Due to the non-stop RICO corruption reports of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, and their family members, and the failure of the other two branches of government to reign them because of RICO corruption there, UpRights News is obliged to continue to report on the same, and where there is so much corruption of SCOTUS, that the same can literally be organized into different categories, by name and/or by the type of corruption, and so we'll organize by both below, with a brief description, followed by (a) link(s) to reporting on the same.
THE TREASON OF THE BUSH, REAGAN, AND/OR TRUMP FAMILIES RESULTED IN THE ILLEGITIMATELY-INSTALLED ONGOING MAJORITIES ON THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (SCOTUS), HAND-PICKED AIDED BY CHILD RAPIST AND SEX TRAFFICKER JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S DAVID KOCH'S AND RUSSIA'S AND SCL GROUP'S CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA'S MERCER FAMILY'S FEDERALIST SOCIETY, IN ORDER TO TOTALLY DESTROY THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND RIGHTS FOR THE PEOPLE, IN ORDER TO OVERTHROW AMERICA FOR THE FAILED BILLIONAIRE EXPERIMENT TURNED OLIGARCH MAFIA
No less than 6/9 of SCOTUS, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch were illegitimately appointed by four Republican presidents involved in as many as six different treason conspiracies, (1) Prescott Bush and aiding the Nazis, (2) Reagan and aiding Iran and the Contras, (3) G.W.H. Bush aiding Iran and the Contras, (4) Reagan and G.W.H. Bush overthrowing the United States to install G.W. Bush by stopping the democratic vote in 2000 in a conspiracy with Jeb Bush, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Barrett, and Clarence Thomas (5) G.W. Bush pre-planning Air National Guard, U.S. Air Force, and/or NORAD activities on 9/11 to aid Russia and the Saudis, then flying out the brother of Bin Laden, then covering up the evidence of what happened on 9/11 and then making that cover-up inaccessible, and (6) Donald Trump and the GOP's treason with Russia, and all 6/9 of these SCOTUS appointments were hand-picked by the Federalist Society, financed by child rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's David Koch, and Russia's and SCL Group's Cambridge Analytica's Mercer family. The father of Jeb and G.W. Bush had also committed treason, but with the Nazis and Hitler, financing Freemason and forged-royal Habsburg crime family's "Traitor King", George VIII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilegium_Maius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Brothers_Harriman_%26_Co.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
https://epsteinsblackbook.com/names/david-koch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election
ADDITIONAL CORRUPTION BY JOHN ROBERTS' WIFE JANE ROBERTS
As reported by Daily Beast, "Jane Roberts—wife of Chief Justice John Roberts—made over $10 million in commission as a legal recruiter for the nation’s top law firms, according to a whistleblower complaint covered by Insider. “When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong,” Kendal Price, who filed the complaint and once worked alongside Jane Roberts, told Insider. At least one of the firms that Jane Roberts received a commission from reportedly later had a case before Chief Justice Roberts. Price is calling for public scrutiny of Jane Roberts’ income, given the influential position of her husband, Insider reports."
SCOTUS DEFANGS WHISTLEBLOWERS AFTER THEIR CORRUPTION IS REVEALED BY WHISTLEBLOWERS, RICO OBSTRUCTING INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE ORGANIZED CRIMES OF SCOTUS AND THEIR FAMILIES
Two months after Daily Beast revealed that whistleblowers revealed the corruption of John Roberts' family, SCOTUS dismantled the rights of whistleblowers to RICO obstruct for SCOTUS, Trump, and the GOP.
"The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Department of Justice has broad, but not unfettered, authority to dismiss whistleblower lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act’s qui tam provision even when the government initially elected to allow the whistleblower to proceed with the action.
The FCA’s qui tam (an abbreviation for a Latin phrase meaning “who sues on behalf of the King as well as for himself”) provision encourages whistleblowers to file suit on behalf of the government. The law also gives the government the option to decide whether to take control of the case (referred to as “intervening”) or instead allow the whistleblower to proceed. DOJ has used the False Claims Act to recover more than $70 billion since 1986, much of it driven by whistleblower lawsuits and largely focused on health care and defense contracting. As the number of qui tam cases has continued to increase (more than 500 have been filed annually in recent years), and the whistleblower’s bar has been increasingly aggressive about moving forward with cases, DOJ has ramped up the use of its dismissal authority — not only declining to take over the litigation of qui tam cases, but also affirmatively dismissing them to prevent the whistleblower from proceeding.
Dr. Jesse Polansky filed a claim as a qui tam whistleblower, and DOJ initially decided to let Polansky proceed with the lawsuit against a company he accused of causing millions of dollars in false billings to the government. After several years of litigation, however, DOJ sought to have the case dismissed over Polansky’s objection, questioning its likelihood of success and pointing to concerns about the discovery burden being placed on the government and possible disclosure of privileged documents. A federal district court in Pennsylvania granted the government’s request and dismissed the case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit upheld that ruling.
There were two questions before the Supreme Court: Whether DOJ must first intervene for a qui tam action to be dismissed, and what standard should apply to the government’s motion to dismiss. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the eight-justice majority, agreed with Polansky on the first issue – requiring the government to intervene before seeking dismissal. However, it is a victory of little value to whistleblowers given the court’s decision on the second issue, which gives the government broad authority to dismiss once it does intervene. Though stopping short of granting the unfettered dismissal authority sought by the government, the standard outlined by the court on Friday is likely hardly different from a practical perspective.
Like the oral argument, Kagan’s opinion centered on an analysis of the text of the FCA.
She noted that dismissal is governed by Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure but “differ[s] in two ways from the norm” given the specifics of the FCA statute. Because of FCA statutory provisions, the government must provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before a case can be dismissed. At that hearing, the district court must consider the interests of the whistleblower, who may have committed substantial resources. Still, Kagan made clear, government motions to dismiss “will satisfy Rule 41 in all but the most exceptional cases,” and the government’s views are entitled to substantial deference. Because qui tam suits allege injury to the government alone, she stressed, “a district court should think several times over before denying a motion to dismiss. If the government offers a reasonable argument for why the burdens of continued litigation outweigh its benefits, the court should grant the motion. And that is so even if the relator presents a credible assessment to the contrary.”
A dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas was notable less for its arguments in favor of an alternative reading of the statute – Thomas agreed with Polansky that the government loses its authority to dismiss a suit once it declines to intervene – and more for its broader suggestion that the entire qui tam system may be unconstitutional. While only Thomas wrote in support of his argument about the extent of the government’s authority to dismiss, Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in which he agreed with Thomas that “[t]here are substantial arguments that the qui tam device is inconsistent with Article II and that private litigators may not represent the interests of the United States in litigation … the Court should consider the competing arguments on the Article II issues in an appropriate case.” It thus appears that the court now includes three justices prepared to broadly question the system that has for decades been the centerpiece of the government’s anti-fraud efforts. A further court shift in this direction in the future would have implications far greater than the dismissal authority issue the court resolved Friday."
CLARENCE THOMAS AND SAMUEL ALITO'S CORRUPTION BY JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S BILLIONAIRE DAVID KOCH, BILLIONAIRE HARLAND CROW, AND/OR THE BUSH FAMILY'S BOHEMIAN CLUB IN CALIFORNIA
As reported by Propublica and Salon Magazine, "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' decades-long friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito's luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation's highest court.
For months, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies have defended Thomas' practice of not disclosing free luxury travel by saying the trips fell under a carve-out to the federal disclosure law for government officials.
But by not publicly reporting his trips to the Bohemian Grove and to a 2018 Koch network event, Thomas appears to have violated the disclosure law, even by his own permissive interpretation of it, ethics law experts said. The details of the trips, which ProPublica first reported last month, could prove important evidence in any formal investigation of Thomas' conduct.
Thomas' defense has centered on what's known as the personal hospitality exemption, part of a federal law passed after Watergate that requires Supreme Court justices and many other officials to publicly report most gifts.
Under the exemption, gifts of "food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality" don't have to be disclosed. The law provides a technical definition of "personal hospitality." It only applies to gifts received from someone at that person's home or "on property or facilities" that they or their family own. A judge would generally not need to disclose a weekend at a friend's house; they would need to report if someone paid for them to stay at the Ritz-Carlton.
Numerous ethics law experts have said that gifts of transportation, such as private jet flights, must be disclosed under the law because they are not "food, lodging, or entertainment."
Thomas has laid out a different view of the disclosure requirements. In his financial disclosure released in late August, Thomas asserted that the personal hospitality exemption extended to transportation. Justice Samuel Alito has made the same argument in an op-ed where he elaborated on his reasoning: private jets would count as "facilities" under the law's definition of personal hospitality. In this view of the disclosure requirements, a key question would be whether the person providing a private jet flight actually owned the jet. So, for example, Thomas would not need to report flights on his friend Harlan Crow's private plane because Crow owns it.
Thomas and Alito's position is incorrect, many experts said, because it simply ignores the statute's language: that the personal hospitality exemption only applies to food, lodging, or entertainment.
But there's an additional reason the newly revealed trips should have been disclosed.
ProPublica recently reported that in 2018, Thomas traveled on a Gulfstream G200 private jet to Palm Springs, California, to attend a dinner at the Koch political network's donor summit. He didn't hitch a ride on a jet owned by a friend. Instead, he flew there on a chartered plane: a jet available through an Uber-like service that lets wealthy individuals rent other people's planes. The owner of the jet at the time, Connecticut real estate developer John Fareri, confirmed to ProPublica that he didn't provide the plane to Thomas and that the Palm Springs flight was a charter flight. That means someone else — not the owner — paid.
A Koch network spokesperson said the network didn't pay for the flights. Because Thomas didn't disclose the trip, it's still not clear who chartered the plane. Jet charter companies told ProPublica the flights could have cost more than $75,000.
Experts told ProPublica they couldn't think of an argument that would justify not disclosing the Palm Springs trip. "Even using Thomas' flawed logic about the personal hospitality exception, there's no way this chartered flight fits into that exception," said Kedric Payne, a former deputy chief counsel at Congress' ethics office.
Thomas and his attorney did not respond to questions about why he didn't disclose the flight or if he paid for it himself. After the Palm Springs donor event, the plane flew to an airport outside Denver, where Thomas appeared at a ceremony honoring his former clerk, then back to northern Virginia, where Thomas lives.
Thomas' undisclosed trips to the Bohemian Grove present a similar issue. As ProPublica reported last month, Thomas has for 25 years been a regular at the Grove, an all-men's retreat held on a 2,700-acre property in California. Thomas has been hosted by Crow, who is a member of the secretive club, and stayed at a lodge there called Midway. Members typically must pay thousands of dollars to bring a guest, according to a Grove guest application form obtained by ProPublica and interviews with members.
Crow does not own the Grove nor does he own the lodge where Thomas has stayed. Experts said in these instances again, even by Thomas' own characterization of the rules, he appears to have violated the law by not disclosing the trips.
"It makes a mockery of the statute," said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House. Painter said that if charter flights and trips to Grove don't need to be disclosed, "you could call everything personal hospitality. Broadway show tickets. A first-class ticket on Delta Air Lines. A trip on the Queen Mary."
Following ProPublica's reporting on Thomas' failure to disclose gifts earlier this year, members of Congress sent a complaint to the Judicial Conference, the arm of the judiciary responsible for implementing the disclosure law. In April, the Judicial Conference said it had referred the matter to a committee of judges responsible for reviewing such allegations.
The law says that if there is "reasonable cause" to believe a judge "willfully" failed to disclose information they were required to, the conference should refer the matter to the U.S. attorney general, who can pursue penalties. But that would be unprecedented. As of May, the Judicial Conference said it had never made such a referral. The committee's process appears to be ongoing.
In his filing in August, Thomas said that his view of the disclosure rules was based in part on conversations he had with staff at the Judicial Conference. Thomas did not respond to questions about the advice he received. A judiciary spokesperson declined to comment on whether it was ever the Judicial Conference's position that gifts of private jet flights didn't need to be reported.
This March, the judiciary revised its regulations to make explicit that private jet travel must be disclosed because transportation is not covered by the personal hospitality exemption. Experts said the update merely clarified what was always the case. (ProPublica reviewed other federal judges' financial disclosure filings and found at least six recent examples of judges disclosing gifts of private jet travel before the regulations were updated.)
More than a decade ago, Thomas' disclosure practices came under scrutiny following research by a watchdog group and a story in The New York Times about his relationship with Crow. Democratic lawmakers wrote to the Judicial Conference in 2011, saying that Thomas had failed to report the sources of his wife's income and that he "may" have also received free private jet trips without reporting them.
What happened after that remains opaque.
In a four-sentence letter the following year, the secretary to the Judicial Conference said that the complaint had been reviewed. "Nothing has been presented," he wrote, "to support a determination" that Thomas improperly failed to report gifts of travel. The letter did not detail what steps the conference took, the reasoning behind its decision or what information it had been presented with.
At the time, nothing in the public record had established that Thomas had ever accepted undisclosed private jet flights. But Thomas' attorney Elliot Berke has cited the 2012 letter as vindication of Thomas' practices. "The Judicial Conference issued a letter confirming that Justice Thomas had not improperly failed to disclose information concerning his travel," Berke wrote.
ProPublica asked the Judicial Conference for details on the 2012 episode, including whether the committee conducted an investigation and an explanation of its ultimate conclusion: Did it determine that private jet flights need not be reported? Or did it determine that it wasn't clear if Thomas had actually accepted such a gift?
A Judicial Conference spokesperson declined to comment."
NEIL GORSUCH'S CORRUPT REAL ESTATE DEAL WITH THOSE WITH 22 CASES BEFORE HIS COURT
"Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch found a buyer for a 40-acre property he had been trying to sell for nearly two years, only nine days after being confirmed for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, according to Politico.
Brian Duffy, the chief executive of top law firm Greenberg Traurig, bought the land co-owned by Gorsuch in Granby, Colorado in 2017. A deed in the county's record system shows that Duffy and his wife closed on the home located on the plot of land for $1.825 million. Given that he had a 20% stake in the property, Gorsuch secured a profit between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale.
Politico reported that Gorsuch failed to identify the buyer on his federal disclosure forms and, since the purchase, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court. Twelve cases in which Gorsuch's opinion was recorded show that he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.
Duffy stated that he does not know Gorsuch personally.
"I've never spoken to him. I've never met him," he told Politico.
Duffy also said that he cleared the property sale with his firm's ethics department upon learning that Gorsuch was a co-owner.
Though members of SCOTUS are not barred from participating in financial dealings with people involved in court decisions, as Politico noted, "Gorsuch's dealings with Duffy expose the weakness of the court's disclosure procedures."
"For instance," the report added, "in reporting his Colorado income, Gorsuch listed as his source only the name that he and his two co-owners gave themselves, Walden Group, LLC. The report didn't indicate that there had been a real estate sale or a purchaser."
The court's critics linked the sale to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to disclose luxury trips, gifts and a real estate deal involving billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
"Well, it looks like the disease of corruption and secrecy at the court is contagious," Take Back the Court Action Fund President Sarah Lipton-Lubet said in a statement. "At this point, it's willfully ignorant to believe that self-interested partisans like Thomas and Gorsuch will ever hold themselves accountable. So it's up to our elected leaders to do it. Congress needs to investigate the rot at the center of this Court before the institution is poisoned beyond the point of return."
"Lord it's so blatant," marveled New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.
"The Roberts Court. A cesspool of corruption," tweeted Norm Ornstein, an Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Just last month ProPublica released a bombshell report detailing how Thomas and his wife have for over two decades accepted luxury trips and other gifts from Crow. The trips "appeared nowhere on Thomas' financial disclosures."
Following ProPublica's revelation, Thomas took another public hit — the conservative justice repeatedly claimed rental income from a real estate firm that has been out of business since the early 2000s, according to a report from The Washington Post. For the past two decades, Thomas reported income that his family received from a firm called Ginger, Ltd., Partnership — a Nebraska real estate firm started by his wife, Ginni, and her family in 1982 — though the company shuttered in 2006, and was ultimately rolled into a new, separate firm called Ginger Holdings, LLC.
However, since then, Thomas has allegedly continued to claim income — reported as "rent" — from Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, with recent years seeing him report between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, per financial disclosure reports. In sum, he has reported receiving between $270,000 to $750,000 from the firm since 2006."
"CLARENCE THOMAS CAUGHT REPORTING UP TO $750K IN INCOME FROM A NON-EXISTENT COMPANY"
"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly claimed rental income from a real estate firm that has been out of business since the early 2000s, according to The Washington Post.
Thomas for the past two decades reported income that his family received from a firm called Ginger, Ltd., Partnership — a Nebraska real estate firm started by his wife, Ginni, and her family in 1982 — amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Washington Post reported that the company shuttered in 2006, and was ultimately rolled into a new, separate firm called Ginger Holdings, LLC. However, since then, Thomas has allegedly continued to claim income — reported as "rent" — from Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, with recent years seeing him report between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, per financial disclosure reports. In sum, he has reported receiving between $270,000 to $750,000 from the firm since 2006.
The report comes on the heels of a bombshell ProPublica report released last month, detailing how the conservative justice and his wife have for over two decades accepted luxury trips and other gifts from GOP megadonor and real estate magnate Harlan Crow.
The report stated that the costs incurred through the travel may be in violation of federal law, as the trips "appeared nowhere on Thomas' financial disclosures." According to two ethics law experts who weighed in on the report, his 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."
Following the report's release, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., vowed that Thomas would be held accountable.
"The highest court in the land shouldn't have the lowest ethical standards. Today's Pro Publica report reveals that Justice Thomas has for years accepted luxury travel on private yachts and jets and a litany of other gifts that he failed to disclose," Durbin said in a statement at the time. "This behavior is simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a Justice on the Supreme Court."
Durbin said the report "demonstrates, yet again, that Supreme Court Justices must be held to an enforceable code of conduct, just like every other federal judge. The Pro Publica report is a call to action, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act."
Thomas has ostensibly feigned ignorance in the past. After revising his financial disclosure forms in 2011 following scrutiny from watchdog group, Common Cause, Thomas stated that he did not understand the filing instructions, according to the Post. In 2020, Thomas once again amended his disclosure forms when another watchdog organization determined that he had not reported reimbursements for travel to speak at two law schools.
"Any presumption in favor of Thomas's integrity and commitment to comply with the law is gone," Stephen Gillers, a legal expert at New York University told the Post. "His assurances and promises cannot be trusted. Is there more? What's the whole story? The nation needs to know."
Gillers, who called for Thomas to face a federal investigation, added that trust in the Supreme Court is "now in serious jeopardy, and others must do something to stop the free fall.""
""SHADY AND CORRUPT": WATCHDOG GROUP SOUNDS THE ALARM OVER AMY CONEY BARRETT REAL ESTATE DEAL", WHICH ECHOES NIEL GORSUCH'S, AND CLARENCE THOMAS' REAL ESTATE DEALS
"Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has personal ties to a leader of the legal clinic under the Notre Dame initiative that funded Justice Samuel Alito's July 2022 speaking trip to Rome, CNN reports.
Just months after she was sworn in at the Supreme Court in 2020, Barrett, who had left her judgeship and job as a Notre Dame law professor, sold her private home in South Bend, Indiana, to a recently hired Notre Dame professor who was assuming a leadership role at the Religious Liberty Initiative, according to records discovered by the left-leaning non-profit watchdog group Accountable.US.
The initiative's legal clinic has curried favor with the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020 and filed at least nine "friend-of-the-court" amicus briefs in religious liberty cases before the Court. Alito joined the majority in deciding in favor of the initiative's conservative positions in several of those cases, including the one that reversed Roe v. Wade, and others on issues of school prayer and COVID-19 restrictions on churches.
Neither Barrett's real estate transaction nor Alito's trip to Italy to deliver a keynote at a gala violated the court's ethics rules, several experts told CNN.
"It raises a question – not so much of corruption as such, but of whether disclosures, our current system of disclosures, is adequate to the task," Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis Law School who specializes in government ethics, told the outlet.
Barrett sold the home to Brendan Wilson, then a Washington D.C.-based lawyer, for $905,000, a transaction that she was not required to disclose on her annual financial forms. Federal regulations exclude sales of the "personal residence of the filer and the filer's spouse" from financial matters judges are mandated to disclose.
However, some experts told CNN that Wilson's role at the Religious Liberty Initiative and the work of its legal clinic provide another reason why some rules at the Supreme Court should be adapted to increase transparency for the public, giving it a better understanding of the ties between the justices and legal advocates in the high court.
"The court, frankly, it faces a kind of legitimacy crisis because of the really dire weaknesses of its ethics," Clark said. "It has the opportunity to address that legitimacy crisis by, you know, stepping up its ethics game – imposing on itself and then abiding by additional disclosure operations."
Stephanie Barclay, the Religious Liberty Initiative's director, emphasized to CNN that Wilson "really could not be further removed from Supreme Court litigation" and explained that many people involved with the group contribute to the briefs they submit to the Supreme Court.
Wilson's biography on the initiative's page says his role covers "the transactional component of the Religious Liberty Clinic," and a recent job posting from the group specified that the transactional component includes legal advising for religiously affiliated organizations.
Wilson did not respond to CNN's interview requests, nor did Barrett respond to the network's request for comment.
Barrett's real estate transaction makes her the third member of the Supreme Court to have made money from property sales with powerful conservative figures or people connected to legal advocacy groups writing the Court.
Politico reported that Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a vacation home to the CEO of a major law firm who has argued before the court and did not disclose the buyer's name. Justice Clarence Thomas also came under fire earlier this year when ProPublica revealed a 2014 real estate deal he made with GOP megadonor and billionaire Harlan Crow and failed to disclose. The outlet also revealed that Crow had financed decades of lavish travel and gifts for Thomas and paid the tuition of Thomas' grandnephew for two years in the 2000s.
Indiana University law professor and legal ethics expert Charles Geyh told CNN that despite Barrett's transaction falling within Supreme Court regulations, it only further complicates the perception of the court in the public eye.
"It is addressed by the court being much more vigilant in guarding against perception problems created by (the justices') financial wheelings and dealings and going the extra mile to make sure that they not only are clean, but look clean," he said.
The controversies and increased public scrutiny of the court have also sparked calls for a defined code of ethics to be imposed and enforced on the justices.
"The endless drip of shady and corrupt Supreme Court dealings just further underscores the need for reform." Accountable.US President Kyle Herrig said in a statement. "Every federal judge is bound to an ethics code requiring them to avoid behavior that so much as looks improper, except for Supreme Court justices. Chief Justice (John) Roberts has the power to change that, but so far he hasn't shown the courage. If he fails to do his job, Congress must do theirs.""
5/6 REPUBLICAN SCOTUS HAND-PICKED BY JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S DAVID KOCH'S AND RUSSIA'S AND SCL GROUP'S CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA'S MERCER FAMILY'S FEDERALIST SOCIETY COMMITTED PERJURY DURING THEIR NOMINATION AND/OR CONFIRMATION HEARINGS TO BECOME GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES
"Update, June 24: The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, holding that the “Constitution does not confer a right to abortion … and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” The ruling was 5-4 to overturn Roe and 6-3 to uphold the Mississippi law. Chief Justice John Roberts concurred on the ruling on the state law but wrote in a separate opinion that the court could “leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all.”
In the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that indicates the court could overturn Roe v. Wade, some lawmakers have charged that conservative Supreme Court justices led them astray during Senate confirmation hearings. We’ll look at what the three most recent conservative justices had said about Roe.
The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, reportedly had the support of Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, according to Politico, which published the draft on May 2. The latter three of those justices were all nominated by then-President Donald Trump. The court has confirmed the authenticity of the draft, but said it didn’t represent “the final position” of any justice.
Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN that conservative justices “misled the Senate, with the intention of getting their confirmation vote, with the intention of overruling Roe.” She added that “they would purposefully create the impression that they would not overrule settled precedent, and that it was not only deserving of due weight and the importance of precedent, but because it had been reaffirmed, that it deserves more weight.”
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said in a May 7 tweet: “Multiple Supreme Court Justices lied during their confirmation process about their view of #RoeVWade and stare decisis. Those are the facts.” (Stare decisis, Latin for “to stand by things decided,” is a legal doctrine that courts generally follow when ruling on a similar case.)
Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, both supporters of abortion rights, also have said the opinion goes against what justices had said.
Collins, who voted to confirm Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, said in a May 3 statement: “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”
Murkowski, who had backed Gorsuch and Barrett, told NBC News: “If the decision is going the way that the draft that has been revealed is actually the case, it was not—it was not the direction that I believed that the court would take based on statements that have been made about Roe being settled and being precedent.”
A close examination of the carefully worded answers by the three Trump appointees, however, shows that while each acknowledged at their hearings that Roe was precedent, and should be afforded the weight that that carries, none specifically committed to refusing to consider overturning it.
Gorsuch
Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearing was held in March 2017 — early in Trump’s presidency, after Senate Republicans had refused to hold hearings on Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.
Gorsuch said that the Roe decision was “precedent,” but declined to call it “super precedent,” a loosely defined term indicating a deeply rooted, repeatedly upheld precedent. He also declined to give his opinion on whether he thought the court’s ruling was correct.
In response to questioning by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, Gorsuch said he would not be a fair judge if he started “telling you which are my favorite precedents or which are my least favorite precedents.”
Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: I think the case that most people are thinking about right now and the case that every nominee gets asked about, Roe v. Wade, can you tell me whether Roe was decided correctly?
Gorsuch: Senator, again, I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. The reliance interest considerations are important there, and all of the other factors that go into analyzing precedent have to be considered. It is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was reaffirmed in Casey in 1992 and in several other cases. So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.
Grassley: What about Griswold, which was decided a few years before Roe, the case where the Court found constitutional right to privacy? Can you tell me your views on Griswold?
Gorsuch: Senator, it is a precedent that is now 50 years old. Griswold involved the right of married couples to use contraceptive devices in the privacy of their own home. And it is 50 years old. The reliance interests are obvious. It has been repeatedly reaffirmed. All very important factors again in analyzing precedent.
Grassley: Well, I think I am going to stop questioning, but I would kind of sum up what you and I just talked about in regard to precedent so everybody understands the principles that are at stake here. There are two reasons why you cannot give your opinion on these cases. One, I believe, is independence, and the other one is fairness to future litigants. Is that the way you see it?
Gorsuch: It is, senator. If I were to start telling you which are my favorite precedents or which are my least favorite precedents or if I view precedent in that fashion, I would be tipping my hand and suggesting to litigants that I have already made up my mind about their cases. That is not a fair judge. I did not want that kind of judge when I was a lawyer, and I do not want to be that kind of judge now. And I made a vow to myself I would not be. That is the fairness problem. And then the independence problem. If it looks like I am giving hints or previews or intimations about how I might rule, I think that is the beginning of the end of the independent judiciary, if judges have to make, effectively, campaign promises for confirmation. And respectfully, senator, I have not done that in this process, and I am not about to start.
During questioning by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gorsuch talked about the value of precedent and declined to agree with her that Roe was “super precedent.”
Feinstein: Since we are on Roe, I was not going to begin with this, but I well recall the time we spent in my office, and we talked about precedent. And in my opening remarks, I indicated that if anything had super precedent, Roe did in terms of the numbers, and I have put that in the record. Here is why it becomes of concern. The president said that he would appoint someone who would overturn Roe. You pointed out to me that you viewed precedent in a serious way, in that it added stability to the law. Could you elaborate on the point that you made in my office on that?
Gorsuch: I would be delighted to, senator. Part of the value of precedent, it has lots of value. It has value, in and of itself, because it is our history, and our history has value intrinsically. But it also has an instrumental value in this sense. It adds to the determinacy of law. We have lots of tools that allow us to narrow the realm of admissible dispute between parties so that we can—people can anticipate and organize their affairs. It is part of the reason why the rule of law in this country works so well. We have statutes. We have rules. We have a fact-finding process and a judicial system that is the envy of the world. And precedent is a key part of that because, as the chairman pointed out when he quoted an old piece of mine, once a case is settled, that adds to the determinacy of the law. What was once a hotly contested issue is no longer a hotly contested issue. We move forward. And senator, the value of that is the U.S. Supreme Court takes something like 70 or 80 cases a year. That is a tiny fraction of all the disputes in our federal legal system, right?
Feinstein: Right.
Gorsuch: My law clerks tell me it is something like .001 percent, and they are unanimous in those cases, which have divided circuit judges. That is why the Supreme Court largely takes the case, because it has divided us. It is one of the rare cases where we disagree. They are unanimous 40% of the time.
Feinstein: One other question.
Gorsuch: Sure.
Feinstein: Do you view Roe as having super precedent?
Gorsuch: Well, senator, super precedent is——
Feinstein: In numbers?
Feinstein: It has been reaffirmed many times. I can say that.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin asked Gorsuch about a line in his book on euthanasia and how it might relate to abortion.
Durbin: There is a statement which you made in that book, which has been often quoted, and I want to make sure that I quote it accurately here today. … And I quote, “The intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” …
How could you square that statement with legal abortion?
Gorsuch: Senator, as the book explains, the Supreme Court of the United States has held in Roe v. Wade that a fetus is not a person for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and the book explains that.
Durbin: Do you accept that?
Gorsuch: That is the law of the land. I accept the law of the land, senator, yes.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal also tried, to no avail, to get Gorsuch to say whether he agreed with the decision in Roe.
Blumenthal: Do you agree with the result in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey?
Gorsuch: Senator, I am drawing the same line that Justice Ginsburg drew, Justice O’Connor drew, Justice Souter, Justice Scalia. Many, many, many people who have sat at this confirmation table have declined to offer their personal views to this or that precedent, whether it is one side’s favorite or another side’s favorite, one side’s least favorite, the other side’s least favorite. We have gone back and forth today on precedents, which ones people like and do not like. And I understand that every citizen and every member of the Senate have their precedents that they prefer personally and not. I understand that. I respect that. That is part of the process and our First Amendment liberties. But as a judge, as a judge, my job is to decide cases as they come to me. And if I start suggesting that I prefer or not, dislike this or that precedent, I am sending a signal, a hint, a promise, a preview, as Justice Ginsburg called it, about how I would rule in future cases where those principles from that case are going to be at issue, and all of these cases that we just discussed that are very alive with controversy, as you know, senator, which is why you are asking about them.
And for a judge to start tipping his or her hand about whether they like or dislike this or that precedent would send the wrong signal. It would send the signal to the American people that the judge’s personal views have something to do with the judge’s job. And the one thing I have tried to convey over the last three days is that I do not believe that is part of the judicial function, and I do not believe that is what good judges do. And I have also said, senator, and I believe this firmly, that once a judge starts committing, promising, hinting, previewing, forecasting, agreeing or disagreeing with precedent at this confirmation table, we are in the process then of campaign promises, and we are in that process, Senator, I fear, of judges having to make commitments, tacit promises, hints, previews, as Justice Ginsburg called it, in order to become confirmed. And once we do that, I am fearful for the independence of our judiciary.
Kavanaugh
At the time of his confirmation hearings in early September 2018, Kavanaugh, who replaced a retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, was seen by abortion rights advocates as the potential deciding vote in a future case to overturn Roe v. Wade.
During questioning, Kavanaugh avoided answering whether Roe v. Wade was correctly decided, or how he might rule in a future case challenging that court ruling. Instead, Kavanaugh repeatedly said that Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent.”
Feinstein brought up news reports that Kavanaugh told Collins in an August 2018 private meeting that Roe v. Wade was “settled law.” When Feinstein asked Kavanaugh to explain what he meant by that, he said:
Kavanaugh: Senator, I said that it is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis. And one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years, as you know, and most prominently, most importantly, reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.
And as you well recall, senator, I know when that case came up, the Supreme Court did not just reaffirm it in passing. The court specifically went through all the factors of stare decisis in considering whether to overrule it, and the joint opinion of Justice Kennedy, Justice O’Connor and Justice Souter, at great length went through those factors. That was the question presented in the case.
At another point, Feinstein asked Kavanaugh if he agreed with former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “that a woman’s right to control her reproductive life impacts her ability to, quote, ‘participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation.’”
In response, he said:
Kavanaugh: Well, as a general proposition, I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in Roe v. Wade. So Roe v. Wade held, of course, and it reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that a woman has a constitutional right to obtain an abortion before viability, subject to reasonable regulation by the state up to the point where that regulation constitutes an undue burden on the woman’s right to obtain an abortion.
And one of the reasons for that holding, as explained by the court in Roe, and also in Planned Parenthood v. Casey more fully, is along the lines of what you said, Sen. Feinstein, about the quote from Justice O’Connor. So that is one of the rationales that undergirds Roe v. Wade. It is one of the rationales that undergirds Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Feinstein also asked Kavanaugh about an email he sent in March 2003 while working in the George W. Bush administration. In the message, in which he replied to an email that included a draft of an op-ed written to defend some of Bush’s judicial nominees, Kavanaugh wrote: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since [the] Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”
“This has been viewed as you saying that you don’t think Roe is settled,” Feinstein said, after reading part of the email aloud during the hearing. “So please, once again, tell us why you believe Roe is settled law, and if you could, do you believe it is correctly settled?”
Kavanaugh again called Roe “an important precedent” that “has been reaffirmed many times”:
Kavanaugh: In that draft letter, it was referring to the views of legal scholars, and I think my comment in the email is that might be overstating the position of legal scholars, and so it was not a technically accurate description in the letter of what legal scholars thought. At that time, I believe Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were still on the court at that time.
But the broader point was simply that I think it was overstating something about legal scholars. And I am always concerned with accuracy, and I thought that was not quite accurate description of legal, all legal scholars because it referred to “all.”
To your point, your broader point, Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed many times. It was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 when the court specifically considered whether to reaffirm it or whether to overturn it. In that case, in great detail, the three-justice opinion of Justice Kennedy, Justice Souter and Justice O’Connor went through all the factors, the stare decisis factors, analyzed those, and decided to reaffirm Roe.
That makes Casey precedent on precedent. It has been relied on. Casey itself has been cited as authority in subsequent cases such as Glucksberg and other cases. So that precedent on precedent is quite important as you think about stare decisis in this context.
But Kavanaugh also told Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that he would be open to hearing arguments if a particular case needed to be “revisited.”
“Of course. I listen to all arguments,” Kavanaugh said. “You have an open mind. You get the briefs and arguments. And some arguments are better than others. Precedent is critically important. It is the foundation of our system. But you listen to all arguments.”
Barrett
The third and final of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, Amy Coney Barrett, was upfront about her history of supporting the Catholic Church’s teaching on “the sacredness of life from conception to natural death.” And she was noncommittal during Senate confirmation hearings in October 2020 about whether she might overturn Roe v. Wade.
Barrett most directly addressed the issue under questioning from Feinstein, who noted that in Planned Parenthood v. Casey — the 1992 decision reaffirming Roe — Justice Scalia “joined the dissent, which took the position, and I quote, ‘We believe that Roe was wrongly decided and that it can and should be overruled, consistent with our traditional approach to stare decisis in constitutional cases.’ Do you agree with Justice Scalia’s view that Roe was wrongly decided?”
Barrett said in the hearings that she shared Scalia’s judicial philosophy of “originalism and textualism,” but she declined to give an opinion on that specific case.
“I think in an area where precedent continues to be pressed and litigated, as is true of Casey, … it would actually be wrong and a violation of the canons for me to do that as a sitting judge,” she said. “So if I express a view on a precedent one way or another, whether I say I love it or I hate it, it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another in a pending case.”
Pressed again by Feinstein whether she “agree[d] with Justice Scalia’s view that Roe was wrongly decided,” Barrett again declined to answer.
“Senator, I completely understand why you are asking the question, but again, I can’t pre-commit or say yes, I’m going in with some agenda, because I’m not,” Barrett said. “I don’t have any agenda. I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey. I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and decide cases as they come.”
Barrett said that if a question about overturning Roe or Casey or any other case comes before her, “I will follow the law of stare decisis, applying it as the court is articulating it, applying all the factors, reliance, workability, being undermined by later facts in law, just all the standard factors. And I promise to do that for any issue that comes up, abortion or anything else. I’ll follow the law.”
Under questioning from Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Barrett said she did not consider Roe v. Wade to be a “super precedent,” at least not according to her definition of it as “cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling.”
“And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category,” Barrett said. “And scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled, but descriptively, it does mean that it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling.”
Correction, June 24: We originally wrote that the court overruled Roe by a 6-3 decision. It was 5-4."
"After Friday's Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, lawmakers who support abortion rights argued that some of the justices who voted in the majority opinion misled senators during their confirmation process.
“This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
The future of the landmark Roe decision has long been a topic of Supreme Court confirmations.
All six Supreme Court judges who voted to uphold the Mississippi law at the center of Friday's decision were asked about Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings. The three justices appointed by President Donald Trump, in particular, were interrogated at length, as he had vowed as a candidate to appoint judges who would overturn Roe.
The judges often said they would broadly respect legal precedents — a doctrine called stare decisis — but declined to opine on abortion rights cases specifically. Some even outlined considerations for breaking with past precedents, too.
Here’s what the justices actually said in each of their confirmation hearings.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett
In her 2020 hearing, Barrett was pressed on why she would characterize Brown v. Board of Education, but not Roe V. Wade, as super precedent.
“Roe is not a super precedent because calls for its overruling have never ceased, but that does not mean that Roe should be overruled. It just means that it doesn’t fall on the small handful of cases like Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. The Board that no one questions anymore,” she said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh
In his 2018 confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh was questioned repeatedly about Roe and Casey.
“It is important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times,” Kavanaugh said of Roe. “It is not as if it is just a run of the mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it. That makes Casey a precedent on precedent.”
Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Sept. 6, 2018.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pressed him to say it was settled law, but Kavanaugh declined to say so by arguing it would diminish the independence of the judiciary. When questioned by conservative senators, though, he said there’s a model for overruling settled precedents, that begins with evaluating whether the prior decision was “grievously wrong.”
“You follow the decision that has been set forth by the Supreme Court, subject to the rules of stare decisis. And you see that time and again. That is part of stability. That is part of predictability. That is part of impartiality. That is part of public confidence in the rule of law that it is not just going to move pillar to post, that the law is stable and foundational,” he said. “Again, it is not — Brown v. Board shows it is not absolute. And that is a good thing, but it is critically important to the impartiality and stability and predictability of the law.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch
Gorsuch, in 2017, would only characterize Roe as “a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court” reaffirmed by several subsequent cases. He went on to say that precedent fills out U.S. law.
“Once a case is settled, that adds to the determinacy of the law. What was once a hotly contested issue is no longer a hotly contested issue. We move forward,” he added.
Judge Neil Gorsuch testifies during his confirmation hearing on March 22, 2017.Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post via Getty Images file
Justice Samuel Alito
Alito, pressed in his 2006 confirmation hearing on whether overturning Roe would undermine the legitimacy of the court, would only say that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined “in any case if the Court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion.”
He went on to joke about the level of precedent the abortion rights cases had earned, when asked whether Casey was a “super precedent or a super stare decisis.”
“I personally would not get into categorizing precedents as super precedents or super-duper precedents, or any —” he began, before Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., interrupted to confirm he said “super duper,” a question that was met with laughs.
“Any sort of categorization like that,” Alito continued, “sort of reminds me of the size of laundry detergent in the supermarket.”
Justice Clarence Thomas
Asked whether the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose during his 1991 confirmation hearing, Thomas said that taking a position “would undermine my ability to be impartial.”
He went on to say he did not have “a personal opinion on the outcome in Roe v. Wade.”
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.
Roberts tried to strike a middle ground in Friday's decision, joining the majority in upholding the Mississippi law that would ban abortion but saying he did not agree with completely overturning Roe.
During his 2005 confirmation hearing, Roberts said that overruling precedent like Roe is “a jolt to the legal system” and that “precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness.”
He continued: “It is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn’t answer the question. It just poses the question. And you do look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments. All of those factors go into the determination of whether to revisit a precedent under the principles of stare decisis,” he said.
BRETT KAVANAUGH WAS REPEATEDLY ACCUSED OF BEING PART OF CONSPIRACIES TO DRUG AND RAPE STUDENTS WHILE HE WAS IN COLLEGE, ECHOES CLARENCE THOMAS AND ANITA HILL ALLEGATIONS
"A third woman accused Brett Kavanaugh Wednesday of sexual misconduct, claiming he spiked drinks to "cause girls to become inebriated" and was part of gang rapes that occurred at high school parties in the early 1980s.
Julie Swetnick alleged in a statement released by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge used to spike the punch at house parties where women were sexually assaulted and raped.
"I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their 'turn' with a girl inside the room," she said. "These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh."
The alleged incidents happened during the years of 1981 and 1982, she said. At the time, Kavanaugh was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Swetnick said she became a victim of one of these rapes in 1982. She did not allege that Kavanaugh and Judge engaged in the rape, but she said they were present.
"During the incident, I was incapacitated without any consent and unable to fight off the boys raping me. I believe I was drugged with quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking," she said.
After the alleged rape, Swetnick said she confided in at least two people about what had happened.
Avenatti made these allegations public Wednesday, posting the correspondence between him and Mike Davis, the chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Twitter.
Avenatti revealed his client's identity in a Twitter post, writing: "Here is a picture of my client Julie Swetnick. She is courageous, brave and honest. We ask that her privacy and that of her family be respected." A headshot photo of Swetnick is included in the tweet.
Swetnick is now the third woman to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. Earlier this month, Christine Blasey Ford alleged that the judge pinned her down and groped her during a high school party while Judge watched.
This week, Kavanaugh's former Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez detailed to The New Yorker her experience with him. Ramirez claimed that Kavanaugh exposed himself and forced her to touch him without her consent when they both attended a dorm party during their freshman year.
Also in The New Yorker report, another woman, Elizabeth Rasor, shared a conversation she once had with Judge when they were classmates at Catholic University. Rasor recalled Judge telling her "ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman."
Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard those incidents as "fully consensual." He did not tell her who else was involved and if Kavanaugh had participated.
Kavanaugh has denied the sexual misconduct allegations, and in an interview with Fox News on Monday, the judge said he has never sexually assaulted anyone and was a virgin throughout high school and "many years thereafter."
Avenatti is demanding that the FBI launch an investigation into Swetnick's allegations, adding that "under no circumstances should Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed absent a full and complete investigation."
During an appearance on MSNBC shortly after releasing Swetnick's identity and allegations, Avenatti said that she is "100 percent absolutely" ready to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee."
https://www.newsweek.com/brett-kavanaugh-gang-rape-avenatti-julie-swetnick-1139745
MICHAEL AVENATTI TARGETED FOR PROSECUTION AND DISBARMENT AFTER REVEALING KAVANAUGH'S DRUG AND RAPE CRIMES, DESPITE CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD LATER CONFIRMING WITH TESTIMONY
"In March 2019, Avenatti was indicted in California and New York on various criminal counts including extortion, tax evasion, fraud, and embezzlement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Avenatti
IN A QUI PRO QUO, BRIBERY, AND/OR RICO OBSTRUCTION MOVE, SCOTUS REFUSED TO HEAR A CASE REGARDING TRUMP BEING INELIGIBLE FOR PUBLIC OFFICE, WHICH LITERALLY PROTECTED 3/9 SCOTUS JUDGES FROM BEING OUSTED, WHO WERE INSTALLED BY TRUMP AFTER HE IMMEDIATELY DISQUALIFIED HIMSELF BECAUSE OF HIS TREASON CONSPIRACY WITH RUSSIA, THE GOP, AND OTHERS
"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned down a case that challenged former President Donald Trump's eligibility to run for the White House in 2024.
The case was brought by John Anthony Castro, a tax consultant and long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, who argued that Trump should be disqualified from running under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment due to his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol. Castro cited a provision in the Civil War-era amendment that states American officials can't hold office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or had "given aid" to insurrectionists.
In August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Trump on four counts in its investigation of the January 6 riot. The counts were conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. However, he was not indicted on charges related to insurrection. During his arraignment, the former president plead not guilty to the counts he was charged with.
Castro had requested the high court hear his appeal after a lower court in June found his case lacked legal standing, but the Supreme Court justices announced the case was denied without any comment or recorded vote.
Newsweek reached out to Castro via his campaign website for comment.
In his lawsuit, Castro said Trump provided "aid or comfort" to insurrectionists by expressing sympathy for those who participated in the January 6 riot as well as for saying he would consider issuing presidential pardons for people convicted of crimes related to the insurrection if he is reelected.
"A primary candidate has judicial standing to bring a claim challenging the eligibility of a fellow primary candidate for competitive injury in the form of a diminution of votes and/or fundraising if the primary candidate believes that the fellow primary candidate is ineligible to hold public office and to prevent actions irreconcilable with the U.S. Constitution," Castro wrote in his petition to the Court.
Newsweek also reached out to a representative for Trump via email for comment.
Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, indicated that he anticipated the Supreme Court would reject Castro's case.
Castro's lawsuit is not the only attempt to use the 14th Amendment as an argument against Trump's eligibility. On Friday, the liberal group Free Speech For People (FSFP) filed a petition in Michigan that cites the amendment in an attempt disqualify Trump. The group used the same argument in a suit filed weeks earlier in Minnesota.
In early September, the nonpartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) also filed a legal challenge that said the insurrection provision in the 14th Amendment should block Trump from appearing on the presidential ballot in Colorado if he wins the GOP nomination for 2024.
"If the very fabric of our democracy is to hold, we must ensure that the Constitution is enforced and the same people who attacked our democratic system not be put in charge of it," CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement announcing the Colorado challenge. "We aren't bringing this case to make a point, we're bringing it because it is necessary to defend our republic both today and in the future.""
CORRUPTION AND INSURRECTION OF CLARENCE THOMAS' WIFE VIRGINIA THOMAS
"In 1991, Thomas returned to government service in the Legislative Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Labor,[21][22][23] where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable.[24]
That year, her husband (whom she had married in 1987), Clarence Thomas, was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall.[24] She attended the contentious U.S. Senate confirmation hearings and supported her husband as he was accused of sexual harassment.[25]
During the confirmation hearings, several Democratic senators questioned whether her job with the Labor Department could create a conflict of interest for her husband if he were to be seated on the Supreme Court.[26] After her husband was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48,[27] she described the televised scrutiny and confirmation process as a "trial by fire".[28][29]
Her next job was as a policy analyst for Representative Dick Armey, who was the House Republican Conference chairman.[30]
By 2000, she was working for The Heritage Foundation, where she collected résumés for potential presidential appointments in the George W. Bush administration when the Supreme Court was deciding Bush v. Gore.[31] She continued to work at The Heritage Foundation during the administration of George W. Bush, serving as White House liaison for the think tank.[32]
In late 2009, Thomas established the nonprofit lobbying group Liberty Central to organize conservative activists, issue legislative scorecards for U.S. Congress members, and be involved in elections.[33] The group was aimed at opposing what Thomas called the "leftist tyranny'" of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, and "protecting the core founding principles" of the nation.[34] Thomas's lobbying activities were raised as a potential source of conflict of interest for her husband.[34][35] Thomas was interviewed by Sean Hannity on his Fox News show Hannity in June 2010. Asked about potential conflicts between her Liberty Central activities and her husband's position, Thomas replied that "there's a lot of judicial wives and husbands out there causing trouble. I'm just one of many."[36] Liberty Central ceased operations in 2012.[37]
In February 2011, Politico reported that Thomas was the head of a new company, Liberty Consulting, which filed incorporation papers in mid-November 2010. The company's website stated that clients could use Thomas's "experience and connections" to help with "governmental affairs efforts" and political donation strategies.[38] The Washington Post described Liberty Consulting as "a one-woman shop" where Thomas advised political donors how to direct funds in the post-Citizens United v. FEC landscape.[3] Also in 2011, Thomas became a special correspondent for Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller.[39]
The Washington Post reported in May 2023 that in 2011 and 2012 Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society instructed Kellyanne Conway and her firm The Polling Company to pay $80,000 to Liberty Consulting, a firm owned by Thomas. Leo directed Conway to bill the payments to Judicial Education Project with "No mention of Ginni, of course" in the paperwork. The Post could not determine the precise nature of any work Thomas did for either firm, though it noted Judicial Education Project filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a 2012 landmark voting rights case. A longtime friend of the Thomases, Leo told the Post, "Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."[40]
Thomas endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.[3] She supported Donald Trump after he won the Republican nomination,[37] and has served on the advisory council of Turning Point USA.[41] Thomas has drawn attention for making controversial social media posts; The Washington Post wrote that she had shared "nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda".[3] On Facebook, she has shared a George Soros conspiracy theory meme and criticized gun control advocates such as survivors of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.[42]
Thomas is a member of the informal conservative Groundswell group,[43] which she founded with the support of Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor.[42] According to a February 2020 report by Jonathan Swan in Axios, Thomas actively urged Trump to change the personnel in his administration. Swan reported that Thomas had given Trump a memo with names of individuals recommended by the Groundswell network.[44][45]
On May 28, 2020, Trump appointed Thomas as a member of the trust fund board of the Library of Congress.[46]
She is a member of the conservative Council for National Policy,[47] and in 2019, she became part of its board.[42]
According to The New York Times, in the days following the 2020 presidential election, the board of the Council for National Policy issued a call to action to its members to keep Trump in power, despite his loss.[42] The call to action instructed members to "pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors."[42] Days after the November 2020 election, with Biden declared the winner in Arizona, Thomas sent emails to that 29 of the state's legislators, urging them to choose "a clean slate of Electors."[48][49] Thomas also emailed Wisconsin state senator Kathy Bernier and Wisconsin state representative Gary Tauchen with verbatim copies of the Arizona emails, urging them to set aside the results of the popular vote in their state and instead choose their own electors.[5]
Prior to January 6, Thomas promoted a Stop the Steal rally on Facebook.[50][51] Thomas said that she attended the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack but left before Trump took the stage at noon.[52]
After January 6, baseless claims that Thomas had paid to shuttle demonstrators to Washington D.C. proliferated online.[53] A year after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, fact checkers again debunked claims that Thomas was one of the organizers of the events of January 6, 2021.[54]
After the Capitol attack, Thomas, on a private email LISTSERV of her husband's former law clerks, expressed her apologies for contributing to a rift among the group.[55] The internal rift reportedly concerned "pro-Trump postings and former Thomas clerk John Eastman, who spoke at the rally and represented Trump in some of his failed lawsuits filed to overturn the 2020 election results."[55] Eastman is a close friend of both Thomases.[56]
An April 2022 Quinnipiac poll found that 52% of Americans said that, in light of Ginni Thomas's texts to Trump's White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows about overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases about the 2020 election.[57]
In March 2022, texts between Thomas and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from 2020 were handed to the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.[58] The texts show her repeatedly urging Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which she called "the greatest Heist of our History,"[59] and repeating conspiracy theories about ballot fraud.[4] She urged that conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell be retained by the Trump campaign efforts to overturn the 2020 election.[60] In the quoted texts, Thomas described an unknown number of American citizens that she hoped would be "living in barges off GITMO"[61] in accord with the QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory that President Biden, his family, and thousands of state and county election officials, administrators, and volunteers successfully orchestrated and performed a vast conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections across thousands of administrative districts or wards. Public perception of the likelihood of such QAnon-style conspiracy theories influencing a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was widespread enough[62] that President Biden was asked what he thought about whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from any January 6-related cases.[63] He replied that the answer is for others to determine,[63] mentioning the congressional investigating committee and the Department of Justice.[63] Under U.S. law, each justice of the court is the main and possibly only person who has power over his or her own recusal.
CNN reported in June 2022 that the Select Committee possessed email correspondence between Thomas and John Eastman.[64] The emails were part of Eastman's correspondence related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.[64] In the wake of revelations regarding her correspondence with Eastman, Thomas was asked to testify before the committee.[65] In an interview with the Daily Caller, Thomas stated that she "can't wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them."[66] Thomas previously signed on to a letter to House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, calling for the removal of Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger from the Republican conference for their participation on the Select Committee and describing the January 6 investigations as "bringing disrespect to our country's rule of law."[42] Mark Paoletta, Thomas's attorney, wrote the committee days later that she would not agree to be interviewed unless additional information came to light that might warrant testimony,[67] but one of her attorneys subsequently announced she would speak voluntarily with the committee.[68][69] The committee interviewed her on September 29.[70]
Days after it became known Eastman and Thomas had communicated by email, Eastman posted on his new Substack blog one email that he captioned, "OMG, Mrs. Thomas asked me to give an update about election litigation to her group. Stop the Presses!" In the December 4, 2020 email, Thomas invited Eastman to speak four days later at a gathering of "Frontliners," which she described as a group of "grassroots state leaders." A private Facebook group named "FrontLiners for Liberty," which included over 50 people and was created in August 2020, showed Thomas as an administrator. The group's front page carried a banner stating, "the enemy of America...is the radical fascist left." After CNBC asked Thomas about the group, its public pages were either made private or deleted. CNBC also contacted Stephanie Coleman, who was also listed as a group administrator. She is the widow of former Texas solicitor general Greg Coleman, who had clerked for Clarence Thomas. Numerous photos of her and Thomas are on her personal Facebook page, including one of both of them with former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon in December 2016. The Thomas email was among those federal judge David Carter ordered Eastman to release to the January 6 committee in June 2022, as Eastman sought to withhold them. Carter found ten documents he ordered released to the committee relating to three December 2020 meetings by a secretive group strategizing about how to overturn the election, which included who he characterized as a "high-profile" leader. Carter noted one email in particular among those he ordered released that contained what he found was likely evidence of a crime. Thomas attended a meeting of FrontLiners for Liberty on March 6, 2021, at which a speaker declared Trump was still the "legitimate president," to enthusiastic applause.[71][72][73][74] [75]
Thomas also emailed state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin, urging them to ignore the results of the 2020 presidential election and vote instead for an alternate slate of electors.[5]
According to transcripts of her interviews with the Select Committee on the January 6 attack, Thomas noted that she communicated with Mark Meadows to advocate for Trump's support of Sidney Powell, who was pushing false accusations about hacked voting machines.[76] She further claimed that she did not communicate her election-related activities to her husband, Clarence.[76] However, Thomas also noted that she referenced her "best friend" (i.e. her husband) in her texts to Meadows when discussing the support that her husband provided when she was upset over Trump's election defeat. In her interviews, Thomas also admitted that she had sent emails to lawmakers in key states and that she still believed that the 2020 election results were impacted by fraud, despite not being able to provide any evidence.[76][77] Thomas also noted that with regards to her texts to Meadows, she "would take them all back if I could today;" she attributed her communications with Meadows as being the result of her being "emotional" after Trump's election defeat.[77]
On January 4, 2023, the Conservative Action Project published an open letter opposing Kevin McCarthy during the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and supporting the House Freedom Caucus's efforts to vote against him. Thomas signed the open letter.[78]
Virginia and Clarence Thomas married in 1987.[79] The couple lives in Virginia.[80] In an interview, Ginni's uncle said of the couple, "I can guarantee you I was surprised when I found out she was going with a black man", to which her Aunt added, "but he was so nice, we forgot he was black, and he treated her so well all of his other qualities made up for his being black."[81]
Thomas converted from Protestantism to her husband's Catholic faith in 2002. She was inspired by his devotion of praying the Litany of Humility and participating in the Mass. She credits Justice Antonin Scalia and his wife Maureen for helping her husband back into the Church.[82]
On October 9, 2010, Thomas left a voicemail message for Anita Hill, whose accusations of sexual harassment against her husband complicated his Supreme Court nomination hearings 19 years earlier.[83][84] In the voicemail, Thomas said that Hill should apologize to her husband. Hill responded that there was nothing to apologize for and said that her 1991 testimony about her interactions with Clarence Thomas was truthful.[83]
In 2011, Clarence Thomas amended 20 years worth of his financial disclosures to include Virginia Thomas's places of employment.[85][86]
In the 1980s, while a congressional aide, Thomas took training with the self-awareness program Lifespring.[87] In 1987, she told the The Washington Post that, during her training several years earlier, she had been "confused and troubled" by lessons such as one where trainees were told to disrobe to bikinis and bathing suits and then "made fun of fat people's bodies and ridiculed one another with sexual questions".[87] After realizing that membership in her Lifespring group was separating her from her family, friends, and co-workers, Thomas said she began what proved to be a difficult and months-long process of breaking away.[87] At one point, she hid in another part of the U.S. to avoid a constant barrage of high-pressure phone calls from Lifespring members, who felt they had a duty to keep her in the organization.[9][88][89]
Thomas came to believe that Lifespring was a cult.[9] After leaving the group in 1985, she sought counseling and joined the Cult Awareness Network.[9][90] She became a critic of controversial religious groups, speaking on panels and organizing anti-cult workshops for congressional staffers in 1986 and 1988.[9] In a 1991 interview, Thomas remarked, "I was once in a group that used mind control techniques", and she called its members "pretty scary people".[91]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginni_Thomas
Pretty scary people indeed, organized crime overtly furthering organized crime.
PHOTO ATTRIBUTE