Objection

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:01 am:

Thomas recuses in a rare moment of integrity

And John Eastman is all out of appeals.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied an effort by lawyer John Eastman to appeal a ruling that found he may have acted criminally with the legal advice he gave former President Trump. It spurred a rare recusal from Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife corresponded with the California attorney in the weeks ahead of Jan. 6.

[...]

The order says that Thomas “took no part in the consideration” of Eastman’s petition.

  The Hill

Previously, the Thomases have claimed they never speak about each other's "work", so why is he recusing now? And why isn't he resigning instead?

The ruling from U.S. District Judge David Carter greenlighted release of [Eastman's] records, allowing for the piercing of materials normally covered by attorney-client privilege — something that can be granted only when a judge determined legal advice was given in furtherance of a crime or to carry out fraud.

[...]

Eastman has since been charged by authorities in Georgia as part of a broader racketeering case, along with several charges relating to making false statements.

He’s also listed as a co-conspirator in the Justice Department’s election interference case, but he and five others have yet to face any charges in the matter.

Good luck, asshole. You should lose your license to practice law at the very least.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02:49 pm:

UPDATE 04:25 pm:  So... not so much integrity as necessity.

Why seems pretty clear to me now.

Corrupt Thomases again in the news

And I keep thinking that even if the Democrats retake the House and keep the Senate, they STILL won't investigate.  The party is scared of its own shadow.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good God, do the Thomases do anything above the board?

And Kellyanne Conway is right in the middle of this stinking pile.

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.

[...]

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.

  WaPo

JFC.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Of course.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Impeach Clarence Thomas. How much corruption do you need to make the case?

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

[...]

[A]lthough justices must report the name of companies that pay their spouses, they are not required to report the names of the companies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a requirement, it is not clear that the Judicial Education Project would have been listed as a client, because the fees intended for Ginni Thomas were to go through Conway.

With instructions not to name Ginni. Nothing suspicious there?

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

No it is not.

As the Judicial Education Project pushed for a conservative court, the group grew into a financial juggernaut and was rebranded as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its revenue nearly doubled from about $66 million to more than $117 million, tax forms show.

Even so, the group has never had more than a handful of employees, tax filings show. It has listed its main office address as a UPS Store situated amid rowhouses and retail stores in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C.

Could you get any more suspicious than using a UPS Store as your main office address? And money is going through that company to Ginni Thomas without naming her. I smell Tide.

But wait!  That's not all we learned about the Thomases today.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

[...]

Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year.

[...]

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well.”

[...]

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.

  ProPublica

He managed to avoid reporting anything about the millions of dollars worth of gifts he got from Crow.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

[...]

Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

Yes! Impeach the bastard.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:57 pm:

UPDATE 05/05/2023:

More January 6 testimoiny nuggets

Then-President Donald Trump wanted to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election!” days after Election Day in 2020, according to emails provided by Jared Kushner to the House select committee.

[...]

“Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see – or ask…I don’t know who to take to,” the email from Scavino reads, according to a transcript of Kushner’s testimony to the committee, which was released by the panel on Friday.

Two phrases were bolded in the email: “Save America PAC!” and “Rigged Election!”

  CNN

WTF??? Did he think he could collect money from people writing "Rigged Election!"? What a freak.

Kushner forwarded the request and discussed it on an email chain that included Eric Trump, the president’s son; Alex Cannon, a Trump campaign lawyer; Sean Dollman, the chief financial officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign; and Justin Clark, a Trump campaign lawyer.

“Guys - can we do ASAP please?” Kushner wrote.

Obviously Kushner is just as insane as Trump here.

Robert Sinners, who worked on the Trump campaign’s Election Day operations in Georgia in 2020 and helped organize the slate of alternate GOP electors there, told congressional investigators that his “intent was never to be aligned with team crazy.”

[...]

CNN previously reported that Sinners emailed the fake electors asking for “complete secrecy and discretion” on December 13, 2020, a day before the GOP electors convened at the Georgia capitol. Sinners told the panel that efforts to ensure Georgia’s GOP electors met in secrecy had more to do with skirting Covid-19 restrictions and avoiding protesters than keeping the elector plan under wraps.

Yeah, that's believable.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol met in person Thursday with conservative activist Ginni Thomas, and during her interview, she told the panel that she did not discuss any of the legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election with her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

  CBS

But did she discuss her own - or others' - activities attempting to overturn the election?

Ginni Thomas also denied her husband knew of her texts with former President Trump's White House chief of staff.

[...]

She also told the committee that her husband is "uninterested in politics," and said in her statement, "I generally do not discuss with him my day-to-day work in politics, the topics I am working on, who I am calling, emailing, texting or meeting."

"Generally".

In one of the texts, sent during a press conference pushing election fraud claims that featured Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Thomas wrote: “Tears are flowing in what Rudy is doing right now.”

In another text, sent on Nov. 24, 2020, Meadows told Thomas that Trump’s post-election legal battles were part of “a fight of good versus evil.” Thomas replied: “Thank you. Needed that, this plus a conversation with my best friend just now. I will try to keep holding on.”

[...]

Thomas confirmed that when she mentioned her “best friend,” she was referring to her husband. But when asked what she and Justice Thomas had talked about, Ginni Thomas said she did not know.

[...]

[Thomas] was asked about some of the text messages she had sent to Meadows after the 2020 election. Thomas said at the start of her testimony that she regretted “the tone and content” of the messages, and expressed frustration at the fact they were made public.

  HuffPo

Oh yeah, that's believable. And I ask you: Do those texts seem a little intimate to you? I don't mean in any sexual context, but like she and Mark Meadows are sharing an awful lot, that they were in constant and close contact during the coup attempt? Would that be a normal situation between a Supreme Court justice's wife and the President's chief of staff? I don't think so.

"I will try to keep holding on."  They're working together, obviously.  And they're NOT relaying information to their partners (Chief Justice and President)?  That's just not believable.  

“My husband often administers spousal support to the wife that’s upset,” she said.

Do all these nutjobs speak of themselves in the third person?

“So I assume that’s what it was. I don’t have a specific memory of it.”

Bullshit. And Clarence Thomas should have been deposed, too.

Thomas said it was “embarrassing” to be confronted with her old digital communications.

“It was an emotional time,” she told the committee at several points.

"Embarrassing".

Thomas deposition transcript 

The national chairman of the Proud Boys took a Dec. 12 tour of the White House, and alarm bells went off inside the Secret Service and among other security officials.

Trump deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato told the Jan. 6 committee last month that Robert Engel — the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail — flagged the visit for him as security officials wondered how they let him slip through the cracks.

“Why didn’t we pick up on his role/membership in the Proud Boys?” one official asked Engel, in an email Engel shared with Ornato.

  Politico

Who gave him the tour?

Ornato also forwarded an article to Engel about the prospect of violence on Jan. 6

But Ornato said he didn’t recall seeing any of this chatter, despite being a point of contact for the security agencies involved, and he said he didn’t recall whether he read the article he sent.

I'm sorry, what?

Ornato also said he didn’t recall the content of a 12-minute call he had on Jan. 6 with Engel, who had been receiving updates about the security situation at the Ellipse, where Trump had begun delivering his speech.

It’s just kind of hard to believe that you don’t recall anything about a conversation when that was going on around the Ellipse and the White House that morning,” an unidentified committee investigator said.

No shit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why does Ginni Thomas get a pass?

I've been reading that there's not a peep about Ginni in the Committee's report.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Looking forward to critiques

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Yes, Bob

The answer to your question is yes.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

h/t Marty

What I did not know about Ginni Thomas

"Ginni graduated from Creighton University, in Omaha, and then attended law school there," Jane Mayer reported in a January New Yorker profile. "Her parents helped get her a job with a local Republican candidate for Congress, and when he won she followed him to Washington. But, after reportedly flunking the bar exam, she fell in with a cultish self-help group, Lifespring, whose members were encouraged to strip naked and mock one another’s body fat. She eventually broke away, and began working for the Chamber of Commerce, opposing 'comparable worth' pay for women."

  Raw Story

What?  She flunked the bar?  A "cultish" group?

Thomas, who was briefly a member of Lifespring — a controversial group that was part of the "human potential movement" — before becoming an anti-cult activist, has surprised many who once knew her by aligning herself with far-right conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon that some say have cult-like qualities.

Nonetheless, Steven Hassan, a former-cult-member-turned-cult-expert who worked with Thomas during her anti-cult activism days, told Insider he is not surprised by her involvement with the far-right conspiracy theory movement.

[...]

"[A]nyone who has ever been in a cult is vulnerable to another cult if they haven't properly counseled and done their homework," Hassan said.

[...]

Founded in 1974 by John Hanley Sr., Lifespring held training seminars to teach its members "self-confidence, self-esteem, lowered job stress, a heightened sense of control in life, and a more positive and pleasurable range of events and experiences in their lives," according to the now-dissolved group's website.

  Business Insider

Something like EST?

Thomas became involved in the 1980s. But shortly after, the group garnered controversy when reports emerged of unsavory practices and several trainees dying, according to a 1987 article in The Washington Post in which Thomas discussed how the group pushed her away from her loved ones.

She eventually left the group after being "deprogrammed" and became a passionate anti-cult activist in the 1980s and '90s.

And yet, she's now deep into QAnon conspiracy.

She blamed the "deep state" when her allies weren't hired onto Trump's administration and made several written attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In text messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, she'd even claimed that Trump watermarked mail-in ballots to track voter fraud and that politicians were being arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

[...]

In March, a video circulated on Twitter showed Thomas speaking at a 1986 Cult Awareness Network event in Kansas City, Missouri, about her experience of leaving Lifespring.

"When you come away from a cult, you've got to find a balance in your life as far as getting involved with fighting the cult or exposing it," Thomas said. "And kind of the other angle is getting a sense of yourself and what was it that made you get into that group. And what open questions are there that still need to be answered."

Sounds like Ginni could use her own advice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

JFC

Remember when the right was outraged because of fake accounts of the Obama administration removing all the W's from keyboards when transitioning to George W Bush?

A Trump administration staff member crammed pictures of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden into the White House’s air conditioning unit during the presidential transition, breaking it, according to a new book set to be released on Tuesday.

The action by the employee, who worked for then-Presidential Personnel Office Director John McEntee, was one of several examples of ways members of the Trump administration sought to undermine the incoming administration, according to New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s book, “Confidence Man,” Politico reported based on excerpts it reviewed.

[...]

he Biden team were delayed in getting information from the Pentagon and obstructed in getting access to COVID-19 vaccines at the start of their rollout, according to Haberman. [Trump Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows also refused to give them access to a computer system to start working on Biden’s budget, saying that they “can’t expect us to endorse your spending plans.”

[...]

Haberman additionally reported that Meadows texted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas, who was involved in efforts to dispute the results of 2020 election in multiple states, that “this is a fight of good versus evil,” according to Politico.

  The Hill

Yeah. With Meadows' side being the evil.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Neeeeext

When you're corrupt, you're corrupt

Or are we to believe she had it hidden from him?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

January 6 Committee reconvened

As the House returns to Washington this week, the panel is promising to air its new findings in at least one public hearing this month, with another perhaps to follow in October — a schedule that would put Trump and his GOP supporters on the defensive heading into November’s midterm elections.

[...]

[A] central focus of the investigation throughout August was the wide-ranging effort by a long list of Trump supporters — some of them on Capitol Hill — to install slates of fake electors in certain battleground states where Trump has claimed, falsely, that he prevailed over President Biden. Gingrich, the committee has found, was a part of that effort.

[...]

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), said Gingrich’s campaign to keep Trump in the White House did not stop even after Congress voted to certify Biden’s victory in the aftermath of the failed insurrection.

[...]

Snippets of Gingrich’s emails obtained by the panel reveal he had suggested line edits for a post-election TV ad in Georgia, where Trump was defeated, promoting conspiracy theories around voter fraud. The message, Gingrich advised, should include reference to a “call to action.”

“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger,” Gingrich wrote to Kushner and Miller, adding that viewers “will then bring pressure on legislators and governors.”

  The Hill

Gingrich has yet to pay for past political sins. I hope they get him.

While Trump’s former chief of staff had delivered thousands of text messages to investigators last year, he has refused to speak with the panel, even under subpoena. The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress last year, but the Justice Department declined to bring charges. The standoff remains under litigation.

Why did the DOJ choose not to bring charges? Curious. Is Meadows maybe cooperating to bring down Trump?

Some members of the select committee are also interested in speaking with Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who had sought to overturn the 2020 election and solicited the help of several well-placed figures, including Meadows and John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who had drafted the dubious legal reasoning on which the “stop the steal” effort relied.

[...]

Still another figure of interest is Tony Ornato, a former Secret Service agent who doubled as Trump’s deputy chief of staff. Ornato has already spoken with investigators, but they want him back to clarify discrepancies in testimony surrounding Trump’s alleged clash with his security detail on the day of the Capitol attack.

We're all interested. I assume these people will want some serious compensatory actions of some kind before agreeing to "interviews" with the Committee since they know from the previous hearings they'll be seen by the world. I also assume it will take some court rulings to get them there, further delaying justice.  (And I assume these folks are hoping they can delay until the GOP can steal the 2024 election and get them all out of the hot water they're in.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  I do hope that date holds.  Because it will be perfect timing after this:

At long last can Newt Gingrich be fitted for an orange jumpsuit?

You know who else was involved in "aspects of the scheme"?  Ginni Thomas.

Will the January 6 Committee get her testimony?  Will the DOJ?

UPDATE:

Oh, Ginniiiii

UPDATE 9/29:

What a surprise

Mr. Paoletta’s letter suggested that the communications between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman, turned over to the committee after Mr. Eastman sued to try to avoid doing so, contain little of note.

“The only other email Mr. Eastman produced where he and Mrs. Thomas communicated directly is from Nov. 6 — a month before Mr. Eastman filed anything on President Trump’s behalf and two months before” the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Paoletta wrote. “In that email, Mrs. Thomas merely forwarded a document with a few comments to Mr. Eastman and another person. Someone else drafted the document, which discussed ways to address the election fraud concerns held by millions of Americans.”

  NYT

You don't say. Could she maybe provide emails to the committee?

“Not a single document shows any coordination between Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Eastman,” he wrote, saying they all had been sent “on or before Dec. 9.”

“It is in this context that Mrs. Thomas has expressed a willingness to try to come before the committee as a means of clearing her name,” Mr. Paoletta wrote. “But, based on my understanding of the facts the committee has in its possession, I do not believe there is currently a sufficient basis to speak with Mrs. Thomas.” Mr. Paoletta allowed that if the committee revealed additional information, he could reconsider his position. But he expressed concerns about Ms. Thomas appearing before the committee amid what he described as a highly charged atmosphere in which Ms. Thomas had been criticized in the press for her political activity.

At least she has a smart lawyer.

Ginni's emails

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.

  WaPo

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack plans to seek testimony from conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

[...]

The decision comes after public and private wavering among committee members in recent weeks over the importance of Thomas’ role in Jan. 6 and former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

Thomas played an active role in pushing then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to take measures to help overturn the 2020 election results, according to texts obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News.

The committee had reportedly been leaning against inviting Thomas to testify as recently as last month.

  Axios

And I didn't think they'd do it.

Emails obtained by the panel reveal correspondence between Thomas and legal scholar John Eastman, a central figure in former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Other emails, reported by the New York Times, reveal that Eastman messaged a pro-Trump lawyer claiming to have insight into a "heated fight" between Supreme Court justices over whether to hear an election case.

Gee, I wonder where he heard that. Can't wait to see THOSE emails.

“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Axios.

I think so.  "Invite" her.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I might have been wrong about the January 6 Committee avoiding Ginni Thomas

My fingers are crossed.

Regarding new emails between Ginni Thomas and John Eastman:

And are we expected to believe she didn't discuss this with Clarence?

Indeed I do.

January 6 criminal liability

If you didn't get to - or want to - watch Thursday's January 6 Committee hearing, Dahlia Lithwick has an interesting interview with Ryan Goodman about the legal ramifications and who might be up a creek without a paddle.

Listen to it here:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

P.S.  Ginni Thomas should be investigated for trying to overturn the election, but I have a feeling we won't be hearing anything about her from the Committee.*

UPDATE: 

UPDATE:

*UPDATE 6/16:  I could be wrong...

At least Republicans can feel safe if (when?) they retake the House in November that Clarence Thomas won't get impeached.

Ginni Thomas....

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.