Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo Spoiler Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party. The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice. Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials. However, it remains unclear what the funds were for. The lawyers who made the Venmo transactions were: Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the US constitution; Kate Todd, who served as White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party of Ellis George Cipollone’s law office; Elbert Lin, the former solicitor general of West Virginia who played a key role in a supreme court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and Brian Schmalzbach, a partner at McGuire Woods who has argued multiple cases before the supreme court. Other lawyers who made payments include Manuel Valle, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School who clerked for Thomas last year and is currently working as a managing associate at Sidley, and Liam Hardy, who was working at the Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel at the time the payment was made and now serves as an appeals court judge for the armed forces. Will Consovoy, who died earlier this year, also made a payment. Consovoy clerked for Thomas during the 2008-09 term and was considered a rising star in conservative legal circles. After his death, the New York Times reported that Consovoy had come away from his time working for Thomas “with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right – and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp”. None of the lawyers who made payments responded to emailed questions from the Guardian. According to his résumé, Vasisht’s duties included assisting the justice with the administrative functioning of his chambers, including personal correspondence and his personal and office schedule. Vasisht did not respond to an emailed list of questions from the Guardian, including questions about who solicited the payments, how much individuals paid, and what the purpose of the payments was. The Guardian also asked questions about the nature of Thomas’s Christmas party, how many guests were invited and where the event took place. Reached via WhatsApp and asked if he would make a statement, Vasisht replied: “No thank you, I do not want to be contacted.” Legal experts said the payments to Vasisht raised red flags. Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration and has been a vocal critic of the role of dark money in politics, said is was “not appropriate” for former Thomas law clerks who were established in private practice to – in effect – send money to the supreme court via Venmo. “There is no excuse for it. Thomas could invite them to his Christmas party and he could attend Christmas parties, as long as they are not discussing any cases. His Christmas party should not be paid for by lawyers,” Painter said. “A federal government employee collecting money from lawyers for any reason … I don’t see how that works.” Painter said he would possibly make an exception if recent law clerks were paying their own way for a party. But almost all of the lawyers who made the payments are senior litigators at big law firms. Kedric Payne, the general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said that – based on available information – it was possible that the former clerks were paying their own party expenses, and not expenses for Thomas, which he believed was different than random lawyers in effect paying admission to an exclusive event to influence the judge. He added: “But the point remains that the public is owed an explanation so they don’t have to speculate.” Thomas has been embroiled in ethics scandals for weeks following bombshell revelations by ProPublica, the investigative outlet which published new revelations about how the billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow has paid for lavish holidays for the justice, bought Thomas’s mother’s home, and paid for the judge’s great-nephew’s private school education. The stories have prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have called for the passage of new ethics rules. Thomas is known for having close relationships with his former clerks. A 2019 article in the Atlantic noted that the rightwing justice has a “vast network” of former clerks and mentees who are now serving as federal judges and served in senior positions throughout the Trump administration. The large presence of former Thomas clerks, the Atlantic noted, meant that the “notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come”. Thomas’s chamber did not respond to a request for comment. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...mas-aide-venmo-payments-lawyers-supreme-court
Amazon Alexa tried to tell me Sotomayor will only receive a slap on the wrist this morning, I’m assuming it was in reference to something not even news worthy?
AP reported that her staff pushed colleges and other public institutions to buy her book. Unethical. She/her staff should not do that. But the right will try to equivocate this to the transgressions of the conservative justices. Which of course, it's laughable, but absolutely will be part of the whataboutism response to criticizing the conservative justices on top of calling them political hit pieces
She should be forced to resign. That opinion has absolutely nothing to do with the fact she's 70 years old w diabetes and we have a Democrat controlled POTUS and Senate (sort of)
Yeah that's pretty shitty to use public dollars to sell your book but really par for the course for scotus it seems
The higher up in government you go, the greater the grift. Supreme Court with no oversight, term limits, or elections is the pinnacle.
That Clarence Thomas Slow Burn season was nuts. I already knew he was an asshole because of his opinions but apparently he was hiring women who he wanted to fuck and when they weren't into it they started having "performance issues" and this went on for years
Everyone has known this since Anita Hill. Funny that the hearings were halted right before credibility witnesses were to be called for her in a deal brokered by Republicans and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Joe Biden).
I knew about the Anita Hill stuff specifically but I didn't know he had been doing it for so long Biden is also a complete asshole in those hearings
Lindsey Graham accidentally admits SCOTUS reform is necessary Earlier this week, senate Democrats rolled out legislation to implement common sense ethics standards for Supreme Court justices – little things like banning them from accepting actual bribes. According to Lindsey Graham, this is all just a bid “to destroy a conservative court." Um... Lindsey... Uh, why would banning bribes destroy the conservative court unless it's intrinsic to how it does business?
I swear to god, all this Finding Out can absolutely not get here soon enough for all these republicans Fucking Around.
Or the Yale/Stanfords of the world who did away with grades in fairness to him, I probably should have failed. Federal income taxation on mon/wed/fri at 9:30am with attendance counting towards your grade was a recipe for disaster
Nebraska Teen Sentenced to 90 Days in Jail After Self-Managed Abortion The case of Celeste Burgess illustrates "the real, human cost of mass surveillance of everyone's private digital communications," said one digital rights advocate. Take the pill, get a cell fucking hell
Am I misremembering something here or are they just ignoring the USSC's decision? If it's the latter, I'm going to laugh so hard at Conservative justices trying to throw a bone out after all their other shit and that one little bone being the lightening rode that causes a Republican state to ignore them, thereby opening the doors and really making the USSC unnecessary.
they’re more ignoring the district court decision, which was upheld by the Supreme Court. But the decision had some wiggle room in it in that it said 2 majority black districts or “something quite close to it”. So the second district they created has a 40% black voter population so now everyone gets to fight about whether 40% is “something quite close” to a majority.
At the end of the day the worst case scenario for these state legislators is that the courts make them make two majority minority congressional districts because there’s no way to make 3 dem leaning districts. So they keep pushing until they can’t.
Those are both *relatively competent* politicians, even if I disagree with them. Your garden variety state rep here is a potato.