29 July 22
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What are strategies of hope?
What is particularly disconcerting is the sense that the forces of repression, illiberalism, inequality, and injustice are locked into a system of power and governance that seems to make overturning these wrongs increasingly difficult.
At the heart of that concern lies the United States Supreme Court. This nation is still feeling the aftershocks of a term that, though it ended a month ago, continues reverberating across America. And it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, perhaps for years or even decades.
Part of that is the result of the impact of the decisions themselves — on guns, the environment, religion, and abortion. Then there is the expectation that the court is not done. Quite the contrary. A sizable hard-right majority is determined to remake American society in a manner that, according to the most reliable poll information, is very unpopular with the electorate at large.
It is vital that we keep track of the results of these decisions. To allow any of this to be normalized is dangerous for the country.
But what are those who oppose such actions to do? Despair is a natural response, but one that is hardly a rallying cry for resistance, let alone progress.
In searching for another approach, we came across a thought-provoking string of tweets written in late June in the wake of the Supreme Court’s assault on American rights. It is courtesy of Niko Bowie, whom Harvard Law School dubbed “a scholar of constitutional law, local government law, and legal history” when promoting him to a full professor last month.
Bowie’s academic pedigree is impressive: Yale undergraduate, Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, as well. He is the son of the late legal scholar Lani Guinier.
However, one of the striking things about Bowie’s effort to inspire those who oppose radical-right judges and justices is that he starts with the limitations of legal elitism. He points the way for a more popular approach, recognizing that the “histories of working women, people of color … abolitionists” contain a long list of improbable victories in America’s march toward greater liberty, equality, and justice.
Although Professor Bowie writes of “liberalism” and the political “left,” his argument has potential for appealing to a wide swath — a majority — of Americans of varying political persuasions: Democrats, yes, but also Independents, moderates, and even many Republicans.
A commitment to “collective action.” Rallying around bottom-up activism. A recognition that there have been “specific strategies ordinary people have used to change legal structures worse than today’s.” This is the language of action and hope. This taps into a deep vein of popular movements that have propelled our growth as a nation from the words of our founding documents to a society more aligned with those lofty ideals.
Ultimately, in a democracy, the energy for change must come from the people — a rising chorus of voices clamoring to be heard and recognizing their power. As Professor Bowie points out, time and time again in the course of American history, those who used their perches in the marbled halls of Washington to try to resist the will of the people had no choice but to listen — or get out of the way.
AR-15-style rifles are on display at Burbank Ammo & Guns in Burbank, California, in June. (photo: Jae C. Hong/AP)
The weapons have been used in massacres that have horrified the nation, including one that left 10 people dead at a grocery store in Buffalo and another where 19 children and two teachers were shot to death in Uvalde, Texas.
The Committee on Oversight and Reform said some ads mimic popular first-person shooter video games or tout the weapons' military pedigree while others claim the guns will put buyers "at the top of the testosterone food chain."
Those sales tactics are "deeply disturbing, exploitative and reckless," said Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York. "In short, the gun industry is profiting off the blood of innocent Americans."
Gun-makers, on the other hand, said AR-15-style rifles are responsible for a small portion of gun homicides and the blame must go to the shooters rather than their weapons.
"What we saw in Uvalde, Buffalo and Highland Park was pure evil," said Marty Daniels, the CEO of Daniel Defense, the company that made the weapon used in Texas. "The cruelty of the murderers who committed these acts is unfathomable and deeply disturbs me, my family, my employees and millions of Americans across this country."
However, he added later in testimony before the committee, "I believe that these murders are local problems that have to be solved locally."
Gun violence overall spiked in 2020, but recent statistics indicate it is coming down this year in many cities.
The House panel's investigation focused on five major gun-makers, and found they took in a combined total of more than $1 billion in revenue over the past 10 years from the sale of AR-15-style firearms. The revenue numbers were released for the committee hearing focused on the marketing and sales of the firearms that have gained notoriety because of their use in the mass killings.
Two of the companies approximately tripled their revenue from the weapons over the past three years, the committee found. Daniel Defense, based near Savannah, Georgia, raised that revenue from $40 million in 2019 to more than $120 million last year. The company sells weapons like the one used in Uvalde on credit and advertises that financing can be approved "in seconds."
Salvador Ramos, accused in the Uvalde shootings, began purchasing firearms and ammunition when he turned 18, eventually spending more than $5,000 on two AR-style rifles, ammunition and other gear in the days before the massacre, authorities have said.
Sturm, Ruger … Co.'s gross revenue, meanwhile, has nearly tripled from $39 million to $103 million since 2019, and Smith and Wesson reported that its revenues from all long guns doubled from 2019 to 2021. Gun manufacturers, the committee said, don't gather or analyze safety data related to firearms.
The increases are against a backdrop of a record-setting overall increase in gun sales that began around the start of the coronavirus pandemic. About 8.5 million people bought guns for the first time in 2020, said Republican Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia. He added that, "American people have a right to own guns."
The hearing comes amid a push by House Democrats to get legislation passed that would ban certain semi-automatic weapons. It's the lawmakers' most far-reaching response yet to this summer's mass shootings.
While AR-15-style firearms aren't necessarily the main drivers of U.S. gun violence overall, their design allows shooters to harm more people from a greater distance, said Kelly Sampson, senior counsel and director of racial justice with Brady, a group pressing to end gun violence that generally supports restrictions.
"If we renew the assault weapons ban, that would take away a key piece of what allows mass shooters to kill more people in less time without having to stop to reload," she said.
There have been 15 mass killings this year, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database. According to that research, those incidents have left 86 dead and 63 injured. Guns were used in all of them, and in at least seven instances they were AR-15-style weapons. Mass killings are defined as incidents where at least four people are killed.
But the AR-15 and similar weapons are also popular with people who buy guns for self defense, said Antonia Okafor, the national director of outreach for the group Gun Owners of America. Such rifles allow people, including women, to shoot a larger gun without having to absorb as much recoil.
"The AR-15 makes it easier for those who have a physical disadvantage to the attacker to have an upper hand," she said.
Wednesday's hearing marked the first time in 20 years that CEOs of leading gun manufacturers testified about their businesses, Maloney said.
Marc and Jane Fogel are seen in a photograph attending a family member's 2017 wedding in Pennsylvania. (photo: Jeff Swensen/The Washington Post)
Arrested last summer after arriving in Moscow with medical marijuana in his luggage, Marc Fogel has a case that parallels the ordeal of WNBA star Brittney Griner. But his plight has mostly gone unnoticed.
He was always just Mr. Fogel to the students he entranced with lectures about the Cold War. But he is Marc Hilliard Fogel on his well-worn passports, abundantly stamped from his many years of teaching International Baccalaureate history courses at schools attended by the children of U.S. diplomats and the global elite in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman, Malaysia and, for the past 10 years, in Russia.
Fogel’s charmed life has turned dark at the age of 60. He never sought notoriety. But he and his family slowly have come to the realization that telling the world his name could be his salvation.
For the past 11 months, Fogel has languished in Russian detention centers following his August 2021 arrest for trying to enter the country with about half an ounce of medical marijuana he’d been prescribed in the United States for chronic pain after numerous injuries and surgeries. First he endlessly awaited trial, often in crowded, smoke-choked cells. More recently, he has been serving the first weeks of an incomprehensible 14-year sentence handed down by a Russian judge in June.
Fogel’s plight parallels a similar case that has played big on news websites, led cable newscasts and prompted White House pronouncements: the trial of WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner, who also was arrested for attempting to enter Russia with a small amount of medical marijuana. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to secure the release of Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year Russian sentence on spy charges he has denied. On Thursday, a Kremlin spokesman said a deal has yet to be finalized.
Marc Fogel’s wife, Jane Fogel, said in a Wednesday interview with The Washington Post after Blinken’s announcement that she’s still hoping her husband can be included in a swap. But those hopes are fading, she said, speaking publicly for the first time about her husband’s case.
“There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Marc will be left behind,” Jane Fogel said. “It’s terrifying. I would hope that President Biden and especially first lady Jill Biden, who is an educator, realize the importance of including Marc in addition to Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.”
In suburban Pittsburgh, Jane Fogel has been watching the Griner case spool out and wondered whether her husband has been forgotten. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, received a call from the president. The Fogels have been stalled at the mid-functionary level of the U.S. State Department. Speculation about a possible prisoner swap before Blinken’s announcement on Wednesday had earlier trickled into his Russian prison cell, compounding his anxiety.
“That hurt,” Marc Fogel wrote in a letter home referencing the prisoner-exchange reports. “Teachers are at least as important as bballers.”
In an email reply to an inquiry from The Post, a State Department official said the agency is aware of Fogel’s case but did not provide any further information, citing privacy reasons. The official did not respond to interview requests.
After Biden’s call with Griner’s wife, the White House issued a summary of the conversation saying he told her the U.S. government was working hard to secure the release of Griner and another American and Whelan. Biden added that his administration is pushing for the release of “other” U.S. nationals imprisoned in Russia and other countries. Marc Fogel’s name did not appear.
“It seems like the government is working really hard for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan,” Jane Fogel, 60, said in an interview last week at her home, surrounded by mementos of the family’s world-wandering. “We want them to work for us, too.”
Jane Fogel was quick to point out that she’s hopeful Griner and Whelan will also be released. Griner herself has issued a statement pleading for the release of other Americans. It’s hard to escape the dread that her husband’s case will never become a priority. That she may never see him again. At times, she said, tearfully, she feels like a “widow.”
Encouraging students to ‘live life’
Marc Fogel was always the lucky one. No matter the tricky situation, he seemed to land on his feet, like a cat, his friends would say.
Personable, athletic, a little silly sometimes, the Pittsburgh-area native with that big radiant smile, the square jaw, the thick head of wavy hair, could chat up anyone. Things were forever falling into place for him. A madcap idea to hitchhike from Prince George’s County, where he was teaching at a public middle school, to see the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Pittsburgh led to a chance encounter with his future wife, Jane, a high school friend he’d seen only occasionally since they graduated a decade-and-a-half earlier.
Marc Fogel had a kind of wanderlust that was irresistible. Lying on a beach in Thailand one New Year’s Eve in the mid-1990s, he and Jane came up with a plan — they’d get married, have children and teach abroad. Jane told her mother that she’d be back in eight months. It turned out to be 27 years.
They went to places that evoked fear and blank stares among their friends and family. And they gushed about them. The country house surrounded by flowers where they lived outside Medellín, Colombia; the home at the beach in Oman where their eldest son learned to snorkel. An exception was Caracas, Venezuela, where a neighbor was murdered and a student’s father was seriously injured in a shooting. Their movements became so limited because of safety concerns that their sons, Sam and Ethan, staged what they jokingly call “a coup” to get the family to move.
Former students remember Marc as an upbeat presence in their lives, who was always saying, “‘It’s a great day to be alive!’ He encouraged the students to also live life, not just ponder it,” said Jukka Haapakoski, a student of Marc’s in Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s who is now CEO of a Finnish organization that advocates on behalf of unemployed people.
In 2012, after leaving Caracas, the Fogels landed jobs at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, a prestigious $34,000-a-year, pre-K-12 institution that had been established by the U.S., Canadian and British embassies. Their salaries were far beyond anything they could make teaching in the United States. They had an apartment on a vibrant Moscow street. They loved the place. They bopped around Europe visiting friends on school breaks.
They mingled with the embassy crowd and taught their kids. Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who was U.S. ambassador to Russia for part of the Fogels’ tenure in Moscow, said his son was captivated by Marc’s infectious teaching style.
“Mr. Fogel, as he called him, made him excited about these issues in a way that he’d never been before, despite having met [President] Barack Obama and all kinds of fancy people,” McFaul said.
In the past few years, as tensions between the United States and Russia grew, it became harder for the Fogels to persuade family and friends that they were in some kind of schoolteacher paradise.
“I would say, ‘What are you doing there? Putin is a monster,’” Marc’s sister, Elise Hyland, said. Her brother always responded by saying Russians are “lovely people,” and that “you have to understand their culture to understand what’s happening now,” Hyland recalled.
Marc was careful to avoid any impression that he was taking political positions, said his friend and fellow teacher, Steve Coffey. Sometimes they would change lunch plans just to avoid neighborhoods where demonstrations might be happening.
All the while, Marc’s body was falling apart. He’d had surgeries on his back and shoulder, and a knee replacement. The pain was never-ending. He walked with a pronounced limp. Coffey remembers his friend’s signature farewell after a long day: “All right, buddy, I’m going to go hit the bath.”
Marc was adamant about not taking opioids. In 2021, a doctor recommended he try medical marijuana. It not only helped with the pain — he liked it in the same way someone else might like a glass of wine or a beer.
While home in Pennsylvania for the summer break in 2021, Marc and Jane had to decide whether they’d go back to Russia. Jane was hesitant to return, but her husband talked her into it. Just one more year. Then he would retire, and they could live in their snug Oakmont house with the big oak tree out back and the bay window overlooking the lawn. They could host barbecues. They could make new friends in their neighborhood.
After three decades abroad, a “normal” life, as she put it, sounded “exotic.”
‘I’m really in trouble’
On Aug. 14, 2021, the Fogels landed at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow after the long flight from New York on the Russian airline Aeroflot. When they deplaned, Jane noticed they were in a different terminal than usual with more security, a change from the lax environment they’d encountered in previous years. She stopped at the restroom and her husband went ahead to the security checkpoint.
When she caught up with him, she could tell something was wrong. His breath had quickened so much that his mask was inflating and deflating like a balloon.
“Jane,” he said, “I’m really in trouble.”
He’d packed 14 vape cartridges of medical marijuana into his suitcase, stuffing some in his shoes, and placed some cannabis buds in a contact lens case, his wife said. Jane said she had no idea he’d done it. But why take such a risk?
“It’s pretty simple,” his son Ethan said of his father’s plan to bring medical marijuana into Russia. “He thought he could get away with it.”
Still, this lucky man, this man who always seemed to have things go his way, assumed this would be a situation that wouldn’t end up so badly. Maybe he’d just get deported. Maybe he’d pay a fine or get a light punishment of some sort. Maybe.
Instead, the Russians charged him with drug possession and intent to sell marijuana to his students.
While waiting for his trial, Fogel kept a diary, pouring out his vacillating emotions, from optimism to despair and back again. On the first pages of a notebook with a blue cover, he scrawled 53 things that gave him hope or made him happy or that he looked forward to when — if — he won his freedom.
Number 1: “Jane is receiving 1,000s of supportive letters.”
Number 8: “Another person got out after paying a fine.”
Number 53: “I found a Frank Zappa picture in a Russian magazine.”
He writes about the confusion and upheaval of being transferred over and over among the network of notorious pretrial detention centers. In one, he encounters a “guardian angel” whose brother sends them boxes of food; he invents a cornhole-style game using “gruel bowls” and dried apricots. In another, he has to kneel to get nasty food passed through a small window in his cell, and he’s not allowed outside for days.
At one point he refers to his notebook as his “dark journal.” He suspects the Russians are trying to “break” him, employing a method of creating misery, “tried … true … right now I feel it in my bones, my soul, it teems throughout my body.” He senses a “lack of empathy from these heartless bastards.”
He chastises himself for ruining his life and that of his family. He dreams of scary bears. He wonders whether he’ll ever see his 93-year-old mother again. When he looks at his face in a mirror he thinks his “crying has carved new lines.”
‘He was stunned’
Marc Fogel did not deny trying to bring medical marijuana into Russia. What he asked for was leniency.
He promised the judge in his case that if he were released, he’d act almost like a tourism promoter, extolling the delights of Moscow and the affection he had for its residents — the same things he’d been telling his family and friends in the United States for years, according to Irina Pigman, a Russian-born business executive whose husband is from the United States.
Fogel thought he had a chance.
He probably didn’t.
U.S.-Russia relations were strained then, as they are now, by U.S. support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Russian prosecutors had painted him as a “large-scale” drug dealer intent on selling drugs to his students and falsely labeled him an employee of the U.S. Embassy, assertions that were repeated in some Western media accounts.
At The Post’s request, Jane Fogel provided documentation — payroll statements from two different years and an employee verification letter dated the month before his arrest — that shows her husband was employed by the Anglo-American School of Moscow. Additionally, McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia who befriended the Fogels in Moscow, said in an interview that Fogel was not an embassy employee or an American diplomat.
Jane Fogel also provided The Post with copies of her visas, which she said are the same type as those her husband received. At the time of his arrest, the school where they taught had sponsored their visa applications and they received a type of visa typically granted to professionals designated as “highly qualified specialists.”
In previous years, they’d received visas sponsored by the U.S. Embassy that labeled them “technical employees,” a term of art that allowed them to work in Russia at the invitation of the embassy and afforded them certain diplomatic protections, even though they were not employed by the U.S. government. The embassy was involved because the school had been chartered by the American, British and Canadian embassies but overseen by a separate school board. The change in the Fogels’ visa status took place in 2021 when the school transitioned to being a nonprofit institution.
On the June day that Fogel was sentenced, Pigman watched the former teacher’s face change as the Russian judge read a lengthy statement culminating in a 14-year sentence.
“It was like he grew old all of a sudden,” Pigman said in a telephone interview from her home in Moscow. “He was stunned.”
Three weeks later, Griner — the WNBA star who was detained in Russia on drug charges in February — pleaded guilty. She’s awaiting sentencing. The family of Whelan, the ex-Marine serving a long sentence on spying charges, has been critical of the attention given to Griner’s case by Biden. His sister said on CNN that she wished her brother was receiving similar treatment. Several days later Biden called her.
Jane Fogel remained quiet. She was following the guidance of U.S. officials and informal advisers who said public comments could make things worse for her husband. The tactic didn’t seem to be working, and she’s become increasingly impatient.
She has grown frustrated that she has not received more information from the State Department on her trips to Washington to discuss her husband’s case. The officials are polite and empathetic, but they tell her almost nothing, she said. One of the most nettlesome and baffling dilemmas she’s faced is that the State Department has not declared her husband “wrongfully detained,” a designation granted to Whelan and Griner that would shift the handling of his case to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which negotiates releases.
Richard Burt, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany who is now a powerhouse Washington lobbyist, is one of those pressing for the designation. Burt has told her that she’s only made it to the sixth floor at the State Department, but that they need to get her to the seventh floor where Blinken, the secretary of state, and the other highest ranking U.S. diplomats have offices.
Burt and McFaul have quietly been nudging the U.S. government on behalf of the Fogels. McFaul says his conversations through private channels with U.S. officials have led him to believe Marc Fogel is “definitely on their radar. It’s not just the other two Americans.”
Fogel is planning to appeal his conviction, but it’s highly unlikely that imprisoned Americans can win release by going through the Russian court system. (The Fogels draw some hope from the possible precedent of a case involving Audrey Lorber, an American teenager whose was released from prison in 2019, one month after being caught bringing marijuana into Russia.)
McFaul has come to the conclusion that the “only viable option” for Griner, Whelan and Fogel is a prisoner exchange. In April, retired U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison, was exchanged for a Russian pilot who had been in a U.S. jail since 2010.
At home, Jane Fogel listens to talk of a prisoner swap and fights the urge to get her hopes too high.
One recent evening, McFaul sent her a clip of him discussing prisoner swaps during a cable news segment. Fogel pulled it up on her phone at the dinner table.
Unprompted, McFaul mentioned his “friend” who’d taught in Russia and was now serving 14 years in a Russian prison. There was a pause. She leaned forward and heard the anchor say what she’d been longing to hear.
Her mouth curled into a wide smile and she let out a little yip of delight: “They said his name!”
The news, which comes weeks after circulation of a student-led petition to fire Thomas as a lecturer over his June 24 vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, was announced in an email from Gregory Maggs, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, who has been co-teaching a constitutional law seminar with Thomas since 2011.
"Unfortunately, I am writing with some sad news: Justice Thomas has informed me that he is unavailable to co-teach the seminar this fall. I know that this is disappointing. I am very sorry," Maggs wrote in an email to the class obtained by The GW Hatchet.
He continued: "The seminar has not been canceled but I will now be the sole instructor. For those of you still interested in taking the course, I assure you that we will make the best of the new situation."
A university spokesperson on Wednesday afternoon confirmed the decision.
"Justice Thomas informed GW Law that he is unavailable to co-teach a Constitutional Law Seminar this fall. The students were promptly informed of Justice Thomas' decision by his co-instructor who will continue to offer the seminar this fall," the spokesperson said.
Thomas faced a wave of criticism for being part of the conservative bloc that overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide and established the constitutional right to the procedure. The justice also sparked controversy over his concurring opinion, in which he wrote that the Supreme Court should "reconsider" other rulings that deal with privacy rights, including decisions that protect contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage rights.
Last month, an online petition created by a student at George Washington called for the university to end their relationship with Thomas, stating that his continued employment at the school was "completely unacceptable." The petition has since garnered over 11,300 signatures.
George Washington Law Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew and Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Christopher Bracey sent a note to the university community in response, stating that it would not end Thomas' class or terminate his employment at the institution.
"Because we steadfastly support the robust exchange of ideas and deliberation, and because debate is an essential part of our university's academic and educational mission to train future leaders who are prepared to address the world's most urgent problems, the university will neither terminate Justices Thomas' employment nor cancel his class in response to his legal opinions," the letter stated.
Thomas has also been under immense scrutiny over his wife's alleged involvement in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack has obtained texts and emails from Ginni Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, in which she urged then-White House officials and Republican state legislators not to accept the results of the election. The committee, which has held a series of public hearings in recent months, has requested an interview from Ginni.
A petition is being circulated to IMPEACH CLARENCE THOMAS for his conduct and corruption - it's being signed by INFORMED people - before you continue to post, although your comments are amusing for your delusions, consider informing yourself from other than right wing Whack-A-Dings.
A large group of zealots DELUDED themselves and united in their delusions to overthrow DEMOCRACY and support a Wannabe Dictator.
Each article adds to the revelation that were there a functioning government, CLARENCE THOMAS would be justly IMPEACHED.
There is always a KOCH CONNECTION! Just look under the rocks.
What is significant is that others need to recognize KOCH intervention and financial support.
More than enough articles have been published in this forum about GINNI/CLARENCE THOMAS even though there are many others.
The Money Trail to the Ginni Thomas Emails to Overturn Biden’s Election Leads to Charles Koch
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/03/the-money-trail-to-the-ginni-thomas-emails-to-overturn-bidens-election-leads-to-charles-koch/
The Curious Case of Ginni Thomas
Charles Pierce
Esquire
https://www.rsn.org/001/the-curious-case-of-ginni-thomas.html
Alex Shephard | The Media Has Yet to Grasp the Full Enormity of Ginni Thomas's Text Messages
Alex Shephard/The New Republic
https://www.rsn.org/001/alex-shephard-the-media-has-yet-to-grasp-the-full-enormity-of-ginni-thomass-text-messages.html
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130688438
Justice Clarence Thomas' Wife Pushed to Overturn Election
https://www.rsn.org/001/justice-clarence-thomas-wife-pushed-to-overturn-election.html
Ginni and Clarence Thomas vs. Democracy: He Sided With Trump in Court While She Backed Coup Attempt
https://www.rsn.org/001/ginni-and-clarence-thomas-vs-democracy-he-sided-with-trump-in-court-while-she-backed-coup-attempt.html
Legal Scholars Are Shocked by Ginni Thomas's 'Stop the Steal' Texts
https://www.rsn.org/001/legal-scholars-are-shocked-by-ginni-thomass-stop-the-steal-texts.html
CLARENCE THOMAS FORGOT TO REPORT $200,000?
Why Democrats Should Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas
excerpt:
Shockingly, Thomas did not recuse himself from the case given the clear financial conflict. He never even disclosed the $200,000 paid to his wife despite being required to report the source of a spouse’s income as part of his annual financial disclosures, according to The New Yorker. Thomas would later join his fellow four conservative justices in voting to uphold Trump’s shameful Muslim ban.
In February, The New York Times Magazine reported that Ginni Thomas served on the board of a secretive right-wing group called CNP Action. In November 2020, it circulated a “November ‘action steps’ document” instructing its members in the days after the election “to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors,” according to the report.
But when former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to block the House Jan. 6 committee from obtaining hundreds of pages of White House records from the National Archives, Thomas was the sole justice to vote against the House investigators.
Then on Monday, in an interview with a conservative blog, Ginni Thomas admitted to having attended the "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. She admitted to being in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, thereby endorsing that day's Trump-led rally to overturn the election, but she claimed to have left before Trump addressed the crowd because she “got cold.”
To recap: These reports showed that the wife of a Supreme Court justice not only took undisclosed money from an activist who filed a brief in front of the court, but that she was also part of a campaign to try to overturn the 2020 election result and attended the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. And as Ginni Thomas herself helpfully explained in Monday’s interview: “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America.”
Ridiculously, Clarence Thomas wants us to believe he can carry on as an associate justice and remain above the fray. In September, speaking at the University of Notre Dame, he railed against growing criticisms of the court’s partisan behavior. If he really wanted to avoid looking like a politician, why allow his wife’s political activism and income streams to have even the appearance of an impact on his decisions instead of recusing himself?
https://www.rsn.org/001/why-democrats-should-impeach-justice-clarence-thomas.html
There was even this ridiculous nonsense from Ginni Thomas:
Justice Thomas' Wife Asks Anita Hill To Apologize
October 20, 2010
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130688438
The Money Trail to the Ginni Thomas Emails to Overturn Biden’s Election Leads to Charles Koch
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2022
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard.
A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through January 20, 2021 when Biden was sworn in.
Much of the current news debate around the emails is focusing on whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases involving groups with which his wife is involved and whether the Select Committee should subpoena Ginni Thomas to testify. While those are certainly important issues, what has thus far been ignored is the smoking gun trail that leads directly to the doorstep of billionaire and right-wing Republican political mastermind, Charles Koch, the Chairman, CEO (and majority owner with the heirs of his deceased brother David) of the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries.
Wall Street On Parade has previously documented that at least three of the front groups that fomented the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump and that actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event at the Capitol, were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.
The smoking gun in the Ginni Thomas email thread occurs in an email dated November 10, 2020 when she tells Meadows to “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.” Thomas is clearly referring to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, and lawyer, Cleta Mitchell.
Cleta Mitchell is best known in the Trump election saga as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him this: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call made the news cycle.)
But Cleta Mitchell’s relationship with Ginni Thomas dates back at least a decade earlier – and not in a good way.
Cleta Mitchell had filed an amicus brief in the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.
Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas. Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc. on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.
On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.
Liberty Central had the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.
Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.
Mitchell, herself, was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)
Mitchell is listed on the 2018 federal tax filing for Steve Bannon’s charity, Citizens of the American Republic, as an officer of the organization, holding the position of Secretary. Bannon and others were charged in August of 2021 by the Department of Justice with bilking donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through that charity.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, was one of those pushing the narrative on television that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lawyers and staff of Foley & Lardner were the third largest donor to Johnson’s campaign committees since 2015. Employees and officials of Koch Industries ranked fifth.
There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. Those Republican Senators were: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.
Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, whom Ginni Thomas enlisted in the White House to help overturn Biden’s election win, was previously a member of the House of Representatives from North Carolina from 2013 to 2020. He also received campaign funding from the Koch Industries PAC throughout his time in Congress.
Charles Koch is usually very careful in keeping an arm’s length relationship between himself and his political operations. But on at least one occasion Koch conducted a dinner meeting directly with sitting Justice Clarence Thomas at a private club in California.
In January 2008, Justice Thomas attended an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to the Koch brothers’ semi-annual political gathering in the Palm Springs area of California. (According to his 2008 disclosure form and the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas’ expenses for that trip were paid by the Federalist Society, a conservative nonprofit that Koch foundations have generously supported.)
Justice Thomas’ trip to the Koch event occurred in the same year that the Citizens United case was accepted by the Supreme Court. The Court accepts less than two percent of all cases appealed to it.
Wall Street On Parade was previously able to confirm with Scott Markley, Public Information Specialist at the Supreme Court, that during that January 2008 visit to the Koch political gathering, Justice Thomas was hosted by Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at the private Vintage Club where Charles Koch is a member.
The Citizens United decision did not pass the smell test when it was approved in a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court. Four of the nine justices wrote a scathing dissent that raised the issue of unprincipled behavior, writing that the majority had ruled on issues that were not even legally before the court.
The money that the Koch political machine pumped into putting Trump in the Oval Office quickly paid big dividends in his first term (and made it clear as to why Charles Koch would have wanted to see a second Trump term).
Koch Industries’ law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since sacked the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal.
Once Trump was settled in the Oval Office, a Koch front group, then known as Freedom Partners, mapped out the agenda it expected Trump to march to. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration. The Trump administration dutifully marched to the beat. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency – done.
By the spring of 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration. Freedom Partners has since disbanded but when we last took a look at the nonprofit in July 2018, we found that all but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair of Freedom Partners at that time was the same Mark Holden that was the General Counsel of Koch Industries.
It’s time for the House Select Committee to subpoena not just Ginni Thomas and Cleta Mitchell. It’s time to hear from Charles Koch directly on how so much money bearing his fingerprints ended up fomenting the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
There will never be a better time than now for the American people to finally get at the truth.
20 years worth of financial disclosures????
Justice Clarence Thomas Amends 20 Years of Disclosure Forms With Wife's Employers
Virginia Thomas' employers added to 20 years of justice's financial disclosure.
ByAriane De Vogue and Devin Dwyer
January 24, 2011, 4:28 PM
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/justice-clarence-thomas-amends-financial-disclosure-reports-virginia/story?id=12750650
$686,589 INCOME NOT DISCLOSED!
excerpts:
Clarence Thomas and His Wife's $680,000 of Unreported Income
By ELIE MYSTAL
January 24, 2011
Who knew that working for a conservative think tank paid so well?
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Virginia Thomas, the politically active wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, earned over $680,000 over five years while working at the Heritage Foundation. That’s pretty nice scratch.
A possible problem: according to Common Cause, Clarence Thomas never reported the income in his federal financial disclosures…
Is it possible that Justice Thomas “forgot” that his wife was raking in the dollars? Here’s the “oversight” Common Cause is highlighting:
Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed…
In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as “none.” Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.
https://abovethelaw.com/2011/01/clarence-thomas-and-his-wifes-680000-of-unreported-income/
Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT, speaks at a news conference about the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act in Washington on Thursday. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
The widely supported bipartisan measure, PACT Act, looked to expand medical coverage for millions of combatants exposed to toxic burn pits during their service.
Supporters of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — or PACT Act — overwhelmingly expected the House-passed bill to sail through to the president's desk for signature.
But in a move that shocked and confused veteran groups Wednesday night, 41 Senate Republicans blocked the bill's passage, including 25 who had supported it a month ago.
"We really expected yesterday to be a procedural vote that would go with easy passage," said Jeremy Butler, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit veterans’ organization. "That was the absolute expectation."
The PACT Act would have expanded VA health care eligibility to more than 3.5 million post-9/11 combat veterans who were exposed to toxins while serving in the military.
The Senate passed the original legislation 84-14 in June. It underwent minor changes when it moved to the House, where it passed 342-88. When the bill returned to the Senate, the bill had not changed much but the view — and vote — of 25 senators did.
While it's unclear what prompted the flip, veterans believe the move was political.
"We’ve seen partisanship and games within Congress for years," Butler said. "But what is shocking is that so many senators would literally be willing to play with veterans’ lives so openly like this."
"They’re manufacturing reasons to vote against legislation that they literally voted for just last month," Butler added. "And so it’s really a new level of low."
Veterans who were exposed to toxins during deployments said the lives of sick and dying people who served the nation are on the line.
"It’s angering. It’s frustrating," said Tom Porter, 54, who developed asthma after spending a year in Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy Reserve from 2010 to 2011.
In the first week of his deployment, Porter said he suffered a serious reaction with his lungs and could not breathe.
Le Roy Torres, 49, who was diagnosed with a lung disease and a toxic brain injury after he was deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army, said he was devastated about the failure of the bill and urged lawmakers to reconvene immediately.
“I know these senators are getting ready for a break. But I didn’t get a break when I was deployed,” he said. “They should not be allowed to go home until they figure this out.”
“I was taught in the Army not to accept defeat and never quit,” he added. “I’m going to keep pressing on this issue.”
Torres’ wife, Rosie, the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Burn Pits 360, said the 25 senators who flipped their votes "should be ashamed of themselves."
In protest, she and other advocates plan to camp on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Thursday night.
“These veterans fought for our freedom during the war," she said. “It’s partisan tactics on the backs of veterans that are sick and dying.”
The PACT Act was named after Heath Robinson, a sergeant with the Ohio National Guard who was deployed to Kosovo and Iraq. He died in 2020 from lung cancer, which he blamed on burn pit exposure.
Open-air burn pits were common at U.S. military bases during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dangerous materials, from electronics and vehicles to human waste, were regularly doused in jet fuel and set ablaze, spewing toxic fumes and carcinogens into the air.
Many others have developed cancers, respiratory illnesses and other serious conditions as a direct result of exposure to toxins, veteran groups say.
President Joe Biden, who has championed the PACT Act, said he believes his late son Beau Biden’s brain cancer was linked to exposure to burn pits while he was deployed in Iraq in 2008.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., who voted against the legislation in June, has remained vocally critical of the bill. Yesterday, after the vote, he said that the bill included a “budget gimmick" that moved $400 billion over 10 years from “discretionary to the mandatory spending category,” which he considered unreasonable. His view did not change in Wednesday's vote.
The views of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., certainly did, however.
Johnson voted for the bill in June, but voted against it on Wednesday. He said in a statement that the bill “opens the door for more reckless government spending."
Why Republicans, like Johnson, changed their minds a month after passing the legislation remains unclear, and it was confounding and unclear to veterans and advocates who shared their ire in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
The comedian Jon Stewart, who has advocated for 9/11 first responders and military veterans for years, excoriated Republican lawmakers outside the Capitol Thursday, angrily describing their opposition to the bill as “an embarrassment to the Senate, to the country, to the Founders.”
“Their constituents are dying and they’re gonna get it done in recess,” Stewart said in fiery and expletive-laden remarks. “You know, tell their cancer to take a recess, tell their cancer to stay home and go visit their families. This is disgrace. If this is America first, America is [expletive].”
Shireen Abu Akleh's niece, Lina, stands outside the State Department in Washington, D.C., 26 July 2022. (photo: AFP)
Members of Congress join Shireen Abu Akleh's family, calling out Biden administration for 'dragging their feet' on journalist's killing
Speaking at a news conference alongside several US lawmakers outside the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday afternoon, Abu Akleh's relatives said they came to the nation's capitol with one request for the administration of President Joe Biden: launch a thorough and independent investigation into the killing.
The family spent this week in Washington meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and several lawmakers in Congress, after Biden rebuffed a request to meet with Abu Akleh's family during his visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank earlier this month.
"Any family of a US citizen who is killed abroad expects their government to put their resources behind an investigation. This is the very least the Biden administration must do," Abu Akleh's niece Lina said during Thursday's press conference.
"We made this demand clear to Secretary Blinken, but he did not make any promises."
Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed on 11 May while covering an Israeli military raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Her death sparked Palestinian outrage and widespread international condemnation.
Since the killing, investigations by Middle East Eye, The Washington Post, The New York Times, as well as international bodies and the United Nations, concluded that Israeli forces had in fact likely killed Abu Akleh.
However, the State Department earlier this month announced its conclusion on the killing, saying that while it was likely Israeli fire that killed Abu Akleh, the US had "found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances".
"We want to know who pulled the trigger and why. We want there to be accountability for the system that gave the green light so that other families don’t suffer the way that we have," said Abu Akleh's nephew, Victor.
The Biden administration has rejected calls for an investigation, previously saying that Israel has all the wherewithal to probe such killings.
Palestinian advocates have condemned the administration's response to the killing, saying that it was trying to bury the killing of Abu Akleh rather than seeking true accountability.
State Department 'dragging their feet'
Meanwhile, there have been several calls from members of US Congress and the Senate for the administration to launch an independent probe into the killing of Abu Akleh.
Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said during Thursday's press conference that it was "shameful" that Abu Akleh's family has to come to Washington to push the US government to take action.
"This is the life of Palestinians in Israel. Even after death, dehumanisation doesn't stop. Our country can stop it though. We must help stop the enabling of death and violence by just looking away."
"When Americans are killed abroad it is more or less standard procedure for our government to open an investigation. But when the murderers wear Israeli uniforms, there's complete silence."
Congressman Andre Carson, who has spearheaded a letter by 60 members of Congress demanding an FBI investigation, said that Washington has more of a case to investigate the killing than Israel does.
"It makes it more important for our government to conduct our own investigation," Carson said. "Shireen needs justice. Every American killed abroad is entitled to our protection."
Congresswoman Marie Newman, another vocal advocate for Palestinians in Congress, said she was "embarrassed and outraged" that the US has yet to start its own investigation.
"I’m gonna call the State Department for dragging their feet. 100 percent. This should already be initiated," she said.
"I'm so sorry to the family and I'm embarrassed for us," Newman added, as she looked over to the Abu Akleh family.
READ MORE
Documents show how Florida Power and Light (FPL) funneled money to a "news" website that promptly published pieces defending the utility's policy positions and attacking its critics. (photo: Florida Power & Light)
The leaked papers, reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald, also reveal how the editor of the fake news outlet – called the Capitolist – created a series of shell companies controlled by FPL consultants and pre-screened articles for FPL staff before publishing. “I find this to be horrifying and undemocratic,” Gianna Trocino Bonner, a former chief legislative aide with a political opponent of FPL told the Guardian. “It’s unfortunate that our process allows for something like this to exist without accountability.”
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