Unsurprisingly, it was through an organization whose membership is largely multi-millionaires and billionaires which is dedicated to the work of a pedophile priest member of the clergy. (Horatio Alger)
The real scandal here is that this is probably all legal, but it appears that Clarence Thomas has always depended on the kindness of strangers:
In recent months, Justice Thomas has faced scrutiny over new revelations by ProPublica of his relationship to Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire, whose largess over more than two decades has included vacations on a superyacht, private school tuition for the great-nephew the justice was raising, and the purchase of his mother’s Savannah, Ga., home. None of this was reported by the justice, and the revelations have renewed calls for tighter Supreme Court ethics rules.
But a look at his tenure at the Horatio Alger Association, based on more than two dozen interviews and a review of public filings and internal documents, shows that Justice Thomas has received benefits — many of them previously unreported — from a broader cohort of wealthy and powerful friends. They have included major donors to conservative causes with broad policy and political interests and much at stake in Supreme Court decisions, even if they were not directly involved in the cases.
………
In his early years on the court, Justice Thomas disclosed about 20 private plane flights and an assortment of other gifts, including cigars, a Daytona 500 jacket, a silver buckle and a rawhide coat. After The Los Angeles Times chronicled his gifts and travel in 2004, he stopped disclosing private flights and has seldom reported gifts or other benefits. After the Crow revelations, the justice said that “colleagues and others in the judiciary” had advised him that he did not need to report the hospitality of good friends.
His decision not to disclose many benefits for nearly two decades — beyond trips related to teaching, speeches and attending legal or academic conferences — has made it difficult to track potential conflicts of interest.
………
Justice Thomas’s acceptance of such hospitality apparently predates his time on the court. A former girlfriend said in an interview that “a buddy” of Justice Thomas had paid for their vacation in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A longtime friend said he had paid for the justice’s 1987 wedding reception.
So, this was before he even became a judge, though as a public official at the time, this is remarkably skeevy from an ethical perspective.
………
Three decades ago, when Justice Thomas joined Horatio Alger, “We tried to get above the controversy and take a measure of his success,” the group’s awards chairman, James R. Moffett, said at the time.
The organization, according to Armstrong Williams, made Justice Thomas “realize that not everyone judges him by the confirmation process, particularly among people of that class and wealth group. They really treated him like a brother, like he mattered and, in return, he opened up the Supreme Court.”
"Opened up the Supreme Court?"
Yeah, that does not sound at all suspect.
………
The association has used access to the court ceremony and related events in the annual gathering to raise money for scholarships and other programming, according to fund-raising records reviewed by The Times.
The court discourages using its facilities, or the justices, to help raise money. In 2014, a court official emailed Horatio Alger staff members a reminder that photographs of the courtroom ceremony were “for internal use only by the association” and “may not be used for any promotional or fund-raising purpose.”
Justice Thomas’s use of the courtroom for the Horatio Alger Association, while hardly unprecedented, is quite rare. That special access and affiliation with Justice Thomas have become central to the identities of the organization and its members. Several have said they counted among their proudest achievements having Justice Thomas bestow their Horatio Alger medallions at the Supreme Court.
So we had a memo going out asking staff of the Horatio Alger Association to cover up what was going on.
This is as corrupt as f%$#.
0 comments :
Post a Comment