I wanted to share another thought on the Post’s travails. I’m chagrined that a friend had to make the point for me since it’s a point I should know as well as anyone. It’s not like there’s not a ton of money to be made on journalism in DC. The fact that it’s one of the few spaces in the U.S. that has spawned a series of successful media startups over the last fifteen years testifies to that — Politico, Axios, Punchbowl and more. Indeed, it was veterans of the Post who branched off and launched the first two and in many ways ate the Post’s launch before Bezos came into the picture.
Continue reading “Just Posting Endlessly”Justice Clarence Thomas Acknowledges He Should Have Disclosed Free Trips From Billionaire Donor
This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation’s highest court.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow.
The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not need to disclose such gifts. “Justice Thomas’s critics allege that he failed to report gifts from wealthy friends,” his lawyer previously said in a statement issued on the justice’s behalf. “Untrue.”
In the new filing released Friday, however, Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019, writing that he “inadvertently omitted” the trips on his previous reports.
Last year, ProPublica documented an array of undisclosed luxury vacations and other gifts Thomas has received over the years from several billionaires, including Crow. ProPublica revealed Crow had treated Thomas to numerous private jet flights and international yacht cruises, covered private school tuition for Thomas’ relative, and paid Thomas money in an undisclosed 2014 real estate deal.
Legal ethics experts said that Thomas appeared to have violated the law by failing to disclose the trips and gifts.
The Thomas revelations helped plunge the Supreme Court into its biggest ethical crisis in the modern era. Justice Samuel Alito also failed to disclose a luxury fishing trip that was paid for by wealthy political donors, one of whom had cases before the court. In recent weeks, Alito has faced criticism for politicized flags that flew at two of his homes. The public’s approval of the court has plummeted in the last few years, polls show.
In response, the court last year adopted a code of conduct for the first time in its history. The code, however, has no enforcement mechanism.
This is not the first time that Thomas has responded to public controversy about his disclosure practices by amending an old form. The forms are required by a federal law passed after Watergate that says justices must annually report income, assets and most gifts. At least twice before, Thomas has similarly defended his failure to make required disclosures as an unintentional error or a misunderstanding of the rules.
Last summer, Thomas amended his 2014 disclosure to include the real estate deal with Crow after ProPublica reported on the transaction. At the time, he wrote that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be publicly reported and said he “continues to work” with judiciary staff to determine “whether he should further amend his reports from any prior years.”
Thomas engaged an outside lawyer last year to review his past filings. The new filing does not make clear whether that review is finished. The justice and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement last year, Thomas’ attorney, Elliot Berke, said that “after reviewing Justice Thomas’s records, I am confident there has been no willful ethics transgression.”
A committee of judges of the Judicial Conference, the principal policymaking body for federal courts, also said last year it had launched a review of the allegations against Thomas. By law, if there is “reasonable cause” to believe a justice intentionally omitted information from a report, the conference is supposed to refer the matter to the attorney general. Such a referral would be unprecedented. A judiciary spokesperson told ProPublica on Friday there is no update on that review.
Even after the new amendments, there are many gifts Thomas received that he has still not disclosed.
As ProPublica previously reported, in 2019, Thomas flew to Indonesia on Crow’s private jet for an extended island cruise on Crow’s superyacht. If Thomas had chartered the plane and the yacht himself, it could have cost more than half a million dollars. Seven ethics-law experts said that Thomas appeared to have violated federal law by failing to disclose the free travel.
Thomas did not mention the flight to Indonesia or the yacht trip in his new filing. However, he disclosed a previously unknown detail about the trip: that Crow and his wife paid for Thomas’ stay at a hotel in Bali. Thomas acknowledged that he should have reported that.
ProPublica also reported that Thomas had taken at least six undisclosed trips with Crow to the Bohemian Grove. Thomas’ amendments to his reports include only one of those trips. Members typically must pay thousands of dollars to bring a guest to the retreat.
In his new filing, Thomas disclosed receiving one gift last year: photo albums that he valued at $2,000 from Terrence and Barbara Giroux. Terrence Giroux was the executive director of the Horatio Alger Association, a nonprofit that provides college scholarships to low-income students. Thomas is an honorary board member of the nonprofit.
Thomas reported no free trips last year, which would make 2023 an anomaly. Thomas received undisclosed vacations from Crow and other wealthy benefactors virtually every year for more than two decades.
In the disclosure forms released Friday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only other Supreme Court justice to report receiving a gift in 2023. Jackson said she received $12,500 worth of artwork for her chambers at the court, as well as a gift from Beyoncé of four concert tickets, which she valued at $3,711.84.
Alito, who has said he did not need to disclose his fishing trip, received a 90-day extension for filing his disclosure form for last year.
Yet More Posting
From TPM Reader RJ, who has a somewhat less generous view of the Post. This is a case where I should remind people that on some topics I post a range of views from readers. That doesn’t mean I endorse them. That said, there are some points here that ring true to me. As the dominant paper in what is an inherently political town, politics and government is inevitably the Post’s big thing. And as we’ve discussed in other posts, it’s hard to make it as one of the very few financially viable national papers if that’s your big and dominant thing.
Continue reading “Yet More Posting”Trump Claims He Has Every Right To Prosecute His Enemies
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘I Would Have Every Right To Go After Them’
Surveying the news of the past 24 hours, we’re presented with a particularly sobering reflection of our current state of affairs. I will lay it out brick by brick in the items below, but first I want to circle back to Donald Trump’s appearance two nights ago on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program.
Hannity asked a leading question, clearly trying to throw Trump a softball that will let him deny his intention to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution against his political foes – even though Trump has spent many months now promising to do precisely that.
At first, Trump took the easy swing and suggested that he won’t perpetuate what he implies is a cycle of retribution he’s already been victimized by. But then he launched into an extended justification of doing exactly what he had just disclaimed and asserting that he has “every right to go after them”:
Don’t be confused by the two-step shuffle Trump just did there. Disclaiming his intent to commit a bad act that he says he has the right to commit is not reassuring in the slightest. Committing or threatening to commit bad acts is the classic strongman move, but so is promising to forbear from committing a bad act.
Reserving to himself the power to decide whether to transgress is no less a strongman flex than actual transgression. It’s all part of the same dance of threat, intimidation, bullying, and aggression. To draw from the domestic abuse context: Don’t make me hurt you.
David Corn efficiently runs through the history of Trump’s promises of revenge, their inextricable connection to his obsession with violence, and how easily they flow from his preferred posture of victim. The bully as victim, the oppressor as oppressed, the abuser as abused.
Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade has a new essay on Trump’s threats of revenage and their consequences. After running through all the checks and balances that would limit the president’s ability to use the justice system as a tool of political reprisal, McQuade then asks what the point of it all really is. This part of her answer is spot on:
Even if politically motivated prosecutions ultimately fail, just bringing charges would be enough to tilt the playing field. If the public can be convinced that all prosecutors are corrupt partisan actors, then their work may be disregarded as mere political gamesmanship, and Trump’s convictions and impeachments will no longer matter. The result is to give Trump — and other political actors — license to commit all manner of crimes in the future.
It goes back to the classic strongman targets: judges, legislators, the press, the education system, even artists. Any power centers that are beyond the strongman’s control are a threat to him. Delegitimizing them serves the same purpose as more direct attacks. It undermines their power over him.
With that in mind, let’s survey the day’s news.
A GOP Election Clerk v. MAGA In A World Of Lies
An exceptional NYT piece on the plight of Cindy Elgan, the Republican election official in Esmeralda County, Nevada, who faced a recall attempt – in a county that went 82% for Trump in 2020 – because some conspiracy-minded residents thought he should have won by a larger margin.
The Grim New Reality
TPM’s Khaya Himmelman: Add Fentanyl-Laced Mail-In Ballots To The List Of Threats Election Officials Must Guard Against In The Fall
Capitol Police Jeered By GOP Legislators
Some Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives jeered, booed, and walked out when two former Capitol Police officers who defended against the Jan. 6 attack were introduced on the floor chamber Wednesday.
Trump II Will Assert Sweeping Powers Over Federal Spending
WaPo: Donald Trump is vowing to wrest key spending powers from Congress if elected this November, promising to assert more control over the federal budget than any president in U.S. history.
Does Trump Have A Deal With Putin?
Chris Hayes places Trump’s outrageous cooptation of the case of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich for his political ends into some dreary historical context:
Bannon Ordered To Report To Prison
Absent intervention by a federal appeals court, MAGA world figure Steve Bannon must report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for rebuffing the House Jan. 6 committee.
‘Isolated and Inexperienced’
Former TPMer and Ft. Pierce, Florida native Tierney Sneed co-authors an in-depth profile of Ft. Pierce’s only federal judge: Aileen Cannon.
What To Make Of The Hunter Biden Case
With President Biden promising not to pardon his son Hunter, Ankush Khardori has a thoughtful look at the Delaware gun case brought by Special Counsel David Weiss and what makes it so unusual.
Stolen Valor
NOTUS: House Republicans are accusing fellow Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) of stolen valor for continuing to wear a Combat Infantryman Badge pin from Afghanistan that he was awarded by mistake.
I’m Not Crying. Nope. Not Me.
Have A Splendid Weekend!
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More Posting
An interesting perspective from TPM Reader CB on the unfolding Post drama …
Continue reading “More Posting”We moved to the DC area – Maryland suburbs – straight from Northwestern Law in 1968 and have subscribed to the Post daily and Sunday ever since. From the elixir of the morning Woodward and Bernstein exclusives that chronicled the unraveling of the Nixon presidency, to a daily paper thinner than a half used yellow legal pad in the dying days of the Graham family ownership, we have stuck with the Post.
Pucking and Bluffing
A bit more on my love/hate relationship with Puck. As I said in today’s Backchannel, it’s a curious mix of the very best and the very worst. But as I also noted, it’s helpful to keep an eye on the worst because they can have a lot of influence. Occasionally you can even learn something. Which brings me to Tara Palmeri of Puck. Her dispatch on Trump’s conviction is just drenched in the contempt in which she holds all Democrats. After listing off Republicans’ absolute and total unity behind Trump she says this: “Ironically, it’s the Democrats who seem confused about how to handle Trump’s newly minted felon designation.”
Let’s go back a few more days to our earlier discussion of this. The roar of rage and total confidence in Trump has two purposes. The one is to keep Republicans on side. The other is to make Democrats doubt the obvious: that Trump’s new first name, “convicted felon,” is bad news for his campaign. And the more it’s flogged and made his official first name, the worse it is. We don’t know how bad it is. We don’t know how many voters it will move. But it’s definitely not good. So saying it over and over again and putting it at the heart of the campaign against him is certainly a good thing. Again, that’s most of the goal of the Republican fusillade: to raise doubt about that completely obvious point.
D-Day
The news pages are filled today with D-Day anniversary messages and accounts. It’s 80 years ago. So we’re at the outer rim of time where anyone there that day must be in their late 90s at the youngest. The thing that seems most important to remember is that it was not clear that it would work. The death, the fear, the terror, the sacrifice all take on a certain hue and logic because we know it was a success that would open the door for the reconquest of Europe. But that wasn’t clear at the time. You’ve probably seen references in the anniversary stories to the message Ike prepared to announce the landing’s failure.
Continue reading “D-Day”The First Point Of Trump’s Abortion Policy: Do Not Talk About Abortion Policy
Donald Trump admitted Wednesday that Republicans have hurt themselves with how they’ve been talking about abortion this election cycle and in years past.
Continue reading “The First Point Of Trump’s Abortion Policy: Do Not Talk About Abortion Policy”Add Fentanyl-Laced Mail-In Ballots To The List Of Threats Election Officials Must Guard Against In The Fall
Last November, just one day after a special election in Lane County, Oregon, an election worker opened an envelope addressed to the county clerk’s office. It contained a letter that read “stop elections now” and was accompanied by a suspicious-looking white powdery substance, Lane County Clerk Dena Dawson told TPM. The powder, which Dawson was not able to confirm pending an ongoing investigation, was feared to be fentanyl.
Continue reading “Add Fentanyl-Laced Mail-In Ballots To The List Of Threats Election Officials Must Guard Against In The Fall”Bored Billionaire Syndrome
From an anonymous reader on what this person calls the “bored billionaire” syndrome. I think this is very on the mark for what the billionaire savior wants to accomplish when they rescue a struggling publication and why they often get tetchy pretty quickly.
Continue reading “Bored Billionaire Syndrome”I wanted to add to your post about the situation at the Washington Post. If I worked there, the thing I would be most worried right now is that Bezos has entered a very familiar and dangerous phase of his ownership for the newsroom. I call it the “bored billionaire” stage and, in my case, it comes from lived experience.
New billionaires don’t buy money-losing publications as charities whose losses they are willing to underwrite because they believe those publications ought to keep existing. (Old billionaires did: the Fleishmans and then the Newhouses with The New Yorker, the Hedermans and the New York Review, Marty Peretz — via his wife’s Singer inheritance — and The New Republic, etc.)