The Scheme 21: “As Friends Do”

April 18 | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, delivered the twenty-first in a series of speeches titled “The Scheme,” exposing the machinations by right-wing donor interests to capture the U.S. Supreme Court and achieve through the Court what they cannot through the elected branches of government. Whitehouse discussed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s brazen disregard for ethics disclosure laws. Last week, Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) sent a letter calling on the Judicial Conference to refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Attorney General for potential violations of the Ethics in Government Act 1978. The letter comes after two bombshell reports from ProPublica exposing Justice Thomas’s failure to disclose the sale of properties to billionaire Harlan Crow, and revealing that Justice Thomas and his wife accepted extravagant vacations on Crow’s dime, including individual trips worth as much as $500,000, without disclosing them as federal law requires. In February, Whitehouse and Johnson reintroduced Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, which was endorsed last week in an editorial by the New York Times Editorial Board.