Justice Scalia.

“Lunch with CT on Monday, Sam on Wednesday, dinner at court on Monday, Dinner with Maureen on Wednesday,” she wrote in another email that year. Mr. Schenck understood “CT” and “Sam” to be Justices Thomas and Alito. (She referred to them by their first names in another email.) Justice Scalia’s widow is named Maureen.

Justice Alito appeared to know Mrs. Wright’s views well enough to recommend she attend a lecture at the court by Kelly Shackelford, the president of First Liberty Institute, which frequently litigates religious liberty cases before the justices. “Sam told us that Kelly is someone we should know,” she wrote to Mr. Schenck in 2013.

Mrs. Wright said in the interview that she had shared such information with Mr. Schenck out of friendship and excitement.

In the statement from the court, Justice Alito said, “‘I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so.”

He added, “I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action.’” He concluded, “I would be shocked and offended if those allegations are true.”

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Many protested the Supreme Court decision backing corporations’ religious right not to pay for contraception.
Many protested the Supreme Court decision backing corporations’ religious right not to pay for contraception.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Image
Many others rallied in favor of the ruling when it was announced in June 2014.
Many others rallied in favor of the ruling when it was announced in June 2014.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

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‘This Will Be It’
In June 2014, when Mrs. Wright told Mr. Schenck that she and her husband would be dining privately with the Alitos, she and the minister agreed she would try to learn the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case, he said. “She knew I had an interest in knowing,” Mr. Schenck wrote in his letter to the chief justice.

On June 4, the day after the meal, Mrs. Wright sent Mr. Schenck her cryptic email saying she had news.

In the interview, Mrs. Wright said that while she did not have her calendars from those days, she believed the night in question involved a dinner at the Alitos’ home during which she fell ill. She said that the justice drove her and her husband back to her hotel, and that this might have been the news she wanted to share with Mr. Schenck.

“Being a friend or having a friendly relationship with a justice, you know that they don’t ever tell you about cases. They aren’t allowed to,” Mrs. Wright said. “Nor would I ask. There has never been a time in all my years that a justice or a justice’s spouse told me anything about a decision.”

The minister said that after he learned the outcome from Mrs. Wright in a phone call, he froze. He knew that pending decisions were not supposed to be disclosed, and that sharing the information could hurt everyone involved if it got out.

His wife, Cheryl Schenck, said he was agonized. “The reason I remember is all the stressful machinations on, ‘What should I do with this information?’” Ms. Schenck, a therapist, said in an interview.

Ultimately, Mr. Schenck could not resist using it, he said. Emails he wrote over the following weeks reflect the advance knowledge he said he had of the Hobby Lobby decision. While the outcome was not surprising — the justices’ questions during oral arguments had hinted at it — Mr. Schenck appeared to know that Justice Alito would author the opinion, even though many court watchers expected Chief Justice Roberts to write it.

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On June 12, as Mr. Schenck’s team prepared dueling statements for the news media envisioning both a win and a loss, he privately expressed confidence about the ruling to his staff and drafted only a victory message for donors. “I have a Plan B for a different outcome, but from all the information I have, I think this will be it,” he wrote. He included a detailed plan to celebrate their triumph on the steps of the court, where they would drop to their knees in a “prayer of thanksgiving.” When a publicist pointed out there was no message for donors in the event of a loss, he did not email a reply.

Image
From left, Steve, Barbara and David Green of Hobby Lobby with Mr. Schenck at an event for the Museum of the Bible.
From left, Steve, Barbara and David Green of Hobby Lobby with Mr. Schenck at an event for the Museum of the Bible.

He was still torn, he said, over whether to pass the news to Hobby Lobby’s owners. But Mr. Schenck hoped to further ingratiate himself with the Green family. “I wanted to give them something of value, and perhaps that would engender a reciprocal gift back,” he told The Times.

As the announcement neared, he grew bolder. On June 29, the day before the ruling, he emailed a staff member that “if it’s positive (confidential: I have good reason to believe it will be),” she should publicly laud Justice Alito as a “reliable defender” of religious freedom. No other justice was mentioned.

That same day, he said, he phoned Mr. Green. “As I mentioned, we’ll need to keep it strictly ‘in the family,” Mr. Schenck emailed him later that night. “We’re watching and praying!”

(Mr. Schenck later wrote an email to supporters that omitted any mention of his prior knowledge, and instead focused on how the two men had prayed together during their call.)

Mr. Green, through his company, declined to comment. Reached by phone, Barbara Green, his mother, said she learned about the decision when it was announced. “We had no idea which way it was going to go,” she said.

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The minister said he told almost no one else at the time, beyond his wife, brother and sister. But three years later, he confided the details to a business associate, who corroborated his story in an interview. That same year, he recounted the episode to a potential ghostwriter for his memoir in an email, calling the ruling “a decision I already knew was a done deal weeks before it was announced from the bench.”

By then, he was changing his position on abortion, citing the toll that unwanted pregnancies take on women, as he later wrote in a Times Opinion essay arguing for the Roe decision to stand. He now regrets the tactics he once employed, saying he had used women and babies as props. “In all of my rhetoric about humanizing the fetus, I had very much dehumanized others,” he said in the interview.

The ruling this year thrilled anti-abortion supporters, though it has proved deeply unpopular among the majority of Americans. After the draft was leaked, Mr. Schenck said, he felt compelled to come forward about his attempts to influence the court.

“You can position yourself in a special category with regard to the Justices,” he said. “You can gain access, have conversations, share prayer.”

Even when his group was most active at the court, he said, “I would look up at that phrase that’s chiseled into the building itself, ‘Equal Justice Under Law,’” he recalled. “I would think, ‘Not really.’”

Julie Tate contributed research.

Corrections were made on Nov. 19, 2022: An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the setting of a photo of Steve, Barbara and David Green and the Rev. Rob Schenck. They were shown at an event for the Museum of the Bible, not at the museum.
An earlier version of another picture caption misidentified the client David Cortman represented as a lawyer. It was Conestoga Wood Specialties, which challenged the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptives mandate in a case that was consolidated with Hobby Lobby’s; it was not Hobby Lobby.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 10, 2022 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

how do we know alito or for that matter any right winger is lying , well when their lips are moving, and will not testify under oath.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/stealth-missionaries-former-anti-abortion-lobbyist-gives-bombshell-testimony-on-supreme-court-campaign/ar-AA156x7W?ocid=winp2fpsystemprelaunch&cvid=f13fa96e4bd5419bab734013e895c114

'Stealth missionaries': Former anti-abortion lobbyist gives bombshell testimony on Supreme Court campaign


Quote:
The Rev. Rob Schenck was once deeply involved in the Christian right movement and white evangelical efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the evangelical Protestant minister has grown increasingly critical of the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement that he was once a part of.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
© provided by AlterNet
Moreover, he is speaking out against the Christian right’s campaign to lobby Supreme Court justices in the 2014 case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

Schenck alleges that evangelical Christian fundamentalists knew what the High Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby would be before that decision was publicly announced, and that the leak came from either Justice Samuel Alito or his wife — an allegation that Justice Alito has vehemently denied. And Schenck discussed that allegation when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, December 8.

READ MORE: Bombshell report on right-wing influence on Supreme Court prompts calls for investigation

The Independent’s Alex Woodward, reporting on Schenck’s testimony, explains, “An evangelical minister and former longtime anti-abortion activist told members of Congress that he helped recruit wealthy conservative donors to serve as ‘stealth missionaries’ at the U.S. Supreme Court, where they developed friendships with conservative justices that aligned with the group’s ‘social and religious’ views. The ‘overarching’ goal of Robert Schenck’s ‘Operation Higher Court’ sought to ‘gain insight into the conservative justices’ thinking and to shore up their resolve to render solid, unapologetic opinions,’ he told the House Judiciary Committee in sworn testimony on 8 December.”

Operation Higher Court was the lobbying campaign of Faith and Action, the Christian right group that Schenck was a part of for many years.


Woodward notes that Schenck “testified to the Committee that his group suggested tactics like meeting with justices for meals at their homes and at private clubs to build relationships and advance their perceived common objectives.”


Schenck told House Judiciary Committee members, “I believe we pushed the boundaries of Christian ethics and compromised the High Court’s promise to administer equal justice. I humbly apologize to all I failed in this regard. Most of all, I beg the pardon of the folks I enlisted to do work that was not always transparently honest.… I’m here today in the interest of truth telling.”

READ MORE: Court disclosure bombshell 'extremely harmful to American politics': legal expert

The December 8 hearing wasn’t strictly about Burwell v. Hobby Lobby or Operation Higher Court’s campaign to influence Supreme Court justices. It was about Supreme Court ethics in general, and Schenck now believes that it was unethical for Supreme Court justices to be interacting with Christian right lobbyists.

Watch the video of Schenck’s December 8 testimony below or at this link.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2023 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

priceless 2016 comments by the cult idiot.

https://www.newsweek.com/ginni-thomas-video-complaining-about-resistance-elections-resurfaces-1772054

Ginni Thomas Video Complaining About 'Resistance' to Elections Resurfaces


Quote:
Video of conservative activist Virginia "Ginni" Thomas criticizing "resistance" to former President Donald Trump has resurfaced online amid ongoing questions about her and her husband, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

The video was shared to Twitter by Ron Filipkowski on Thursday, an attorney and former Republican, and shows Thomas speaking to CSPAN 2 in April, 2018 about those opposing Trump.

Thomas has been the center of controversy because of conversations she had with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the 2020 election in which she encouraged him to continue efforts to overturn the results.


In her 2018 interview, she spoke to journalist Ronald Kessler on CSPAN 2's After Words program about the Trump administration and strongly criticized the then president's opponents, some of whom referred to themselves as the "resistance."

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"I mean, the left - I've never seen anything like what's out there outside these walls both culturally and politically," Thomas told Kessler. "So, with all that's geared up against this man, what would have happened if the right would have done this for President Obama and developed a resistance across the culture, across legal lanes, across political obstruction?"

"It's just two different worlds that seem to be tolerated in America," Thomas went on. "Are we losing the civility of legitimate elections - a duly elected president being able to govern?"


Filipkowski's video had been viewed more than 120,000 times as of early Saturday morning.

There was significant resistance to then President Barack Obama's administration and in particular his singular legislative achievement the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 13, 2023 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

John Dean slams 'evasive' Ginni Thomas for her lack of remorse


Quote:
On Friday's edition of CNN's "OutFront," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean analyzed the transcripts of right-wing activist Ginni Thomas with investigators on the House January 6 Select Committee — during which she admitted she had no proof of the election fraud claims she was making.


One of the key takeaways, Dean argued, is that she was never actually sorry for spreading these lies; she was just sorry it led to her being investigated.

"Let's start with Ginni Thomas," said anchor Sara Sidner. "She defends — she still defends her beliefs that she believes that the 2020 election was stolen, which it wasn't. Can she have it both ways here?"

"Well, when I went through her transcript, I had the impression she was evasive," said Dean. "She wasn't remorseful in general about the fact that she had made these comments and sent these texts out. She was regretful that they'd gotten — they'd been released and became public, and then she accused the committee of leaking them basically just to embarrass her, which was not the case. But I think she really was uncomfortable throughout her testimony. Her attorney testified a lot for her, which I've never seen a chair let happen as often as it did in this deposition. It's an odd collection in this deposition."


Furthermore, Dean argued, Ginni Thomas' claim that she keeps her politics out of her discussions with her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was not credible.

"She claimed at the outset of her testimony in a brief statement, there was an ironclad rule in the house, they never talked about each other's business," said Dean. "She was in a political lane. Her husband was in the legal lane. Those lanes didn't cross. It was pretty hard to believe as the testimony unrolled ... what I took away from it was that they often talk about these things. They are sounding boards for each other, which is natural in a marriage.

Watch below:

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2023 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

more dark money controlling the media...

https://news.yahoo.com/fossil-fuel-industry-takes-gaslighting-033132397.html

Fossil fuel industry takes gaslighting to new level with dark money campaign


Quote:

Alex Wagner looks at how the gas energy lobby is working to portray propane and methane as "green" energy sources and influencing state legislation to their benefit with dark money manipulation.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2023 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

here ya go disguised as a company buyout just another way to put dark money into right wing politicks..... just like the so called consulting investment fee by oil countries to give Kushner 2 billion or so and his 666 business loan. and so on and on..

https://www.rawstory.com/kellyanne-conway-polling-place-2659285165/?cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=6&cx_experienceId=EXC93HV4HK4I#cxrecs_s

Dark money group shuttered after questions raised about deal involving Kellyanne Conway


Quote:
A dark money group tied to conservative activist Leonard Leo shut down three days after reporters questioned its role in the multimillion-dollar sale of Kellyanne Conway's polling company.


Politico reported last month that the BH Fund, which had been formed in 2016 with an anonymous $24 million donation, apparently helped finance a 2017 transaction between Creative Response Concepts Inc. and Conway's firm The Polling Company worth between $1 million and $5 million, and correspondent Heidi Przybyla followed up with a new report showing the fund closed down immediately after she inquired about its role in the transaction.

“Nothing screams ‘efforts to conceal’ quite like folding up an organization just as you start getting questions about it,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

The firm now known as CRC Advisors did extensive consulting work for Leo in 2017 and is now led by the conservative judicial activist, and spokesman Adam Kennedy told Politico that BH Fund had been dormant since the end of 2021 and was dissolved in October “as other organizations made it obsolete.”

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2023 2:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

part of the cover up club of right wingers covering for each other...

https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-leak-2659291271/

Supreme Court staffers bitter over justices getting a pass during leak investigation


Quote:
The Supreme Court investigation into the leak of Associate Justice Sam Alito's draft that would lead to the dismantling of the Roe v Wade after fifty years came up empty according to a report this week, but it left behind a bitter aftertaste among clerks for the justices --some of whom feel it was not conducted thoroughly.


According to a report from the New York Times' Jodi Kantor, court employees feel they were unfairly interrogated while the nine justices sat on the sideline and faced far less scrutiny.

Legal experts are questioning the thoroughness of the investigations, with one pointing out, "Whether the ‘employees’ who were subjected to the investigation includes the justices themselves remains unclear, and the speculation amongst legal industry commentators is that the nine were not included in the search for the leaker — and it certainly doesn’t include any of their spouses,” and those staffers are now raising the same concerns.

According to the Supreme Court marshal who headed the investigation, the justices were questioned -- but not asked to sign sworn affidavits.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2023 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/the-whole-thing-makes-no-sense-senator-whitehouse-smells-a-rat-in-supreme-courts-report-on-leaked-opinion/

‘The Whole Thing Makes No Sense’: Senator Whitehouse Smells a Rat in Supreme Court’s Report on Leaked Opinion


Quote:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed the Supreme Court’s “very weird” report on its investigation into the leak of a draft opinion in a landmark case last year.

In May, Politico obtained a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which thanks to a 5-4 vote, overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.


The incident sparked outrage among conservatives, who speculated the ruling was leaked by a liberal court employee –not necessarily a justice – to put popular pressure on at least one of the justices into changing their vote. Another theory, however, holds the leak originated with a conservative who wanted to prevent any wavering justices in the majority from changing their vote. Doing so in the face of public outrage would make the court look weak and political, thus making a defection less likely.

The Supreme Court conducted an investigation and concluded last week that “it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico.”

The report, which did not say whether justices were questioned or investigated in the way other employees were, described the leak as “no mere misguided attempt at protest,” but “a grave assault on the judicial process.”

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The following day, the court’s marshal issued a follow-up statement saying justices were not required to sign affidavits.

Whitehouse told Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday’s installment of The Last Word why he finds the report “very weird”:

I’ve been involved in investigations as my state’s attorney general and United States Attorney, and there’s a lot about this investigative report that is very weird. It starts out weird in the very first sentence, where they describe the crime here, the incident as being “no mere misguided attempt at protest,” which flags the prospect that the Democratic appointees did it, that it was their offices’ attempt to protest the Dobbs decision.

Well, if you can’t solve whodunit, then you’ve got no business trying to flag a motive. And they do that in page one, and it’s only a motive that would apply to the guilty party being a member of the staff of the Democratic justices.

Then you go on to the fact that they couldn’t get anything done and didn’t make it clear whether they interviewed a bunch of prime suspects, which is the justices themselves about their activities, or their spouses, or whether they took the opinion home.

Whitehouse noted the court’s statement released the day after the report, which said the justices participated in an “iterative process.”

“It’s peculiar,” he continued. “It’s an iterative process, not an investigative process?” he said. “The judges were asking questions as well as answering them? The whole thing makes no sense.”

He concluded, “So, it’s a very, very peculiar investigative report, and frankly doesn’t look very investigative.”

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 31, 2023 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/this-defines-the-roberts-court-chief-justice-s-wife-earns-millions-placing-lawyers-at-firms-that-argue-cases/ar-AA16XVzs?cvid=800e9943d3a046b4862e548b6c86113b&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover



'This defines the Roberts Court': Chief justice's wife earns millions placing lawyers at firms that argue cases


Quote:
The highly controversial and highly unpopular U.S. Supreme Court isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.


Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?

That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.

The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”

Jane Sullivan Roberts left a law firm where she was a partner after her spouse was confirmed as Chief Justice.

READ MORE: Failed Leak Probe Will ‘Add to Public Distrust’ and ‘Accelerate Partisan Rancor’ Surrounding Supreme Court: Analyst

“Mrs. Roberts, according to a 2015 deposition,” The Times reports, “said that a significant portion of her practice was devoted to helping senior government lawyers land jobs at law firms and that the candidates’ names were almost never disclosed.”

Documents in that case “list six-figure fees credited to Mrs. Roberts for placing partners at law firms — including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. The documents do not name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one prominent candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale, a global firm that boasts of arguing more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.”

That case involves “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts,” Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, who “has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice.”

“According to the letter,” sent by Price to DOJ and Congress, which the Times reports it obtained, “Mr. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, as well as Mrs. Roberts and another executive, over his dismissal.”

Doug Lindner, Advocacy Director for Judiciary & Democracy for the League of Conservation Voters remarked: “Another day, another ethics concern about another life-tenured conservative justice on the most powerful court in the world, which has no binding ethics rules.”

READ MORE: Marshal ‘Spoke With’ Supreme Court Justices, Excluded Them From Signing Sworn Affidavits in Leak Probe

Indeed, the lack of a Supreme Court code of ethics has been repeatedly condemned for years, including by some of the nation’s top critics.

On Sept. 1, 2022, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin tweeted out her opinion piece: “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory .. just another insurrectionist.”

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor for the Atlantic, responded:

“Another reminder of how unethical is Justice Clarence Thomas, while Chief Justice Roberts turns a blind eye and continues to resist a code of ethics for a Supreme Court now distrusted by a majority of Americans. This defines the Roberts Court.”

The following month Ornstein slammed the Roberts Court once again.

“It is a stain on the Supreme Court that Chief Justice Roberts refuses to support a Judicial Code of Ethics, and stands by silently while Clarence Thomas flouts ethical standards over and over and over,” Ornstein charged.

Less than one month later he again unleashed on Roberts.

“Roberts is culpable,” he tweeted. “He has resisted over and over applying the Judicial Code of Ethics to the Supreme Court. This is Alito’s court, and it is partisan and corrupt.”

Ornstein is far from the Court’s only critic.

“If Chief Justice Roberts really wanted to address Supreme Court ethics, he would have immediately worked to implement a Code of Conduct after Clarence Thomas failed to recuse from cases involving January 6th despite having a clear conflict of interest,” the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tweeted a year ago in May. The following month CREW published an analysis titled: “Chief Justice John Roberts is wrong: the American judicial system is facing a major ethics crisis.”

Meanwhile, in late November Politico reported that Democrats in Congress were outraged at the Roberts Court.

“Two senior Democrats in Congress are demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts detail what, if anything, the Supreme Court has done to respond to recent allegations of a leak of the outcome of a major case the high court considered several years ago,” PoliticoJosh Bernstein reported, referring to the leak of the Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision – itself a massive ethics crisis for the Court.

READ MORE: Revealed: Four Supreme Court Justices Attended Right-Wing Gala — Further Endangering SCOTUS Credibility

“Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are also interested in examining claims about a concerted effort by religious conservatives to woo the justices through meals and social engagements. They wrote to Roberts on Sunday, making clear that if the court won’t investigate the alleged ethical breaches, lawmakers are likely to launch their own probe.”

Whitehouse and Johnson “also criticized the high court’s response to a letter they sent Roberts in September, seeking information about the court’s reaction to reports in POLITICO and Rolling Stone about a yearslong campaign to encourage favorable decisions from the justices by bolstering their religiosity.”

Nothing has changed.

When the Roberts Court earlier this month announced its lengthy investigation did not find the draft Dobbs decision leaker but also did not include the Justices themselves, Stokes Prof. of Law at NYU Law School Melissa Murray, an MSNBC host, tweeted, “This is a Roberts Court leitmotif–The Chief loves to handle things–even big things–in-house. Ethics issues? No need to get involved, Congress. We’ll sort it out ourselves. Leak needs investigating? No need to call in an actual investigative body, the Marshal will handle it.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor, pointing to how the Justices were not thoroughly investigated during the leak probe, in earlier this month said: “Last week the court released statements that confirmed the gap between how the justices and everyone else were treated.”

“The whole situation amplifies a major question about the court: are these nine people, making decisions that affect all of us, accountable to anyone?”

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-guarantee-of-anarchy-law-professor-warns-supreme-court-is-a-threat-to-the-whole-system/ar-AA18zqSr?cvid=7999b830776740d5d49d4ce7b8db60ca&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=12

'A guarantee of anarchy': Law professor warns Supreme Court is a 'threat to the whole system'


Quote:
In an grim column for The Atlantic, American University Law Professor Kimberly Wehle warns that the current Supreme Court with its 6-3 conservative majority has become "a threat" to the country as it runs roughshod over previous rulings while usurping the powers of the executive and legislative branch unchecked.

Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts
© Raw Story
As Wehle explains, using recent rulings including the highly controversial overturning of Roe v Wade last year, the court, bolstered by three far-right justices appointed by former president Donald Trump, has taken on cases that expose "the right-wing majority’s appetite for asserting massive power under the auspices of judicial review."

Noting that Stanford Law School Professor Mark A. Lemley recently wrote that the court, as it stands now, is engaged in “a radical restructuring of American law across a range of fields and disciplines,” Wehle agreed, writing that what the court's conservative wing is doing runs, "...along two lines: substantive changes to the Constitution made under the guise of interpretation, and procedural power grabs executed despite traditions of deference. This has pushed our constitutional system dangerously off balance, with little opportunity for correction."

Case in point, she notes, is how the court ruled on the two hot topics of abortion, in its controversial Dobbs ruling, and guns.

IN OTHER NEWS:'Just gross' Ron DeSantis boasts visibly disgust Morning Joe hosts

"What will constrain this Court? Not its constitutional philosophy, and not respect for precedent either. The decision in Dobbs was stunning not just because it gutted a constitutional right many counted on. It was also a snub to the vitality of judicial precedent itself, which has long operated as a check on the power of the Supreme Court," she wrote.

She then added that the court has given entirely inconsistent mixed messages when it comes to the regulation of guns.


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"What about states? No, their power won’t constrain the Court either, despite the traditional conservative concern for states’ rights. To be sure, in Dobbs, the Courtgave state legislatures the power to regulate abortion, but in Bruen, the same Court struck down a more-than-100-year-old New York State handgun-licensing law that regulated the carrying of concealed weapons in public," she wrote. "Dobbs enhanced state legislatures’ control over abortion. Bruen took it away over guns and public safety."

According to the law professor, "This is not how it is supposed to work," and the future looks grim because voters -- and too a lesser degree lawmakers -- are powerless to stop the legal carnage.

"A too-powerful, unaccountable Court is a threat to the entire system. Short of a constitutional amendment retracting their life tenure, or a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate willing to do controversial things such as restricting the Court’s jurisdiction or expanding the number of justices, there’s nothing the voting public can really do about this political power grab and its lasting impact on the lives of millions," she warned.

She then quoted Chief Justice Roger Taney who wrote in 1849: “If the judicial power extends so far, the guarantee contained in the Constitution of the United States is a guarantee of anarchy, and not of order.”


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clarence-and-ginni-thomas-could-be-sidelined-under-supreme-court-model-ethics-code/ar-AA18yukI?cvid=47534fb4dbae4a2de934b86d6390b186&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=6

Clarence and Ginni Thomas could be sidelined under Supreme Court 'model' ethics code


Quote:
Aproposal by outside interest groups for the Supreme Court to adopt a new "model" ethics code could thrust Justice Clarence Thomas and his spouse, Ginni, further into the political limelight.

The proposed guidelines from so-called independent government watchdogs Project on Government Oversight and Lawyers Defending American Democracy would put in place "more stringent guidelines for recusal." The guidelines would be so strict that if they were in effect last year, it may have prevented the high court's eldest Republican-appointed justice, Thomas, from participating in a case involving the release of Trump administration records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a recent NPR report.

DEMOCRATS RATCHET UP SUPREME COURT ETHICS BILLS AS JUSTICES CAN'T DECIDE ON NEW RULES

"Such a provision would clearly have forbidden Justice Clarence Thomas from participating" in the 2022 case, NPR's Nina Totenberg reported Thursday.

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