Conservative legal scholars are calling attacks on Clarence Thomas for his alleged ethics violations hypocritical in light of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s financial disclosure as a nominee, which shows she omitted portions of her income on previous filings, including money from her husband’s consulting work.
Democratic lawmakers are calling for Thomas’ resignation following ProPublica’s report that he failed to disclose expense-paid vacations he received from his friend and billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow. Yet Jackson’s nominee disclosure filed in March 2022, which notes that she “inadvertently omitted” income her spouse “periodically receives from consulting on medical malpractice cases” on prior reports, has received little attention, which legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation shows there is a double standard for conservative justices.
Mike Davis, Founder and President of the Article III Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Jackson’s disclosure shows Democratic lawmakers’ focused attacks on Thomas after reports that he allegedly violated ethics rules are “hypocritical and dishonest.”
“Jackson only told us her husband made money in ‘legal malpractice consulting,’ which is about as opaque as you can get,” he said. “Where did this money come from? Who are his clients? Did these clients have any matter before Jackson while she served as a federal judge for the prior decade? Jackson left out this required information in her disclosures for nearly 10 years, and she stated in her 2022 confirmation disclosures that she’d amend them later. Where are the amendments?”
Jackson not only omitted details about her husband’s work, she also excluded details about her own positions.
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Paoletta noted there have been many other examples of Justices amending their disclosure forms, showing Democrats’ outrage at Thomas to be “decidedly partisan.”
“For example, Justice Sotomayor has amended her forms on four separate occasions, including amending her 2016 disclosure forms in 2021 to include six trips she made in which a third party paid for travel, lodging and food,” he said. “This was six years late. Was there any outrage?? No. Nobody called her character into question. It was an oversight and she fixed it.”
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Davis said Democrats are wrong to call the reports on Thomas a scandal.
“For Democrats to pretend that Justice Thomas’ disclosures–related to his best friend of 25 years, with no business before the Supreme Court–were an unprecedented scandal is yet another smear against a justice they’ve tried to chase off the court for the last 31 years,” he said. “They’ll do anything to punish him for leaving the Democrats’ plantation and being an independent thinker.”