An activist with interests in the court judgements to be delivered by US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Thomas’s wife, Washington Post reported. Thomas is now under renewed scrutiny for the alleged instructions dispelled to ensure his wife was not named.
The report published on Thursday outlines instances in which activist Leonard Leo paid Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, via the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway.
Citing documents it had obtained, the Washington Post reported that Leo told Conway to bill one of his non-profits and send the funds to Thomas. At one point, the paperwork associated with the transaction stated “no mention of Ginni, of course.”
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The report is the latest in a stream of similar stories that have scrutinised the ethics of US Supreme Court justices.
Last month, ProPublica revealed entanglements between Clarence Thomas and the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. Thomas has for years accepted luxury travel from Crow and at one point participated in a real estate deal with the billionaire, without fully disclosing these associations, ProPublica reported.
Prior to that, Politico reported that Neil Gorsuch, a conservative appointed to the Supreme Court by former US President Donald Trump, profited from the sale of a home to the executive of a law firm involved in cases the panel was considering.
Reports in the US media have claimed that the Supreme Court swung firmly to the right after Trump elevated Gorsuch and two other judges widely perceived to be conservatives to the Supreme Court.
Last year, that group together with Thomas and fellow conservative justice Samuel Alito voted to overturn Roe vs Wade and allow states to ban abortion entirely.
Democrats have cried foul over the recent reports about justice’s ethics. The senate judiciary committee this week held a hearing to examine whether Congress should impose a code of conduct on the nation’s highest court. The committee’s chair, Dick Durbin, invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify, but he declined. Roberts instead sent along a statement signed by all nine justices to “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe.”
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