Clarence Thomas gifts scandal: US Senate panel to examine Supreme Court ethics

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00:00 I'm joined by our international affairs commentator, Doug Herber.

00:02 I like that you added the detail about the house where the mother still lives.

00:06 Well, that's one of those things that just sticks out when you talk about this story.

00:09 Doug, tell us what prompted this hearing in the first place.

00:13 Broadly speaking, and this might come as a shock to some of our listeners,

00:16 the Supreme Court of the United States is the only government agency,

00:19 and it's a branch of government, of course,

00:21 that does not have an enforceable emphasis on enforceable code of conduct,

00:26 code of ethical conduct.

00:28 Shocking, you might say, but as far back as 2019,

00:32 okay, four years ago, not that far back,

00:33 Justice Elena Kagan was before a House committee,

00:36 and she said that the Chief Justice, who was then and now Justice Roberts,

00:40 was studying the question of whether to come up with an enforceable code,

00:45 judicial code that would be applicable to he and his fellow justices.

00:50 It has never happened. It still hasn't happened.

00:52 What has triggered this hearing here and now?

00:54 Why are we standing talking about it today?

00:56 ProPublica, which is an investigative online outlet in the United States,

01:00 recently had a blistering expose,

01:02 basically revealing that Justice Clarence Thomas,

01:06 the one whose mother is living in that house that was sold to the billionaire,

01:09 he, a series of revelations that he had accepted luxury travel,

01:14 very expensive gifts, and done some real estate property deals

01:18 with a property tycoon, and a guy named Harlan Crowe,

01:22 not just any guy that he was accepting gifts and luxury travel from,

01:26 Harlan Crowe is an extremely staunch Republican,

01:29 a very big donor to the Republican Party and Republican political groups,

01:33 to the tune of about $10 million.

01:36 And this is a man that basically flew Clarence Thomas around in his private jet

01:42 to retreats in Northern California,

01:44 a luxury superyacht retreat to an island in Indonesia, so on and so forth.

01:51 And there were also some property deals that I said were struck,

01:53 in which Harlan Crowe purchased some properties from Clarence Thomas' family.

01:59 Now, this comes in a context in which Clarence Thomas' wife

02:04 had already been under heavy criticism and scrutiny

02:07 for allegedly being a prominent player in supporting Donald Trump's efforts

02:11 to overturn the 2020 election.

02:13 So Clarence Thomas fronted center on the radar here

02:16 in the reasons for having this hearing today.

02:19 But he's not the only one, it's the whole Supreme Court.

02:21 Now, as currently composed, as you know,

02:23 Supreme Court is what?

02:24 It's nine justices, six of whom are conservative, three liberal justices.

02:28 And of those six conservative, three are Trump-appointed.

02:31 Another justice, Trump-appointed in this case, Neil Gorsuch,

02:35 also under scrutiny, ethical scrutiny for property deals,

02:40 for selling property shortly after he was confirmed in 2017

02:45 to the head of a law firm that has had business before the Supreme Court.

02:49 You can see the potential, not just the potential,

02:51 you can take away the word potential.

02:53 You could see where the possible conflict of interest arises here.

02:57 That's what this hearing's about.

02:58 The committee, the Senate committee is the judiciary committee.

03:01 It's led by a Democrat named Dick Durbin.

03:03 He's from Illinois, and he basically says

03:06 that it's right now up to Congress to basically help the Supreme Court justices

03:11 protect the, you know, the Congress has to protect the justices

03:14 from themselves actually by having this hearing.

03:16 Who's expected to testify at this hearing today?

03:18 I don't suppose we'll see Clarence Thomas in front of the judiciary committee.

03:21 We will not see Clarence Thomas.

03:23 Certainly not.

03:24 We will also not see, at least not physically see,

03:27 the Chief Justice Roberts, who you could argue would have had a prominent role testifying.

03:32 He did submit a written statement in which he judged

03:36 that the Supreme Court right now did have enforceable practices

03:40 and a code of conduct implying that that was sufficient.

03:44 Dick Durbin, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, begs to differ,

03:48 saying it's not at all sufficient.

03:49 It's very insufficient.

03:50 He perhaps should have been there.

03:52 There is going to be, before there, two former U.S. District Court judges,

03:56 that is federal judges, former federal judges testifying,

04:00 including a former attorney general under the former president George W. Bush.

04:04 You're going to have a law professor from a private university,

04:09 and you are going to have, I had it somewhere,

04:12 in addition to that, you're going to have the head of ethics from a campaign watchdog group as well.

04:17 So a lot of legal experts as well.

04:19 You've had some other written testimony submitted by a very famous in the U.S.

04:23 progressive law professor emeritus of Harvard University named Lawrence Tribe.

04:28 He submitted written testimony, as has a very prominent conservative former federal judge, Judge Lutig.

04:35 He's also supplied written testimony, heavily in favor of having an ethics code.

04:39 Okay, we'll be looking to see what happens.

04:41 International Affairs Commentary Doug Douglas.

04:43 Thanks as always.

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