1). “ 'Shady and Corrupt': Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals: The right-wing justice sold a home to a religious freedom group that has filed numerous briefs in cases before the court”, Jun 22, 2023, Julia Conley, Common Dreams, at < https://www.commondreams.org/news/coney-barrett-real-estate-deal >
2). “Congress Has Known About John Roberts’s Wife’s Shady Financial Dealings for Months: Another financial scandal for another Supreme Court justice”, April 28, 2023, Prem Thakker, The New Republic, at <https://newrepublic.com/post/172304/congress-known-john-robertss-wifes-shady-financial-dealings-months>
3). “Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property: The Supreme Court justice did not report the identity of the purchaser, whose firm has had numerous cases before the court”, April 25, 2023, Heidi Przybyla, Politico, at <https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/neil-gorsuch-colorado-property-sale-00093579>
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Turns out that all 6 Right-wing Supreme Court justices are despicable corrupt puppets of the far-right. Taking all kinds of monies and support.
1). “ 'Shady and Corrupt': Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals: The right-wing justice sold a home to a religious freedom group that has filed numerous briefs in cases before the court”, Jun 22, 2023, Julia Conley, Common Dreams, at < https://www.commondreams.org/news/coney-barrett-real-estate-deal >
{Caption: Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 14, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images) }
Thursday reporting on a real estate deal made by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett months after her confirmation in 2020 was the latest evidence, said a government watchdog, that ethics reforms at the high court must either be imposed by the judiciary or Congress.
Days after ProPublicareported on Justice Samuel Alito's previously undisclosed private jet trip—funded by a billionaire hedge fund owner whose business has been involved in numerous Supreme Court cases—CNNrevealed that Barrett has had financial dealings with the Religious Liberty Initiative (RLI) at Notre Dame Law School.
A Note Dame professor who had just taken a leadership role at RLI purchased Barrett's private home months after she was sworn in in October 2020.
The group, which advocates for religious freedom, was founded in 2020 and has filed numerous amicus briefs in cases related to the issue—related to questions surrounding abortion, public health precautions, and school prayer—since it was established. RLI has filed at least nine briefs with the court since the sale of Barrett's home.
The newly reported conflict of interest is one of several in recent months that have brought renewed scrutiny to the fact that the Supreme Court justices are not required to abide by an ethics code, as other federal judges are.
"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 Roberts has the power to change that, but so far he hasn't shown the courage."
"The endless drip of shady and corrupt Supreme Court dealings just further underscores the need for reform," said Kyle Herrig, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US. "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 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."
CNN also reported Thursday that RLI funded a previously reported trip Alito took to Rome shortly after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping millions of people across the U.S. of the right to abortion care. In Rome, the right-wing justice mocked critics of the ruling, which has been decried as a violation of international law by human rights experts.
Alito ruled in favor of RLI's positions stated in its amicus briefs in several cases, and neither judge has recused themselves from a number of high-profile cases involving the Initiative.
In recent months, government watchdogs have demanded accountability for alleged ethics breaches and conflicts of interest at the Supreme Court, including Justice Clarence Thomas' financial ties to Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing last month to make the case for legislation that would require the high court to follow an ethics code.
Although Barrett's home sale may not have violated any rules, Indiana University law professor Charles Geyh told Accountable.US, it adds to the "perception problem" regarding the justices' ethics.
"It is addressed by the court being much more vigilant in guarding against perception problems created by [the justices'] financial wheelings and dealings," Geyh said, "and going the extra mile to make sure that they not only are clean, but look clean."
2). “Congress Has Known About John Roberts’s Wife’s Shady Financial Dealings for Months: Another financial scandal for another Supreme Court justice”, April 28, 2023, Prem Thakker, The New Republic, at <https://newrepublic.com/post/172304/congress-known-john-robertss-wifes-shady-financial-dealings-months>
(Caption: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Jane Roberts, the wife of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, has allegedly been paid more than $10 million by an array of high-class law firms; at least one of these firms argued a case before her husband in the Supreme Court, after paying her hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the cherry on top is that Congress has known about these allegations for months.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has come under immense pressure to do something, anything, in the face of numerous revelations of how crooked America’s Supreme Court is. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have both been reported to have participated in shady dealings; frustration mounted as Roberts has refused to cooperate with the Senate Judiciary Committee in responding to the troubling allegations.
And now it’s becoming more and more clear why: It’s a small club, and Roberts has no problem being part of it.
Business Insider reports that two years after Roberts ascended to lead the court in 2005, his wife, Jane, pivoted from an illustrious career as a lawyer to become a legal recruiter, matching lawyers up to elite corporations and firms. Between 2007 and 2014, Jane Roberts cashed in $10.3 million in commissions in her newfound career. And the complaint pressing forward the revelations was filed in December; reporting on Jane Roberts’s ethically questionable career vis-à-vis her husband’s position had been published even back in January.
The allegations come from Jane Roberts’s old colleague Kendal B. Price, who worked at the same recruiting firm she did. In Price’s complaint, he explains that a partner at the firm told him Jane Roberts was “the highest earning recruiter in the entire company ‘by a wide margin.’” While she surely may be highly qualified, the eye-popping numbers cause even more concern around the question of how Supreme Court justices and their families enrich themselves—particularly at the expense of judicial responsibility, given that some of the firms Jane Roberts profited from would then appear in front of the court led by her husband.
“She restructured her career to benefit from his [John Roberts’s] position,” Price wrote in an affidavit. “I believe that at least some of her remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse’s position.”
The details of exactly how much Jane Roberts has made follows the stream of revelations related to other conservative justices on the court. Justice Thomas has received secret and lavish gifts for decades from Nazi memorabilia–collecting billionaire and GOP donor Harlan Crow, including luxurious island-hopping excursions on superyachts and even a secret deal in which Crow bought Thomas family property and proceeded to upgrade it while Thomas’s mother still lived in it.
Last week, it was revealed that Justice Neil Gorsuch successfully sold a 40-acre property that he had been trying to sell for two years to an undisclosed buyer; the buyer of the nearly $2 million Colorado ranch was the CEO of a law firm that has since had 22 cases with business before the court.
Amid all this, Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin has continued to remain under fire. He has spent weeks now kindly passing the buck to Justice Roberts to lead reform on ethical standards for the court; he has seemingly done so while knowing that Roberts himself is implicated in potential ethics violations. Meanwhile Durbin has refused to eliminate a blue slip rule that has prevented Democrats from confirming more judges—especially while Senator Dianne Feinstein remains absent.
In the face of corruption, elected officials can either respond appropriately or maintain false hope in the system that created such corruption in the first place. The more Durbin and his colleagues continue to do the latter, the more they actively allow and even encourage further corruption.
3). “Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property: The Supreme Court justice did not report the identity of the purchaser, whose firm has had numerous cases before the court”, April 25, 2023, Heidi Przybyla, Politico, at <https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/neil-gorsuch-colorado-property-sale-00093579>
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(Caption: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and his associates purchased property in Granby, Colo., in 2005 through their LLC, called the Walden Group, which was dissolved after the 2017 sale. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo )
For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.
Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.
On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.
He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.
Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.
Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket.
They include cases in which Greenberg either filed amicus briefs or represented parties. In the 12 cases where Gorsuch’s opinion is recorded, he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.
In addition, a Denver-based lawyer for Greenberg represented North Dakota in what became one of the more highly publicized rulings in recent years, a multistate suit which reversed former President Barack Obama’s plan to fight climate change through the Clean Air Act.
Gorsuch joined the court’s other five conservative judges in agreeing with the plaintiffs — including Greenberg’s client — that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority by regulating carbon emissions from power plants in the decision that makes it more difficult for the executive branch to regulate emissions without express authorization from Congress.
Duffy, who in addition to serving as CEO is chief of Greenberg’s entire 600-lawyer litigation department, said he has never personally argued cases before Gorsuch or met the justice socially.
“I’ve never spoken to him,” Duffy said. “I’ve never met him.”
Once he learned Gorsuch was among the owners, Duffy said, he cleared the sale with his firm’s ethics department.
Gorsuch did not respond to inquiries about the sale, his disclosures or whether he should have reported Duffy’s identity as the purchaser.
Supreme Court rules do not prevent justices from engaging in financial transactions with people with interest in court decisions, but Gorsuch’s dealings with Duffy expose the weakness of the court’s disclosure procedures. For instance, 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.
Such a sale would raise ethical problems for officials serving in many other branches of government, but the Supreme Court sets its own rules. It has largely left justices to make their own decisions about when and how to report outside gifts and income.
Justice Clarence Thomas is currently under scrutiny for accepting lavish trips from GOP billionaire donor Harlan Crow, who also purchased three Georgia properties from the justice. Thomas did not report the property sales. Of the vacations, Thomas said he had been advised that “personal hospitality from close friends” need not be disclosed.
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