September 1, 2023

Friday, September 1, 2023.🍁 Annette’s News Roundup.

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Clarence Thomas claims he has come clean on 2022 financials disclosures.

Justice Thomas says he used private jet for security reasons after Dobbs leak.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported three 2022 trips on the private jet of a Texas billionaire in a financial disclosure form released Thursday, and for the first time detailed the businessman’s purchase of three properties from the justice’s family years earlier.


In his required annual financial report, Thomas said he opted to fly on the private plane of his friend and benefactor, Harlan Crow, for one of the trips on the advice of his security detail. The justices faced heightened security risks, Thomas noted, after the May, 2022 leak of the court’s majority opinion to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion and overturn Roe v. Wade.


Thomas also acknowledged prior mistakes and omissions in past reports, involving bank accounts, a life insurance policy and the name of his wife’s real estate company.

Filings from Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. were made public Thursday, months later than those of their colleagues at the high court, because the two justices had requested 90-day extensions. The annual reports have drawn increased attention in recent years, amid pressure from Congressional Democrats and outside legal experts for the justices to strengthen disclosure requirements for travel and gifts, and adopt specific ethics guidelines.

The pressure comes in part from news reports by ProPublica and other outlets revealing that Thomas did not disclose years of luxury vacations and private jet travel funded by Crow, and that Alito did not report a free trip to a fishing resort in Alaska in 2008. Alito flew to the resort on the private jet of a billionaire hedge fund manager who later had cases before the court; the trip was organized by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who had helped Alito win confirmation, according to ProPublica.


Thomas and Alito have said they did not believe they needed to disclose the free travel. But ethics rules for federal judges — and the nine justices — were revised in March to require a fuller accounting of the free trips and other gifts members of the judiciary accept.


The revised rules were designed to clarify which gifts can be counted as “personal hospitality” from a close friend and exempt from disclosure. They made clear that starting with the 2022 forms, judges and justices must report travel by private jet.

In his report Thursday, Thomas said he prepared his 2022 report with guidance from the Supreme Court’s legal office, the counselor to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., staff of the Judicial Conference’s financial disclosure committee and an attorney. Thomas said he “continues to work with Supreme Court officials and the Committee staff for guidance on whether he should further amend his reports from any prior years.

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Federal ethics law requires top officials from all branches of government, including the justices, to file annual disclosures listing investments, gifts, outside income and the source of spousal income so that the public can assess potential conflicts of interest. Officials from the legislative and executive branch also have more stringent requirements.


The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation in July that would require the justices to follow disclosure rules as strict as those that apply to members of Congress — more detailed and timely information about privately sponsored travel, for example — tighten recusal requirements for the justices and create an ethics code for the high court. The bill is opposed by Republicans and is unlikely to succeed.

Roberts has opposed congressional efforts to impose more stringent rules. He said this spring that the court was continuing to “look at things” to show the American public that the court adheres to the “highest standards of conduct.” The justices, however, have struggled to reach consensus on a binding ethics policy.

Reports from Thomas’s and Alito’s colleagues were released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in June, detailing teaching income, book payments and travel to legal conferences.

Thomas’s allies have said that the justice’s travel paid for by Crow did not need to be disclosed and that there is nothing wrong with accepting gifts from a longtime friend.


In 2014, Thomas sold Crow three properties in Savannah, Ga., including the home where Thomas’s mother was living and two nearby vacant lots. Experts said the $133,363 real estate transaction should have been reported on Thomas’s disclosure forms.


Democratic lawmakers have asked a committee of the federal judiciary’s policymaking body to review Thomas’s decision not to disclose his dealings with Crow. (Washington Post).

ProPublica’s response to Justice Thomas’s filing on Thursday.

Clarence Thomas Filing Acknowledges Harlan Crow Real Estate Deal, Private Jet Travel.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time acknowledged that he should have reported selling real estate to billionaire political donor Harlan Crow in 2014, a transaction revealed by ProPublica earlier this year. Writing in his annual financial disclosure form, Thomas said that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be publicly disclosed.

In the form, which was made public Thursday after he’d received an extension on the filing deadline, Thomas also disclosed receiving three private jet trips last year from Crow. ProPublica reported on two of those trips.

Thomas defended his previous practice of not disclosing private jet flights provided to him over the years.

In a statement Thursday, an attorney for Thomas, Elliot Berke, said that “after reviewing Justice Thomas’s records, I am confident there has been no willful ethics transgression, and any prior reporting errors were strictly inadvertent.”

Thomas’ expanded disclosures for 2022 follow a series of ProPublica stories that documented an array of undisclosed luxury vacations and other gifts Thomas has received over the years from a cadre of billionaires, including Crow. ProPublica revealed Texas real estate magnate Crow’s generosity toward Thomas, including yacht cruises, private jet flights, the purchase of his mother’s house in Georgia and tuition payments. Subsequently, we reported that Thomas has received at least 38 destination vacations and 26 private jet flights from multiple billionaires. Thomas’ latest filing brings the total number of jet flights he’s received even higher.

In its initial story, ProPublica reported Thomas took a trip to Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks last July and to a conservative think tank conference in Dallas last May, noting that flight records suggested he flew to and from both places on Crow’s jet. In his new form, Thomas confirmed that Crow provided the private plane travel.

In the form, Thomas said that his security detail recommended he fly private whenever possible “because of the increased security risk following the Dobbs opinion leak.” The Supreme Court did not respond to a question about whether all justices are now advised to take private jet flights for security purposes.

Thomas also disclosed one previously unknown private jet trip he received from Crow. He reported taking a private plane on the way home from a February conference in Dallas because of an “unexpected ice storm.”

In his form, Thomas wrote that he “continues to work” with judiciary staff to determine “whether he should further amend his reports from any prior years.”

The disclosure contains Thomas’ first public comments on his failure to disclose a 2014 real estate deal with Crow. As ProPublica reported this spring, Crow purchased Thomas’ mother’s house and two nearby vacant lots from Thomas and his relatives for $133,363. Thomas’ mother continues to live at the property, which Crow now owns. Crow has said he plans to someday turn the house, which was Thomas’ childhood home, into a museum.

In the form, Thomas said he took a loss on the deal because he and his wife “put between $50,000 to $75,000 into his mother’s home in capital improvements over the years.”

Thomas also defended his practice for more than two decades of not disclosing private jet trips provided by Crow and other wealthy businessmen.

Justices are required by a federal ethics law passed after Watergate to publicly disclose most gifts. Thomas’ defense centers on a carve-out in the law known as the “personal hospitality” exemption. The exemption states that gifts of “food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality” don’t have to be disclosed. The judiciary updated its guidelines earlier this year to make explicit that the exemption doesn’t apply to private jet travel.

Seven ethics law experts told ProPublica that even before the update, both the law and the judiciary’s regulations have required that gifts of transportation, such as private jet travel, be disclosed because they are not food, lodging or entertainment. Reviewing other federal judges’ financial disclosure filings, ProPublica found at least six examples of judges disclosing gifts of private jet travel in recent years prior to the update.

In the new filing, Thomas for the first time said he got advice that he did not have to disclose such flights from staff at the Judicial Conference, the policymaking arm of the federal judiciary. He said he received that advice from “Conference staff, and in conversations with court officers and colleagues early in his tenure on the Court.” In his previous statement on the matter, Thomas did not say he had consulted the ethics staff.

Prior to his most recent disclosure, Thomas had reported receiving one private jet trip from Crow in 1997, the year after the pair met.

Thomas also pointed to advice received in 2006 by a lower court federal judge, Ray Randolph, that a private jet flight to Alaska didn’t need to be disclosed.

A judiciary spokesperson declined to comment Thursday on whether it has ever been the Judicial Conference’s position that judges can accept gifts of private jet travel without disclosing them.

She also declined to confirm Thomas’ account of past advice he’d received from conference staff. “Advice sought by any filer is confidential and we do not discuss that advice publicly,” the spokesperson said.

The Supreme Court press office did not immediately respond to a request for more details on the advice Thomas said he received.

Thomas’ attorney criticized watchdog groups and Democratic members of Congress who have called for Thomas to be investigated.

“The attacks on Justice Thomas are nothing less than ridiculous and dangerous, and they set a terrible precedent for political blood sport through federal ethics filings,” Berke wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito’s filing was also released Thursday. His did not contain any new disclosures of gifts. Earlier this year, ProPublica reported that in 2008, Alito accepted a private jet flight to Alaska from a hedge fund billionaire who later had cases before the Supreme Court. Alito said that he was not required to disclose the gift, and that when the billionaire’s companies came before the court, Alito was unaware of his connection to the cases.

From the Guardian. In his own statement, Kyle Herrig, senior adviser to the watchdog Accountable.US, said: “It’s no surprise that Justice Thomas has kept up his decades-long cozy relationship with billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow with even more lavish jet rides and vacation reimbursements.

“For years, Thomas has used his position on our nation’s highest court as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle – and that hasn’t stopped.

“… Harlan Crow, Justice Thomas, Leonard Leo, and other key players … may believe they exist above the law, but they don’t. We need accountability and reform now.”

Another court observer, Gabe Roth of Fix the Court, addressed the unusual statement appended to Thomas’s declarations form.

“Justice Thomas’s lengthy explanation as to why he omitted various gifts and free trips on previous disclosures does not countermand his decades of willful obfuscation when it comes to his reporting requirements,” Roth said.

“What’s more, he’s chosen not to update earlier reports with details about the tuition gift, the RV loan” – from Anthony Welters, a healthcare magnate, and first reported by the New York Times – “or his countless private plane fights, all of which were reportable.

“It’s time for the Judicial Conference, as required by the disclosure law, to refer these issues to the [US] justice department for further investigation.”

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Trump pleads Not Guilty in Georgia. 🤭

Trump, Waiving Arraignment, Pleads Not Guilty in Georgia Case.

Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia.

Former President Donald J. Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday and waived his arraignment in the Georgia criminal case charging him and 18 of his allies with interfering in the 2020 election.

His plea came as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a fellow Republican, dismissed demands from the former president and some of his supporters to start impeachment proceedings against Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought the case.

Without Mr. Kemp’s help, it is all the more unlikely that Mr. Trump will be able to derail the prosecution.

“In Georgia, we will not be engaging in political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment,” Mr. Kemp said in a news conference at the State Capitol, where he also discussed the response to Hurricane Idalia. “We will do what is right, we will uphold our oath as public servants, and it’s my belief that our state will be better off for it.”

It remains unclear where or when Mr. Trump will be put on trial in the case, one of four that he has been charged in this year. A number of the 19 defendants are sparring with Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, over when a trial might start and whether it will be in state or federal court, leaving two judges in courtrooms only a few blocks apart in downtown Atlanta to wrangle with defense lawyers pulling in different directions.

“I do hereby waive formal arraignment and enter my plea of not guilty,” Mr. Trump stated in a two-page filing on Thursday morning.

He wrote that he had discussed the charges with his lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, adding: “I fully understand the nature of the offenses charged,” and that he waived his right to appear at arraignment, which had been scheduled to take place in Atlanta next Wednesday along with those of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.

Mr. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta last week and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia. On social media, he has assailed and spread falsehoods about Ms. Willis, a Democrat, calling her “crooked, incompetent & highly partisan.” He has also praised State Senator Colton Moore, the most outspoken advocate for impeaching Ms. Willis. But calling a special legislative session to begin the impeachment process lacks enough support among lawmakers to move forward.

Mr. Kemp has the power to unilaterally call a special session; his refusal to do so for an impeachment of Ms. Willis echoes his refusal to call a special session after the 2020 election, when Mr. Trump pressured him to make such a move to help overturn his election loss.

State legislators may also call a special session. But although Republicans are in the majority of both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, doing so would require the support of three-fifths of the legislature, a threshold that could only be met with votes from some Democrats.

Republican lawmakers in the state have wrestled since Mr. Trump’s indictment over whether anything can or should be done to impede Ms. Willis and her criminal case.

This week, House Speaker Jon Burns said it would be “reckless” to take steps to defund Ms. Willis’s office, another move that some Republicans are considering, because it could hinder efforts to fight violent crime in Atlanta.

But Mr. Moore, a first-year senator from ultraconservative northwest Georgia, has spoken in threatening terms.

“I don’t want a civil war,” he said in a recent televised interview. “I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so.”

Mr. Kemp’s relationship with Mr. Trump fractured after the governor stood by the state’s election results in 2020, which gave Joseph R. Biden a narrow victory there.

On Wednesday, he warned fellow Republicans that they could suffer politically if they focused on what he called the “distractions” posed by Ms. Willis’s case and Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. They should be pursuing tax cuts and teacher raises, he said, “not focusing on the past, or some grifter scam that somebody’s doing to help them raise a few dollars into their campaign account.”

Mr. Trump has also been indicted this year in a criminal case in Manhattan, on state charges in a case stemming from hush money paid to a pornographic film actress. And he has been indicted in a pair of federal cases — one in Washington, related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result nationally, and one in Florida over his handling of sensitive government documents after he left office.

Should he be elected president again, he may theoretically be able to pardon himself of any federal convictions. But Mr. Trump would not be able to do so for a state conviction, even if the case was moved to federal court, as some defendants are seeking to do.

Complicating the Georgia case, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants have differing legal strategies. Several of the defendants, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, have filed to move the case to federal court. Late Thursday afternoon, prosecutors and lawyers for Mr. Meadows filed a new round of briefs in their battle over the removal question.

Other defendants, including Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have moved for speedy trials in state court, as they are allowed under Georgia law. Mr. Chesebro’s trial has already been scheduled to start on Oct. 23. Ms. Willis’s office is seeking to keep all of the defendants together in a single trial starting then, but Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has initially indicated that only Mr. Chesebro will be tried at that time.

Mr. Sadow filed a motion on Thursday seeking to sever Mr. Trump’s case from Mr. Chesebro’s and those of any other defendants who invoke their right to a speedy trial. He wrote in his filing that “requiring less than two months preparation time to defend a 98-page indictment, charging 19 defendants, with 41 various charges” would “violate President Trump’s federal and state constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process of law.” (The New York Times)

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The jail terms just keep on growing.

Joe Biggs, Proud Boys leader, gets 17-year prison sentence for role in Jan. 6 attack.

Joe Biggs.

Joseph Biggs, a Florida leader of the Proud Boys on Jan. 6, 2021, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to derail the peaceful transfer of power — the second-longest sentence of the hundreds handed down since the violent assault on the Capitol.

“That day broke our tradition of peacefully transferring power,” said U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly as he delivered his sentence. “The mob brought an entire branch of government to heel.”

Biggs is the first of four Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy to face sentencing.

The others include Philadelphia Proud Boys leader Zachary Rehl, Seattle Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean and former national Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who will all be sentenced between Thursday and early next week.

A fifth member of the group, Dominic Pezzola, who was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of other Jan. 6 felonies, faces sentencing on Friday. He smashed a Senate-wing window of the Capitol with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the mob’s breach of the building.

Kelly, an appointee of Donald Trump, applied a “terrorism” enhancement to Biggs’ sentence, a distinction that so far has only been applied to members of the Oath Keepers similarly convicted of seditious conspiracy. Kelly spoke at length about his decision to apply that label and how it compared to other, more stereotypical acts of terrorism that involve mass casualties or bombings.

“While blowing up a building in some city somewhere is a very bad act, the nature of the constitutional moment we were in that day is something that is so sensitive that it deserves a significant sentence,” Kelly said.

The sentence is an important marker in the fraught aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors, who had asked for a 33-year sentence for Biggs, said he and his co-conspirators were the driving force behind the violence that unfolded that day, facilitating breaches at multiple police lines and helping the crowd advance into the building itself. A jury convicted the five men of multiple conspiracies in June, after a four-month trial that recounted their actions in painstaking detail.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough urged Kelly to severely punish Biggs as a way to deter others who might consider similar actions in the future aimed at disrupting the government. The fear and effect on society caused by Jan. 6 , he said, is “no different than the act of a spectacular bombing of a building.” (Politico).

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Vassar! This is a disgrace.

Professor pay parity. A group of female professors from Vassar College have sued the school for allegedly paying female professors less than their male coworkers while subjecting them to sluggish promotion paths. The women, seeking class action status, are asking for back pay from 2015 for all female full professors who worked during that time as well as a revised promotion system. Vassar has yet to comment on the lawsuit. Washington Post

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Women’s sports continues to grow.

In Nebraska on Wednesday. 92,003. Women’s volleyball.

Nebraska volleyball sets women’s sporting event attendance world record.

Nebraska Volleyball. 92,003.

At first, the idea seemed audacious. Holding a college volleyball match inside the University of Nebraska’s massive football stadium? What would it look like? Would enough people come?
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I think my brain started spinning,” Nebraska’s senior associate athletic director Brent Meyer recently said in an interview on the team’s website.
But then the tickets for Nebraska’s night match against Omaha started selling and selling and selling, with 92,003 fans officially in attendance at the school’s Memorial Stadium for the Huskers’ match against Omaha on Wednesday night, setting a new world record for a women’s sporting event.

The former world record for attendance at a women’s event was 91,648 for a Champions League soccer match between Barcelona and Wolfsburg held in Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium.

The United States record was 90,185 for the 1999 World Cup Final played in the Rose Bowl.


Those were huge global events with championships on the line.

Wednesday’s event in Lincoln, Neb., promoted as Volleyball Day in Nebraska, was the Cornhuskers’ season opener, with an opening match featuring Nebraska Kearney against Wayne State.

The program also included a post-match concert by country music star Scotty McCreery.

Anyone who didn’t think Nebraska could fill a huge stadium for a volleyball match doesn’t know much about Nebraska volleyball, or college volleyball for that matter.

The fourth-ranked Cornhuskers have won five national championships and have sold out 306 consecutive matches, an NCAA record, and the sport itself is in a boom, approaching basketball as the most popular women’s collegiate sport.


Volleyball is particularly robust in the Big Ten, and most of the game’s attendance records involve teams from that conference.

The previous largest crowd to watch a women’s college volleyball match was 18,755 for the 2021 national championship game between Nebraska and Wisconsin.

The Badgers also held the record for the largest regular season crowd, set last year with a crowd of 16,833 for a match against Florida.


Those numbers look tiny compared to the crowd that filled Memorial Stadium on Wednesday night.

Nebraska officials began discussing the idea of a match inside the stadium early this year apparently with little hesitation about the enormity of the undertaking.
“If we were going to do it, we were going to go big,” Cornhuskers director of volleyball operations Lindsay Peterson told the team’s site.

Initially, the school hoped to sell seats in three sections of the 85,000-seat Memorial Stadium, but when tickets, priced at $25 for adults and $5 for children, went quickly in the first few days, officials opened the south end zone seating section and added bleacher seats to accommodate a larger crowd.


Nebraska, the fourth-ranked team in the country, won the record-setting match in a sweep, 25-14, 25-14, 25-13.


“This is unbelievable for women’s athletics and to do this at Nebraska. We dreamed big, we really dreamed big,” Huskers Coach John Cook told Big Ten Network after the win.


In a nod to the school canceling classes Wednesday, Cook added, “There’s only three three things that shut down the University of Nebraska: One, snowstorms. Two, covid. And three, Nebraska volleyball in the stadium.” (Washington Post).

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