Fox News Prompts GOP Senator to Frame Clarence Thomas’ Documented Corruption as ‘Attacks’

Posted by Mark NC on May 7, 2023 at 1:03 pm. 4 Comments :

In recent weeks there have been numerous reports detailing the profoundly disturbing legal and ethical breaches by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It paints a picture of a Justice deeply mired in schemes to enrich himself with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts from a right-wing billionaire with interests before the Court.

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The investigative work by ProPublica is thorough and well documented. It reveals that Thomas took luxury vacations provided by Harlan Crow, and sold real estate to him for inflated values. And as incriminating as all of the evidence was, Fox News conspicuously avoided any substantive reporting on it.

SEE THIS: Fox News Blacks Out Story of Clarence Thomas Secretly Taking Luxury Gifts From GOP Billionaire

And that wasn’t the only time that Fox News purposefully suppressed a story about the improprieties of Thomas and his family.

SEE THIS: Fox News Totally Ignores Story About Ginni Thomas Texting QAnon Nuttery to Mark Meadows

As this story developed and expanded, Fox has been continuing to downplay the criminal and ethical aspects of it. On Sunday Fox’s Senior Trump-Fluffer, Maria Bartiromo, interviewed Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. and from the outset of the interview it was clear how she wanted to frame the story.

Bartiromo: Let me get your take on these attacks against Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court…your reaction to what’s taken place to the Supreme Court.
Lee: This is absolutely dreadful. this is an attack on Justice Thomas, a good man. a good man who has risen from poverty in the Jim Crow South to a position where he is one of the most respected jurists in our nation’s history. They don’t like that. They don’t like the fact that he has the audacity to be conservative as a Black man. […] There’s not one allegation they’ve raised against him that reveals any impropriety, any wrongdoing, any violation of any law, any rule, or ethical principle.

Mike Lee on Fox News dismisses Clarence Thomas's corruption: "This is an attack on Justice Thomas … they don't like the fact that he has the audacity to be conservative as a Black man." pic.twitter.com/AV6n4Dy1gq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2023

Bartiromo’s first question literally coached the response from Lee, asking him to comment, not on the crimes or the controversy, but on “these attacks against Clarence Thomas.” And Lee took the prompting and elaborated on it in the most brazenly dishonest manner. He completely ignored every allegation against Thomas, who he described as “a good man” despite the proof of his improper conduct.

Lee sought to deflect from the charges against Thomas by attributing them to alleged racism on the part of Democrats. Never mind that there is absolutely no evidence supporting that contrived excuse. And even if there were it wouldn’t absolve Thomas of his blatant wrongdoing. By Lee’s reasoning Black conservatives should have a free pass to commit any crimes they want with impunity.

Lee went on to say that Democrats “are doing this to attack the legitimacy of the Supreme Court so they can reimage the Supreme Court according to their own preferences.” So in one respect he’s accepting that Thomas’ actions diminish the legitimacy of the Court. But more to the point, he’s forgiving Thomas and embracing the Court’s illegitimacy as acceptable. Lee is also forgetting that it was Republicans who improperly “reimage[d] the Supreme Court” by manipulating the confirmation process to deny Democrats their right to fill vacancies on the Court.

It’s astonishing how Fox News and Lee can pretend that the issue here is political criticism of a conservative Black Justice, when the evidence of Thomas’ violations of the law and ethics are so obvious. But this is what Fox News does. They are committed to exonerating right-leaning criminals, whether they are insurrections, tax cheats, rapists, or Supreme Court Justices. Because to Fox News, political ideology “Trumps” principles. And this was recognized poignantly last year by Jon Stewart…

SEE THIS: Jon Stewart Nails It: The Supreme Court is Now the Fox News of Justice

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Fox News Blacks Out Story of Clarence Thomas Secretly Taking Luxury Gifts From GOP Billionaire

Posted by Mark NC on April 6, 2023 at 1:29 pm. 2 Comments :

It takes a story of profound significance to bump the indictment of Donald Trump from the headlines. After all, when was the last time a twice-impeached, pathologically lying, former TV game show host, and aspiring dictator, was charged with 34 felonies for crimes ranging from election interference to tax fraud?

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The arraignment of Trump in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday afternoon was a historic event that saw Trump sitting feebly in the embrace of his lawyers at the defendant’s table like any other alleged criminal. It signaled the resilience of the American idiom that “no one is above the law.” It also triggered a typically psychotic “death and destruction” response from Trump, whose mental state in court was noticeably tempered, but wildly loosed online.

SEE THIS: Read Trump’s Raving Arraignment Response as Foretold By His Unhinged Truth Social Rants

On Thursday morning such a story was published by the investigative journalists at ProPublica. The story detailed how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a right-wing billionaire without disclosing them as the law requires. According to ProPublica…

“For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them.” […]

“[Thomas] has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.” […]

“These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts.”

For the record, Harlan Crow is a notorious conservative and Republican donor who often has cases before the court that would impact his business interests. What’s more, the “vacations” that Thomas enjoyed at Crow’s expense regularly included other conservative businessmen and politicos who would have reasons to want to rub elbows with a Supreme Court Justice.

This is a blatant breach of judicial ethics and federal law. Although it is not surprising that Thomas would stoop to violate the standards of behavior for a Justice, considering his long history of such ethical lapses. For instance, Thomas refused to recuse himself from matters that directly involved his wife, Ginni Thomas, and her efforts to undermine democracy in support of the January 6th insurrection and coup plotters. A story that Fox News didn’t bother to cover.

SEE THIS: Fox News Totally Ignores Story About Ginni Thomas Texting QAnon Nuttery to Mark Meadows

Similarly unsurprising is the fact that Fox News is ignoring this new Clarence Thomas story. In the past several hours most of the credible media has picked up the ProPublica report. But it has yet to appear on Fox News or their website.

This is their modus operandi for any news event that reflects poorly on Republicans and Trump. The revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News (which Fox News initially refused to cover) exposed them as deliberate liars who placed their politics and greed above truthfulness and patriotism.

Even after the humiliation from the Dominion disclosures of the private communications of Fox executives and hosts, this censorship by omission is further proof that Fox couldn’t care less about honest journalism or holding the powerful accountable. They only care about disseminating right-wing propaganda and goosing their ratings.

UPDATE I: Clarence Thomas pathetically and dishonestly responds to the charges that he secretly took numerous luxury gifts from a right-wing billionaire.

UPDATE II: ProPublica published a follow-up story that reveals that Clarence Thomas sold real estate properties to Harlan Crow (at inflated prices), that Thomas never disclosed. Which is a federal crime.

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Trump and His Desperate Right-Wing Conspiracy Kooks Go After Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Wife

Posted by Mark NC on November 25, 2022 at 11:36 am. 1 Comments :

On Thanksgiving day, Donald Trump posted more than forty fanatical memes expressing undying adoration for Dear Leader. They included expressions of worshipful love and loyalty in words pasted over artificially iconic images of Trump as superhero or savior.

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Missing from this avalanche of self-adulation were any wishes for a happy Thanksgiving. However, interspersed among the exaltations and QAnon-sense were Trump’s own outpourings of rage against “Radical left” Democrats, and “rigged” courts and judges, and perennial “witch hunts,” all in his warped cranium determined to stifle him and his MAGA cult movement. It was a Thanksgiving Day parade of pity and victimhood.

At the top of Trump’s miscreant mind was Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate his criminal activities related to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol that he incited, and the theft of national security documents that he hoarded – and lied to the FBI about having – at his Mar-a-Lago bunker.

In utter horror over the prospect of his being held accountable, Trump posted several hostile comments on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, directed at Special Counsel, Jack Smith, and more disturbingly, at his wife, documentary filmmaker Katy Chevigny. Trump ranted that…

“Democrats argue a Supreme Court justice (Clarence Thomas) must recuse from cases, based upon the personal political views of his wife (Ginni). So why doesn’t Special Counsel Jack Smith have to recuse, based upon his wife’s anti-Trump/pro-Biden large political donation and other major advocacy on behalf of Democrats?”

And he fumed that…

“The wife of the Special Counsel Biden chose to investigate @realdonaldtrump (his likely opponent in 2024) reportedly produced the Michelle Obama documentary… Yes America, you are reading this correctly.”

Trump’s ravings are typically ego-based and legally befuddled. Analogizing Smith to Clarence Thomas makes no sense. As a Supreme Court justice, Thomas can (and does) make decisions that bear directly on the activities of his wife, Ginni, who was an active participant in the coup staged by Trump and his traitorous StormTrumpers. Thomas has already made rulings that shield his wife from legal scrutiny and potential liability.

On the other hand, Jack Smith’s work as Special Counsel would have no bearing whatsoever on the activities of his wife. Furthermore, unlike Ginni Thomas, Chevigny, and Michele Obama, the subject of her documentary “Becoming,” have not been implicated in efforts to overthrow the government of the United States.

Smith’s wife, like the spouses of all Justice Department attorneys, (and all Americans) is free to support whatever candidates and political parties she wants to. So are the attorneys, for that matter. That doesn’t mean that the career prosecutors to whom they are married are going to exercise bias in the performance of their duties. And it wouldn’t matter if they did. Because the judges who hear the cases aren’t going to adopt any alleged biases if the existed.

Smith’s record in the Justice Department is unblemished by any allegations of political bias. He has prosecuted both Democrats and Republicans in the past. That’s routine for the Justice Department. For instance, special counsel Robert Mueller, who probed Trump’s connections to Russia during the 2016 campaign, was a lifelong Republican.

Trump’s temper tantrum is standard operating procedure for him. It hardly matters what the facts are. He will always strive to contort the circumstances into some sort of personal assault, because all he knows how to do is whine. He has actually bragged that he is “the most fabulous whiner,” a claim that is hard to argue with. And he’s providing another outstanding example of it with his reaction to the Special Counsel appointment and the unconscionable attack on his wife.

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Fox News Totally Ignores Story About Ginni Thomas Texting QAnon Nuttery to Mark Meadows

Posted by Mark NC on March 25, 2022 at 3:31 pm. 8 Comments :

The Fruitcake Faction of Donald Trump’s Republican Party (which is most of it these days) continues to venture ever further over the edge of sanity. On Thursday the Washington Post and CBS News released a series of text messages exchanged between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Trump’s then-Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. The content of these messages is profoundly disturbing and evidence of severe mental rot.

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Ginni Thomas has long been an ultra-conservative activist. But these text messages make it clear that she has crawled much farther out on the QAnon limb than previously thought. This is critically important because her husband is a sitting justice on the Supreme Court and in a position to rule on election related matters.

Despite the obvious risk of undue political influence and bias, Fox News has not mentioned any of it in their reporting on Friday. They did manage to report on a hysterically bogus lawsuit filed by Trump against Hillary Clinton and some forty-plus others. And they are still beating the Hunter Biden story that is wholly bereft of any factual basis. And they have plenty of time to malign President Biden while he is overseas in support of Ukraine against Trump’s BFF Vladimir Putin. But covering the wife of a Supreme Court Justice who is up to her eyebrows in seditionist coup plotting is too much to ask of Fox News.

So for the record, what follows are the some of text messages that Thomas and Meadows wrote one another:

Thomas: Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.

Meadows: This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

Thomas: Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!

Thomas: Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.

Thomas: Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.

Thomas: Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.

Thomas: Mark, I wanted to text you and tell you for days you are in my prayers!! Help This Great President stand firm” and invoking “the greatest Heist of our History. Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.

Meadows: I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.

Thomas: House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots… Gohmert, Jordan, Gosar, and Roy.

Thomas: Sounds like Sidney [Powell] and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.

Thomas: We are living through what feels like the end of America. […] Amazing times. The end of Liberty.

None of that is considered to be newsworthy by Fox “News.” They just don’t think their dimwitted audience of Trump cultists need to know that the wife of a Supreme Court justice was discussing overthrowing American democracy with Trump’s Chief of Staff. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone. That’s just how they keep their viewers mired in ignorance and eager to sign on to whatever idiocy Trump is disgorging.

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Clarence Thomas Opinion Would Muzzle the Press for Donald (the Media is the Enemy of the People) Trump

Posted by Mark NC on February 19, 2019 at 3:34 pm. 2 Comments :

There is much that Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Clarence have in common. For instance, their starkly conservative principles (although Thomas actually believes them, while Trump holds them as long as it’s convenient to do so). And they are also notorious abusers of women who have managed to escape the consequences of their repulsive behavior.

And now Thomas has written a new opinion that will surely please Trump. In a case involving another sexual predator, Bill Cosby, Thomas called for a total rewrite of a fifty year old precedent that shielded journalists from hostile lawsuits that would impose on their First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. The case is known as “New York Times v. Sullivan,” and it prohibited the recovery of damages for defamation unless it could be shown that the alleged offense was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” As reported by ThinkProgress:

“Truth traditionally was not a defense to libel prosecutions,” the justice writes. “The crime was intended to punish provocations to a breach of the peace, not the falsity of the statement.” Thus, a journalist (or anyone else with a platform, for that matter) could face criminal prosecutions even if their reporting is 100 percent accurate.

Imagine that. A reporter could be held criminally liable for publishing a true story if the truth caused the subject harm. This is something that Trump would absolutely love. He is fond of slandering the media as “fake News” whenever they write accurate stories about what he actually does and says. If the law were rewritten in the manner that Thomas advocates, Trump could then sue the media enterprise that published it.

Trump has literally called for such a change in the law. At his cult rallies he has insisted that he should be able to sue the media when they publish stories that he regards as negative. And in one of his staged photo-op cabinet meetings, Trump said that:

“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. If somebody says something that is totally false, and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.

“Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values or American fairness. So we’re gonna take a strong look at that. We want fairness. You can’t say things that are false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account.”

First of all, the law already provides for recourse if someone is “knowingly” and “falsely” maligned. What Trump wants is to be able to sue anyone who criticizes him, even if the criticism is warranted and documented. Ironically, what Trump is calling for would put him in far more legal jeopardy than the journalists he is hoping to punish for being honest. Most reporters make conscious efforts to get their stories right. But Trump cavalierly lies whenever he gets the urge to attack his perceived foes.

This opinion by Thomas could not be more obedient to the whims of the President if were dictated by him. And for all we know it might have been. Trump’s goal has long been to incite hostility toward the press and to diminish its reputation. That’s how Trump seeks to soften the blow from all the deservedly negative press he generates.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

He isn’t interested in truth. He’s seeking the sort of tyrannical control of the press that all dictators lust after. It’s precisely the same sort of intimidation that he aimed at Saturday Night Live recently when he called for “retribution” against them for a satirical bit featuring Alec Baldwin. If Trump had his way he would revoke the First Amendment. And if Thomas has his way, it will be a big step toward that nightmarish end.

Clarence Thomas Should Shut Up

Posted by Mark NC on November 30, 2007 at 4:04 pm. NO Comments :

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has officially jumped the snark. He has traversed so far past the horizon of satire that he can’t be made fun of anymore.

Thomas has long kept tongues wagging about how little wagging his tongue does while on the bench. The Wall Street Journal reports that…

“Through about 20 oral arguments this term, Justice Thomas has yet to ask a question from the bench […] Last term, through 68 hours of oral arguments, he didn’t say a thing either. The last time Thomas asked a question: Feb. 22, 2006.”

In almost two years, not a peep from Justice Thomas, even during a case that involved the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which he headed during the Reagan administration. We know that there is nothing wrong with his vocal chords because he speaks in the private sector far more frequently than his fellow justices. In one of those speeches (delivered this week for $100.00 per seat), Thomas defended his silence by attacking his benchmates:

“My colleagues should shut up!” he exclaimed.

Then Thomas drew an absurd analogy between judges and surgeons saying that doctors don’t engage in seminars while in the operating room. If that’s an example of Thomas’ logical acuity we’re in bigger trouble than we thought. Doctors do, of course, have conferences to toss around theories and arguments for how to proceed before they ever step foot in an operating room. That’s a better analogy for what happens when justices conduct hearings. Justices in deliberations and composing their opinions would be more analogous to the operating room. But it doesn’t seem like Thomas even understands the duties required of him when he says…

“We are judges. This is the last court in a long line in our system. We are there to decide cases, not to engage in seminar discussions.”

Wrong, Clarence. You are there to assemble a thorough knowledge of the competing interests that the case presents. You ask questions in order to construct a legal foundation from which to form an opinion. You don’t decide the case until after you’ve heard the advocates from both sides and tested their legal arguments.

What a sad state of affairs that we have such an ill-informed and intellectually incurious member of our country’s highest court. We can only hope that he will develop a renewed appreciation for his family and resign to spend more time with them.

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