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One of the biggest news stories yesterday — in both the legal industry and America, generally — was Pro Publica’s bombshell about the lavish gifts and trips googletag.cmd.push( function() { // Display ad. googletag.display( "div-id-for-top-300x250" ); }); billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow gave to Clarence Thomas without a single recusal or any reporting of those gifts in sight. Sponsored Introducing Filevine’s 2023 Customer Benchmark Report Explore new data on how modern law firms are managing their work. From Filevine and Above The Law  

But perhaps most noteworthy is my complete lack of surprise. Seriously, if A.I. constructed a justice with ethics problems it couldn’t have don’t a better job than Thomas. A lot of the ethics controversies and outrage surround the advocacy work that Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife, does. She’s absolutely worked on causes and cases that Clarence would eventually rule on. Indeed, Clarence has to adjudicate all manner of controversies that intersect with his wife’s interests — even before Ginni’s post-election advocacy made Clarence’s votes on issues related to the January 6th committee super suspect. Remember, she led a grassroots movement in support of Trump’s travel ban, worked for right-wing think tanks, and led efforts to defeat the Affordable Care Act. And she’s been linked to dark money designed to remake America in the right wing’s image. (And if the Thomas household just happens to make ~$700,000 in income for Ginni’s advocacy work that — oopsie! — Clarence forgets to report on disclosure documents, well, what can be done?)

So, yeah. Pressure on Thomas to recuse himself on cases or resign from the Court has been high, with the threat of impeachment even coming up. And with this latest scandal comes repeated calls for impeachment, my personal fav being Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeting out, “This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached.”

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But not all Dems have the appetite for that.

Clarence Thomas deserves a full Senate investigation and possible impeachment, but Congress likely doesn't have the appetite for that.

As one Democratic House member tells me via text, "Public trust in SC is already bad. A big circus would destroy it completely."

— Max Burns (@themaxburns) April 6, 2023

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Which is dumb. As my colleagues pointed out on Twitter, with Republicans in control of the House, the chances of an impeachment vote even happening is zilch. Given that political reality, why are there any Dems protecting Thomas? Do they earnestly believe a mealy-mouthed response to the latest ethics crisis is the way to go?

If they held the House then there's a very valid argument that it's not worth wasting time on an impeachment that will inevitably fail in the Senate when there are more pressing matters they could get passed with a Dem Senate & WH.

But as is… just go ahead and float it.

— Joe Patrice (@JosephPatrice) April 6, 2023

Feels like Dems have exactly zero idea how to respond to the serious — and repeated — ethics breaches of SCOTUS justices. And their whole ass is showing.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

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Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas, Harlan Crow, Judicial Ethics, Supreme Court