appearance of impropriety

Unethical Headline Of The Year (So Far): Conservative Website “Hot Air”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ugh.

How disgraceful. Here is the headline: “Clarence Thomas must resign because he went on vacation or something.” Despicable.

Justice Thomas, the most extreme conservative jurist on the U.S. Supreme Court, already, in the assessment of Ethics Alarms, has been shown to have engaged in unethical judicial conduct by raising a flaming appearance of impropriety with his acceptance of lavish junkets from an activist conservative billionaire and his failure to report them. The verdict here in April was that Thomas is obligated to resign, and that is still the verdict. His inexcusable conduct not only undermines his own credibility but the credibility and legitimacy of the entire Supreme Court.

But now, there is evidence that Thomas’s conduct was even worse than what was reported last Spring. From Pro Publica:

A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood. Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include: At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast. While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts. Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

Jeez, I hope it’s unprecedented! The degree of arrogance and dunder-headedness that led Thomas to do this is astounding. He’s known he’s had a target on his back since he was nominated for SCOTUS; he knows, or should know, that he is going to be scrutinized for missteps like no other Justice in the Court’s history. For Thomas to accept such trips and luxuries from parties who stand to benefit from the results of the Court’s deliberations is as irresponsible for a controversial Supreme Court Justice as it would have been for Jackie Robinson to secretly run a numbers game while he was playing for the Dodgers.

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Regarding Justice Alito’s “Appearance Of Impropriety” Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a 2008 trip on the private jet of Paul Singer, a billionaire GOP donor, and did not recuse himself from a later case involving Singer’s hedge fund. Since the Supreme Court is now under a sustained attack by Democrats and progressives, partially because of the Dobbs ruling (How dare unelected judges rule that unelected judges shouldn’t decide matters the Constitution leaves to legislators?) and partially because they see the current conservative-leaning Court as its greatest roadblock to a socialist, quasi-totalitarian Nirvana, his best, most responsible and most ethical course was to admit he made a mistake, show that he understood the public’s concern, and vow to be more mindful of his conduct going forward.

Instead, Alito penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his indefensible conduct,  declaring himself as innocent as a newborn lamb, and, of course, making things worse. His piece was full of legalistic hair-splitting to explain why he was well-within the requirements of the Ethics in Government Act, but the universal ethics requirement that judges must avoid the appearance of impropriety does not rest upon legal niceties. It rests upon how the public perceives things, and most of the public can’t read a statute and don’t read court opinions.

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Back To The Justice Thomas Scandal: Do Conservatives Really Not Understand The Appearance of Impropriety Judicial Ethics Prohibition, Or Are They Just Choosing To Ignore It?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Ugh.

From the Daily Caller:

Conservative legal scholars are calling attacks on Clarence Thomas for his alleged ethics violations hypocritical in light of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s financial disclosure as a nominee, which shows she omitted portions of her income on previous filings, including money from her husband’s consulting work.

These “conservative scholars” are partisan hacks.

Their argument is that because Jackson’s SCOTUS nominee disclosure papers filed in March 2022 “inadvertently omitted” income her spouse “periodically receives from consulting on medical malpractice cases” (which was disclosed on prior reports), there is a double standard applied to conservative justices. Utter garbage, and I suspect intentionally misleading. There would be no demands for Thomas’s resignation if all that was at issue was the failure to report some ambiguous gifts on his annual disclosure forms. SCOTUS justices have done this many times in the past: it is grounds for criticism and a necessary “Sorry, I won’t do that again” statement. The reason Thomas’s 20 years of unreported vacations with ultra-conservative billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow is that it looks bad, to the public, to objective judicial ethicists, and to me.

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The Complete List Of Rationalizations To Excuse Justice Thomas’ Gross Betrayal Of Judicial Ethics, And Other Updates (Part I) [Revised and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Just in case you’re wondering, I stand by everything in my previous post about Justice Thomas’s unprecedented breach of judicial ethics and his obligations as a Supreme Court justice, except my belief that Thomas would resign, or be forced to. Not for the first time, I badly over-estimated the integrity of a public servant. Other points…

1. Above is Thomas’s statement this morning regarding the ProPublica report that he has been accepting lavish trips from conservative donor and billionaire Harlan Crow for decades. It is garbage, top to bottom:

  • The fact that the Thomases and the Crows are good friends or old friends is irrelevant, and is no defense.  Of course SCOTUS justices can have friends, and can socialize. However, many of the vacations the Crows took Clarence an Ginni on included other politically interested conservatives, who has access to Justice Thomas and an opportunity to pursue their interests with him as a captive audience. Moreover, one reason such situations suggest impropriety is the Cognitive Dissonance scale: gifts tend to raise the giver and what the giver is linked to on the scale of the receiver. This is why legislators and government employees are limited by laws in what kinds of gifts they receive. The legal ethics rules also caution against accepting expensive gifts from clients, because it might interfere with independent judgment, even though lawyers are supposed to already be on their clients’ sides.
  • “Family trips” is deceit. More than just the Crow family went on these trips. Thomas is obfuscating.
  • What “colleagues”? When was “early in his tenure”? Thomas joined the Court in 1991, well before the vacations with the Crows began. Are we supposed to believe he asked about gifts and junkets like these before they were offered? By colleagues, does he mean other justices? “I once asked somebody and they said it was okay” is a particularly unconvincing justification. 
  • Our first unethical rationalization, and it’s a lulu:#4 Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s ethical.” Thomas is saying that because no official standards prohibited what he did until recently, what he did was okay. Wrong! Rules, laws and standards don’t make unethical conduct wrong, ethical principles do. Thomas knew that the vacations violated well-accepted and near-universal principles of judicial ethics. He was and is a judge, and judges must avoid the appearance of impropriety and influence. For a Supreme Court justice to invoke the same corrupt logic as D.C.’s rogue mayor is disgusting and depressing.
  • It is false to say that the trips were not “reportable.” Of course they were reportable: Thomas deliberately chose not to report them.

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No, Anti-Kavanaugh Obsessives, Attending A Holiday Party Does Not Constitute “An Appearance Of Impropriety” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ooooh, scary! Politico reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended a private holiday party last week at the home of Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC). Attendees included Stephen Miller, whose group America First Legal Foundation, it reported, “has interests in cases now pending before the court.”

Bloomberg Law seems to think social engagements over the holidays aree suspicious actions triggering “the appearance of impropriety” prohibitions all judges are told to avoid. They are not. The problem is that now there is a glut of committed ideologues determined to intimidate, neutralize and delegitimatize the Supreme Court, and to those biased critics, virtually anything a conservative justice does appears improper. In Kavanaugh’s case, unsubstantiated juvenile conduct while in high school was cited as sufficiently improper to overshadow his impeccable record as an adult judge.

Attending a party with people who “live, eat, and breathe conservative political action” is either reflective of a level of insensitivity to that development or indifference to it, says Charles Geyh, an Indiana University Maurer School of law professor. “This is the worst possible time for this,” he said. “That development” is the Court being unjustly and disingenuously attacked for legitimate and legally justifiable decisions that the Left hates. The prohibition against “the appearance of impropriety” means conduct that could be reasonably and objectively seen as improper, not conduct that partisan fanatics find convenient to call improper. Professionals like lawyers, politicians and judges should be capable of interacting socially with those they may disagree with, and there should be no adverse inferences from accepting a private party invitation. As the late Justice Scalia insisted, even Supreme Court Justices are entitled to a social life. If the job requires living like a cloistered monk, no one will want the job.

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Ethics Observations On Musk’s Blitzkrieg Twitter Account Bans

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Interesting.

Twitter (aka Elon Musk) suspended the accounts of journalists from CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post and other news sources yesterday, without warning and initially without giving any explanation.

Later last night, Musk tweeted, “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”

This morning, however, there was still confusion over whether all of those suspended had engaged in doxxing.

Observations:

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Observations On A Potential Supreme Court Ethics Scandal That I Have No Idea What To Make Of…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

What’s going on here? I wish I knew.

Rolling Stone has reported that during an evangelical victory celebration in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the Dobbs decision,  Capitol Hill religious leader Peggy Nienaber got herself recorded saying that  she has prayed with sitting justices inside the SCOTUS building. “We’re the only people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber boasted. Nienaber is Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the Supreme Court. Liberty Counsel frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court, and filed an amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

Rolling Stone says,

Liberty Counsel’s founder, Mat Staver, strenuously denied that the in-person ministering to justices that Nienaber bragged about exists. “It’s entirely untrue,” Staver tells Rolling Stone. “There is just no way that has happened.” He adds: “She has prayer meetings for them, not with them.” Asked if he had an explanation for Nienaber’s direct comments to the contrary, Staver says, “I don’t.” But the founder of the ministry, who surrendered its operations to Liberty Counsel in 2018, tells Rolling Stone that he hosted prayer sessions with conservative justices in their chambers from the late-1990s through when he left the group in the mid-2010s. Rob Schenck, who launched the ministry under the name Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, described how the organization forged ministry relationships with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the late Antonin Scalia, saying he would pray with them inside the high court. Nienaber was Schenk’s close associate in that era, and continued with the ministry after it came under the umbrella of Liberty Counsel.

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“Ethics? What’s Ethics?” Mayor Adams Takes The Reins…[Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Next time a New York Democrat complains about an elected government official’s ethics when he or she identifies as Republican, breaking out into uncontrollable laughter would be appropriate.

New New York City Eric Adams, elected as the “anti-de Blasio,” almost immediately proved that he has at least one thing in common with New York’s “Worst Mayor Ever.” Just a few days ago, Ethics Alarms noted that the former mayor had defiantly continued to ask corporate contractors for the city to contribute to a de Blasio slush fund, in a time honored unethical shakedown ploy known as “pay to play,” even though he had been formally warned to cut it out by the city’s ethics board. Now the new improved mayor is also signalling that he isn’t very concerned about ethics, the appearance of impropriety, or conflicts of interest.

Adams appointed as his sole male deputy mayor (the other five are female) Philip Banks III, who comes with some interesting baggage. (That’s Banks above on the right, the new mayor is on the left.)

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The Judge, The Video And The Slur [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Judge Michelle Odinet of the City Court of Lafayette, Louisiana, resigned last week after being heard on a video using the term “nigger” while watching security footage of a foiled car burglary outside her home. In her letter of resignation to the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Odinet said she was stepping down “after much reflection and prayer, and in order to facilitate healing within the community.”

“My words did not foster the public’s confidence and integrity for the judiciary,” she wrote. Yeah, I would say that that’s accurate. Still, it’s a strange story. In the video, voices off camera inside the judge’s home are heard saying “nigger” repeatedly and laughing as they watch security-camera footage of someone trying to break into a car until the criminal was foiled. Also used: “mom,” which is the judge, who was clearly joining in the hilarity.

The video was originally sent by an unknown source to a local newspaper, and when she was first questioned, Odinet tried to huminhumina out of the mess. She initially said she had no recollection of the conversation shown, and claimed that her “mental state was fragile” because of the attempted burglary. She also used the excuse that she had been “given a sedative at the time of the video.” Then she played the Pazuzu card (“That’s not me talking!”) protesting that “Anyone who knows me and my husband, knows this is contrary to the way we live our lives.” Continue reading →

A Musical Ethics Quiz: D.C.’s Biased Jailer

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Landerkin fuck

There’s really nothing special about this tweet from a woman named Kathleen Landerkin. I have friends and relatives who might tweet the same sentiments, if they were, you know, vulgar, uncivil clods. They aren’t, fortunately: I don’t consort with vulgar, uncivil clods. However, the tweet above is significant, because Ms. Landerkin is the current Correctional Training Facility (CTF) Deputy Warden at the Department of Corrections in the District of Columbia, and thus assists in overseeing day to day operations, inmate transportation, and case management at the D.C. Jail. The D.C. Jail is where Donald Trump supporting participants in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol are being kept.

Landerkin has been wildly vocal abut her hatred of al things related to Donald Trump, especially his supporters, and has been tweeting rants and nasty messages about those she creatively calls “deplorables” for years. One of the more provocative comments was this one, from 2018:

landerkin-white-people-extinct

Why should anyone care? Well, she has power over the January 6 inmates, and this degree of hostility, which could be fairly called demented, calls into legitimate question her ability to do her job fairly. Or does it? Literally dozens of over-heated tweets were uncovered by an enterprising social media sleuth, so Landerkin took down her account…but not before he reduced them to a video.

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