Over the last day or so, the D.C. insider sheets have had some interesting details about the GOP’s positioning and doubts about the debt-limit hostage-taking standoff. Senate Republicans especially are pushing to punt on the crisis for 30 days or so. Publicly, they’re siding with McCarthy and only a few have vaguely floated the idea. But for a lot of non-die-hards there’s clearly a mood of Can we take a time out? or Can we get a little more time to plan our hostage-crisis so you get blamed?
The White House obviously has little incentive to help Republicans out with their self-created crisis planning, though OMB Director Shalanda Young didn’t categorically rule it out.
But other Republicans have come up with a different way of extending the deadline: simply say the deadline is later. Two nights ago, Axios reported that many Republicans simply don’t believe the government will run out of money in early June.
“Nobody believes her. I don’t believe her,” said Sen. Kennedy, referring to Janet Yellen’s June estimate.
Many GOP lawmakers think they have until July or August.
Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) will sign a bill on Friday creating a state commission that will have the authority to investigate, sanction or remove local prosecutors – all part of a broader Republican-led push to punish district attorneys who don’t do their bidding.
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.
Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow paid tuition for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ grandnephew for two years at two private boarding schools, according to a statement released Thursday by a longtime friend of Thomas’.
The statement came in response to a ProPublica story that disclosed Crow had paid the fees at two schools for Mark Martin, a relative who Thomas had legal guardianship of and said he was raising “as a son.” Thomas did not include the payments in the financial disclosures he is required to file each year.
Mark Paoletta, the friend, acknowledged that Crow paid Martin’s tuition at both Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia and Hidden Lake Academy in Georgia, saying Crow paid for one year at each school. Paoletta did not give a total amount but, based on the tuition rates at the time, the two years would amount to roughly $100,000. Martin attended Randolph-Macon for multiple years, and the statement did not say who had paid for the remainder of his high school education.
Paoletta, Crow and Thomas did not respond to further requests for comment.
STATEMENT OF MARK PAOLETTA, FRIEND OF JUSTICE THOMAS
The Thomases have rarely spoken publicly about the remarkably generous efforts to help a child in need. They have always respected the privacy of this young man and his family. It is disappointing and painful, but unsurprising…
The revelation of the tuition payments deepens the financial ties between Crow, a Republican megadonor, and Thomas, who earns $285,000 a year as a Supreme Court justice. Last month, ProPublica reported that Crow had paid for decades of luxury vacations and travel for Thomas and his wife and had bought the home of Thomas’ mother, making tens of thousands of dollars of improvements to it.
“This story is another attempt to manufacture a scandal about Justice Thomas,” Paoletta wrote. “But let’s be clear about what is supposedly scandalous now: Justice Thomas and his wife devoted twelve years of their lives to taking in and caring for a beloved child — who was not their own — just as Justice Thomas’s grandparents had done for him.”
“They made many personal and financial sacrifices to do this. And along the way, their friends joined them in doing everything possible to give this child a future.”
Paoletta asserted that Thomas was not required to report the tuition payments “made directly to these schools” because Martin was not his “dependent child” as defined by federal disclosure law. Thomas has said he was advised he didn’t need to disclose the luxury travel because it was hospitality from a friend.
Legal ethics experts said the justice should have disclosed the payments as a gift because they defray tuition costs that he would otherwise be responsible for paying. Several years earlier, Thomas did disclose a $5,000 gift to help with Martin’s education from another friend. Minor children are seldom responsible for their own tuition. Martin told ProPublica in an interview he had not been aware Crow had paid his fees.
In Washington, prominent Democratic lawmakers renewed calls for ethics reform. One called for a Justice Department investigation.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that ProPublica’s latest report “continues a steady stream of revelations calling Justices’ ethics standards and practices into question.”
“I think that all Justices should be held to the same ethical standards as every other federal judge,” he said. “The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Senate Finance Committee who previously sent a letter to Crow requesting a full accounting of the gifts he’s given Thomas, said: “Harlan Crow has been subsidizing an extravagant lifestyle that Justice Thomas and his family could not otherwise afford. This is a foul breach of ethics standards.”
If Crow doesn’t comply, Wyden added, the lawmaker intends to “explore using other tools at the committee’s disposal to obtain this critical information.”
In an interview with CNN, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., reiterated a call for a Justice Department probe and subpoenas to force Thomas to testify before Congress. Chief Justice John Roberts has previously rebuffed invitations to testify before Congress. He cited the “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
Blumenthal told CNN that “the drip, drip, drip of these destructive disclosures is going to destroy the United States Supreme Court unless there is an effective proper investigation.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who has sought Supreme Court ethics reform for years and has co-authored bills to shore up the ethics rules for justices on the high court, wrote on Twitter: “When does the stench get bad enough that SCOTUS stops the cover-up and ends the mischief? This is on the Chief Justice to solve, plain and simple. Mom’s rent, family tuition, vacations and gifts — and secret? Any other government employee would be fired.”
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, an array of experts — including a retired federal judge and a former attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush — debated the constitutionality of Congress regulating the Supreme Court, as well as the balancing act between two pillars of American government: checks and balances versus the separation of powers.
Former federal circuit judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative, sent a letter to the committee ahead of Tuesday’s hearing and argued that Supreme Court justices need to act and appear “beyond reproach.” He said Congress can pass laws to codify ethical standards for Supreme Court justices. But, Luttig added, lawmakers shouldn’t have to.
“The ‘judicial power,’ the power of the Supreme Court, is ultimately dependent on the respect that its judgments command, or not, from the American People,” he wrote. “Whether the Supreme Court is subject to ethical standards of conduct or not is emphatically not a partisan political issue and must not become one.”
During the hearing, Democrats, led by Durbin and Whitehouse, said there is a long tradition of Congress passing laws to regulate the Supreme Court’s administration — which, they said, is decidedly separate from the justices’ decision-making remit. Republicans said lawmakers across the aisle only care about enforcing ethics rules because they dislike the majority-conservative Supreme Court.
“There’s a very selective outrage here,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, ranking member of the committee’s minority side. Some Republicans on the committee cited examples of liberal justices accepting trips in the past but did not distinguish those from Thomas’ unreported trips. “This is not about making the court better,” Graham said, “this is about destroying a conservative court. It will not work.”
Last month, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, publicly criticized Thomas’ relationship with Crow. “If the reports are accurate, it stinks,” he told reporters.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
A Montana District Court judge has rejected Democratic state Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s attempt to return to the House floor following Republican lawmakers’ moves that blocked her from entering or speaking in the House chamber at the end of April 2023.
`A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
I’m Excited. Are You Excited?
A whopping FIVE New York Times reporters have dumped their notebooks on the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The revelations fall into three buckets:
✅ a cooperating inside source
✅ video tampering suspicions
✅ Saudi LIV connection
Am I enjoying this too much? Probably a little.
Let’s take them in order:
Try To Keep The Witnesses Straight
Last night’s NYT story on the Mar-a-Lago investigation leads with: A person who has worked for Trump at his oceanside resort is cooperating with prosecutors.
This is a different witness than Walt Nauta, the former military valet for Trump who went with him to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency, whose cooperation has reportedly been, shall we say, spotty, the NYT reports:
But prosecutors appear to be trying to fill in some gaps in their knowledge about the movement of the boxes, created in part by their handling of another potentially key witness, Mr. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta. Prosecutors believe Mr. Nauta has failed to provide them with a full and accurate account of his role in any movement of boxes containing the classified documents.
With me so far?
Tell Me More About The MAL Video Tampering Suspicions
The NYT story echoes some of CNN’s reporting from the day before about investigators’ suspicions that the surveillance video at MAL was tampered with (emphasis mine):
Prosecutors have also issued several subpoenas to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, seeking additional surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida, people with knowledge of the matter said. While the footage could shed light on the movement of the boxes, prosecutors have questioned a number of witnesses about gaps in the footage, one of the people said.
But hoping to understand why some of the footage from the storage camera appears to be missing or unavailable — and whether that was a technological issue or something else — the prosecutors subpoenaed the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago.
Like the CNN story Wednesday, the NYT connects prosecutors suspicions about the video to grand jury testimony yesterday by a father-son duo who works for Trump:
And they recently subpoenaed Matthew Calamari Sr., the longtime head of security at the Trump Organization who became its chief operating officer. His son, Matthew Calamari Jr., who is the company’s corporate director of security, was subpoenaed some time ago, according to a person familiar with the activity.
Both would have insight into the security camera operation, according to people familiar with the matter. Both Calamaris appeared before the grand jury gathering evidence in the case on Thursday. CNN first reported that prosecutors planned to question them.
Still with me?
I’m 100% Here For The Saudi Golf Connection
The emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour as a would-be competitor to the PGA has been fascinating to my sports-and-politics sotted brain, so I was delighted(!) to see a potential connection to the MAL probe:
It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.
It’s a lot, I know.
What To Make Of All This?
A couple of thoughts to keep in your head as you process the new MAL news this week:
Don’t rule out that part of the reason for stories like the NYT and CNN ones this week could be defense attorneys communicating to each other about the status of the investigation via press reports. This probably sounds more sinister to you than I intend it to be because it doesn’t make the reports false or the lawyers guilty of obstruction of justice. It may just color the way the info is presented and framed.
For what it’s worth, I am a little surprised to see the reports this week suggesting a flurry of activity recently in the MAL probe. I had been under the impression that the core of the investigatory work was complete and a charging decision might not be too far off. Maybe or maybe not.
Historic Seditious Conspiracy Verdict For Proud Boys
The conclusion of the four-month long Proud Boys trial with seditious conspiracy convictions for its leaders was the most historically resonant news of the day.
While the verdict was mixed, that didn’t blunt the significance of the outcome:
Remember it was the Proud Boys whom Trump directed to “Stand back and standby” during a 2020 presidential debate then unleashed them on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The big unknown coming out of the trial is whether the Proud Boys convictions pave the way for prosecutors to connect the Capitol attack to the White House or to Trump or to those in his inner circle. More on that to come.
SCOOP
Politico: “A former Trump campaign staffer who was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice as part of its investigation into the plot to overturn the 2020 election, is currently serving on the House committee overseeing U.S. elections.”
Supreme Court Scandal Watch
What Now, Clarence!?! The next shoe to drop has dropped, via the WaPo:
Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.
A Remarkable Statement. The Thomas camp issued the following statement in response to the separate ProPublica report that billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow paid the private school tuition of Thomas’ grandnephew. I’ll put it here in full as an historical artifact:
STATEMENT OF MARK PAOLETTA, FRIEND OF JUSTICE THOMAS
The Thomases have rarely spoken publicly about the remarkably generous efforts to help a child in need. They have always respected the privacy of this young man and his family. It is disappointing and painful, but unsurprising…
Ouch! The reaction to the latest Thomas news was blistering:
"In very simple terms, if you are a public servant you can't take free stuff, it is as simple as that. If you want free stuff don't be a public servant. But guess what? When you are not a public servant, people don't want give you free stuff" – @BarbMcQuade w/ @NicolleDWallacepic.twitter.com/2Kz8SiO0XC
I mean, can anyone else say they have a friendship like the one Clarence Thomas has with Harlan Crow? A friend you met when he gave you a ride on his private jet, who's also your mom's landlord but doesn't charge her rent and pays for a family member's tuition?
Every friend group has that one friend who pays for all the vacations, and the oil paintings of the vacations, and your kids’ tuition, and buys your mom’s house and lets her live there rent free for life, and plans to turn the house into a museum of you. You know that friend?
With no certain time for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s return to the Senate, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) is in the “hope and understanding” phase of denial:
Sort of a category misunderstanding here. People shouldn’t be trying to save the reputation of the Court. The current court is corrupt to the core. It’s corruption needs to be addressed not papered over. https://t.co/IXm3eY3csf
Can Biden give Durbin an ambassadorship or something? Maybe just speak from experience about the consequences of limply declining to hold Clarence Thomas accountable? https://t.co/PCvhUw1kVv
Standing on a golf course in Ireland Thursday, former President Trump suggested – against all evidence – he was going to leave early and head back to New York to “confront” the allegations being levied against him in the E. Jean Carroll trial, which he hasn’t attended and where he doesn’t plan to testify in his own defense.
The news of Trump’s remarks made it back to the trial judge, who ended the day by calling Trump’s bluff and giving him until Sunday at 5 p.m. ET to change his mind about testifying at trial.
Republican Kari Lake’s lawyers were sanctioned $2,000 Thursday by the Arizona Supreme Court in their unsuccessful challenge of her defeat in the governor’s race last year to Democrat Katie Hobbs.
In an order, the state’s highest court said Lake’s attorney made “false factual statements” that more than 35,000 ballots had been improperly added to the total ballot count. They have 10 days to submit the payment to the court clerk.
Finding Humor In A Grim Moment
Of all the Trump barbarism to come out in the E. Jean Carroll trial, I don’t know why this froze me the most, but it did:
In Trump's deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case, he lashed out at Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, telling her she's not his type.
"You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either, to be honest," he told Kaplan. "I wouldn’t, in any circumstances, have any interest in you."
It took some effort to find any humor in this, bust MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin may have succeeded:
Carroll, day 7: This trial has been heavy. But hearing Trump tell Robbie Kaplan, Carroll’s lead lawyer, *she* wasn’t his type either was unexpectedly funny. Why? Kaplan is one of the most prominent, publicly gay women in New York. Suffice it to say he’s REALLY not her type.
The jury in the civil trial in which author E. Jean Carroll is accusing Donald Trump of rape was finally shown video of Trump’s taped deposition Thursday where he mixes up a photo of Carroll with one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) bemoaned Thursday that Democrats didn’t just raise the debt ceiling themselves before Republicans got their grubby mitts on it.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the debt ceiling crisis, Senate efforts to address judicial system rot and Ted Cruz’s shiny new 2024 challenger.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Florida’s state legislature approved a flurry of anti-“woke” bills on Wednesday, banning college diversity programs and preventing schools from being required to use pronouns that don’t correspond to one’s sex.
