It's Not A Recent Thing

This fucked up shit - meaning the fucked up political shit, and the fucked up economic shit - didn't get all fucked up yesterday. And we're not going to get it unfucked by tomorrow.

Dealing With Them

Be kind to them, challenge them directly, walk away.

They believe they've discovered the magic formula for never being wrong. All they have to do is declare themselves always right, and everybody else always wrong. There's no "proving" for them. If your evidence is beyond reproach, they just claim "fake news", "lackey of the establishment" etc etc etc.

An updated Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accommodate, and the courage to fight, and the wisdom to know when to walk away.

Slightly altered:

Grant me the self-respect to exit, and to ignore what I need not change -

the serenity to accept what I want to change but can't -

the courage to try to change what I can -

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Sotomayor's Dissent

The main problem I see with practically everything being argued on the "progressive" side is that (eg: Sotomayor, here) cites precedent after precedent after precedent, and I think what should be obvious by now is that the Roberts court doesn't give one empty fuck about precedent if it doesn't support their position du jour.

Fake lord help us.

One thing before you dive into this - if you feel so inclined: 

We have to stop being surprised by this kinda shit. Yes, it's bloody awful. And we should never lose the capacity to be shocked and dismayed and fuckin' pissed when it happens - but we have to stop feeling ambushed. We can't walk around thinking, "These guys may be raging assholes, but they're not going to pull something that fucks it all up for everybody - right?"

Wrong. They are pulling that shit, and they're going to do it more and more until we either stop them, or they tip us into the abyss.

So stop the hand-wringing.

Stop denying it, or assuming it's all over.

But mostly, stop bitchin' about it, and put your backs into it.

Cuz guess what - SCOTUS just gave us King Joe & Princess Kamala. They've got 6 months to bring the magic. Let's just see where this goes.

One other thing: Sotomayor's summation (VII below) is fire.

DONALD J. TRUMP, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
[July 1, 2024]

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR,

with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.

Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution
and system of Government, that no man is above the law.

Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump
all the immunity he asked for and more.

Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.

I.
The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power.

In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, then President Trump allegedly “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” despite being “notified repeatedly” by his closest advisers “that his claims
were untrue,”

When dozens of courts swiftly rejected these claims, Trump allegedly “pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss
legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors” in his favor.

It is alleged that he went so far as to threaten one state election official with criminal prosecution if the official did not “‘find’ 11,780 votes” Trump needed to change the election result in that state.

When state officials repeatedly declined to act outside their legal authority and alter their state election processes, Trump and his co-conspirators purportedly developed a plan to disrupt and displace the legitimate election certification process by organizing fraudulent slates of electors. 

As the date of the certification proceeding neared, Trump allegedly also sought to “use the power and authority of the Justice Department” to bolster his knowingly false claims
of election fraud by initiating “sham election crime investigations” and sending official letters “falsely claim[ing] that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns
that may have impacted the election outcome” while “falsely present[ing] the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors.”

When the Department refused to do as he asked, Trump turned to the Vice President. Initially, he sought to persuade the Vice President “to use his ceremonial role at the
January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.”

When persuasion failed, he purportedly “attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D. C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.”

Speaking to that crowd on January 6, Trump “falsely claimed that, based on fraud, the Vice President could alter the outcome of the election results.”

When this crowd then “violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding”, Trump allegedly delayed in taking any step to rein in the chaos he had unleashed. Instead, in a last desperate ploy to hold onto power, he allegedly “attempted to exploit the violence and
chaos at the Capitol” by pressuring lawmakers to delay the certification of the election and ultimately declare him the winner. That is the backdrop against which this case comes to the Court.

II.
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The
majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.

The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of “core constitutional powers.” This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and
the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds.

In any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which is to create expansive immunity for all “official act[s].” Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune
from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. 

Finally, the majority declares that evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him.

That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.

Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force. Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble.

To start, the majority’s broad “official acts” immunity is inconsistent with text, history, and established understandings of the President’s role. Moreover, it is deeply wrong, even on its own functionalist terms.

Next, the majority’s “core” immunity is both unnecessary and misguided. Furthermore, the majority’s illogical evidentiary holding is unprecedented.

Finally, this majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy.

III.
The main takeaway of today’s decision is that all of a President’s official acts, defined without regard to motive or intent, are entitled to immunity that is “at least . . . presumptive,” and quite possibly “absolute.”

Whenever the President wields the enormous power of his office, the majority says, the criminal law (at least presumptively) cannot touch him. This official-acts immunity
has “no firm grounding in constitutional text, history, or precedent.”

Indeed, those “standard grounds for constitutional decisionmaking,” all
point in the opposite direction. No matter how you look at it, the majority’s official-acts immunity is utterly indefensible.

A.
The majority calls for a “careful assessment of the scope of Presidential power under the Constitution.”

For the majority, that “careful assessment” does not involve the Constitution’s text. I would start there.

The Constitution’s text contains no provision for immunity from criminal prosecution for former Presidents.

Of course, “the silence of the Constitution on this score is not dispositive.” 

Insofar as the majority rails against the notion that a “‘specific textual basis’” is required, it is attacking an argument that has not been made here.

The omission in the text of the Constitution is worth noting, however, for at least three reasons.

First, the Framers clearly knew how to provide for immunity from prosecution. They did provide a narrow immunity for legislators in the Speech or Debate Clause. (“Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace,
be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place”). They did not extend the same or similar immunity to Presidents.

Second, “some state constitutions at the time of the Framing specifically provided ‘express criminal immunities’ to sitting governors.”

The Framers chose not to include similar language in the Constitution to immunize the President. If the Framers “had wanted to create some constitutional privilege to shield the President . . . from criminal indictment,” they could have done so. They did not.

Third, insofar as the Constitution does speak to this question, it actually contemplates some form of criminal liability for former Presidents. The majority correctly rejects Trump’s argument that a former President cannot be prosecuted unless he has been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for the same conduct. The majority ignores, however, that
the Impeachment Judgment Clause cuts against its own position.

That Clause presumes the availability of criminal process as a backstop by establishing that an official impeached and convicted by the Senate “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

That Clause clearly contemplates that a former President may be subject to criminal prosecution for the same conduct that resulted (or could have resulted) in an
impeachment judgment—including conduct such as “Bribery,” which implicates official acts almost by definition.

B.
Aware of its lack of textual support, the majority points out that this Court has “recognized Presidential immunities and privileges ‘rooted in the constitutional tradition of the
separation of powers and supported by our history.’” That is true, as far as it goes. Nothing in our history, however, supports the majority’s entirely novel immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.

The historical evidence that exists on Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution cuts decisively against it.

For instance, Alexander Hamilton wrote that former Presidents would be “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” For Hamilton, that was an important
distinction between “the king of Great Britain,” who was “sacred and inviolable,” and the “President of the United States,” who “would be amenable to personal punishment...

—————— 

Article II, §4, provides: “The President, Vice President and all Civil

Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and

Misdemeanors.”

..and disgrace.” In contrast to the king, the President should be subject to “personal responsibility” for his actions, “stand[ing] upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware,” whose State Constitutions gave them some immunity.

At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, who was aware that some state constitutions provided governors immunity, proposed that the Convention “conside[r]
what privileges ought to be allowed to the Executive.”

Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 503. There is no record of any such discussion.

Ibid. Delegate Charles Pinckney later explained that “[t]he Convention which formed the Constitution well knew” that “no subject had been more abused than privilege,” and so it

“determined to . . . limi[t] privilege to what was necessary, and no more.” “No privilege... was intended for [the] Executive.”

Other commentators around the time of the Founding observed that federal officials had no immunity from prosecution, drawing no exception for the President.

James Wilson recognized that federal officers who use their official powers to commit crimes “may be tried by their country; and if their criminality is established, the law will punish. A grand jury may present, a petty jury may convict, and the judges will pronounce the punishment.”

2 Debates on the Constitution 177 (J. Elliot ed. 1836).

A few decades later, Justice Story evinced the same understanding. He explained that, when...

—————— 

To note, as the majority does, see ante, at 39, that this Court has recognized civil immunities arguably inconsistent with this view is not to

say that Pinckney was wrong about what the Framers had “intended.”

Indeed, Pinckney’s contemporaries shared the same view during the ratification debates. See, e.g., 4 Debates on the Constitution 109 (J. Elliot

ed. 1836) (J. Iredell) (“If the President does a single act by which the

people are prejudiced, he is punishable himself. . . . If he commits any

crime, he is punishable by the laws of his country”).

...a federal official commits a crime in office, “it is indispensable, that provision should be made, that the common tribunals of justice should be at liberty to entertain jurisdiction
of the offence, for the purpose of inflicting, the common punishment applicable to unofficial offenders.”

2 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §780, pp. 250–251 (1833).

Without a criminal trial, he explained, “the grossest official offenders might escape without any
substantial punishment, even for crimes, which would subject their fellow citizens to capital punishment.”

This historical evidence reinforces that, from the very beginning, the presumption in this Nation has always been that no man is free to flout the criminal law. 

The majority fails to recognize or grapple with the lack of historical evidence for its new immunity. With nothing on its side of the ledger, the most the majority can do is claim that the historical evidence is a wash. It claims that the Court previously has described the “relevant historical evidence on the question of Presidential immunity” as “‘fragmentary’” and not worthy of consideration. Yet the Court has described only the evidence regarding “the President’s immunity from damages liability” as “fragmentary.”

Moreover, far from dismissing that evidence as irrelevant, the Fitzgerald Court was careful to note that “[t]he best historical evidence clearly support[ed]” the immunity from damages liability that it recognized, and it relied in part on that historical evidence to overcome the lack of any textual basis for its immunity.

The majority ignores this reliance. It seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient. 

Our country’s history also points to an established understanding, shared by both Presidents and the Justice Department, that former Presidents are answerable to the criminal law for their official acts.

Consider Watergate, for example. After the Watergate tapes revealed President Nixon’s misuse of official power to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation of the Watergate burglary, President Ford pardoned Nixon. Both Ford’s pardon and Nixon’s acceptance of the pardon necessarily “rested on the understanding that the former President faced potential criminal liability.”

Subsequent special counsel and independent counsel investigations have also operated on the assumption that the Government can criminally prosecute former Presidents for their official acts, where they violate the criminal law. Because a President, and certainly a past
President, is subject to prosecution ... the conduct of President Reagan in the Iran/contra matter was reviewed by Independent Counsel against the applicable statutes. It was
concluded that [his] conduct fell well short of criminality which could be successfully prosecuted”.

Indeed, Trump’s own lawyers during his second impeachment trial assured Senators that declining to impeach Trump for his conduct related to January 6 would not leave
him “in any way above the law.” They insisted that a former President “is like any other citizen and can be tried in a court of law.” 

(Trump’s impeachment counsel stating: “If my colleagues on this side of the Chamber actually think that President Trump committed a criminal offense ... [a]fter he is out of office, you
go and arrest him”).

Now that Trump is facing criminal charges for those acts, though, the tune has changed. Being
treated “like any other citizen” no longer seems so appealing.

In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or
even President Trump’s lawyers, until now.

Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.

IV.
A.
Setting aside this evidence, the majority announces that former Presidents are “absolute[ly],” or “at least . . . presumptive[ly],” immune from criminal prosecution for all of their official acts. The majority purports to keep us in suspense as to whether this immunity is absolute or presumptive, but it quickly gives up the game. It explains that, “[a]t a minimum, the President must . . . be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no ‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’” No dangers, none at all.

It is hard to imagine a criminal prosecution for a President’s official acts that would pose no dangers of intrusion on Presidential authority in the majority’s eyes. Nor should that
be the standard. Surely some intrusions on the Executive may be “justified by an overriding need to promote objectives within the constitutional authority of Congress.”

According to the majority, however, any incursion on Executive power is too much. When presumptive immunity is this conclusive, the majority’s indecision as to “whether [official-acts] immunity must be absolute” or whether, instead, “presumptive immunity is sufficient,” hardly matters.

Maybe some future opinion of this Court will decide that presumptive immunity is “sufficient,” and replace the majority’s ironclad presumption with one that makes the difference between presumptive and absolute immunity meaningful.

Today’s Court, however, has replaced a presumption of equality before the law with a presumption that the President is above the law for all of his official acts.

Quick on the heels of announcing this astonishingly broad official-acts immunity, the majority assures us that a former President can still be prosecuted for “unofficial acts.”

Of course he can. No one has questioned the ability to prosecute a former President for unofficial (other-wise known as private) acts. Even Trump did not claim immunity for such acts and, as the majority acknowledges, such an immunity would be impossible to square with Clinton v. Jones, 520 U. S. 681 (1997).

This unremarkable proposition is no real limit on today’s decision. It does not hide the majority’s embrace of the most far-reaching view of Presidential immunity on offer.

In fact, the majority’s dividing line between “official” and “unofficial” conduct narrows the conduct considered “unofficial” almost to a nullity. It says that whenever the President acts in a way that is “‘not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority,’” he is taking official action.

It then goes a step further: “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” It is one thing to say that motive is irrelevant to questions regarding the scope of civil liability, but it is quite another to make it irrelevant to
questions regarding criminal liability. Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt
motives and intent, remains official and immune. Under the majority’s test, if it can be called a test, the category of Presidential action that can be deemed “unofficial” is destined to be vanishingly small.

Ultimately, the majority pays lip service to the idea that “[t]he President, charged with enforcing federal criminal laws, is not above them,” but it then proceeds to place former Presidents beyond the reach of the federal criminal laws for any abuse of official power.

B.
So how does the majority get to its rule? With text, history, and established understanding all weighing against it, the majority claims just one arrow in its quiver: the balancing test in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, (1983).

Yet even that test cuts against it. The majority concludes that official-acts immunity “is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch,” by rejecting that Branch’s own protestations that such immunity is not at all required and would in fact be harmful (see Brief for United States.)

In doing so, it decontextualizes Fitzgerald’s language, ignores important qualifications, and reaches a result that the Fitzgerald Court never would have countenanced.

In Fitzgerald, plaintiff A. Ernest Fitzgerald sued then former President Nixon for money damages. He claimed that, while in office, Nixon had been involved in unlawfully
firing him from his government job. The question for the Court was whether a former President had immunity from such a civil suit. The Court explained that it was “settled law that the separation of powers doctrine does not bar every exercise of jurisdiction over the President of the United States.”

To determine whether a particular type of suit against a President (or former President) could be heard, a court “must balance the constitutional weight of the interest to be served against the dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

The Court explained that, “[w]hen judicial action is needed to serve broad public interests—as when the Court acts, not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain
their proper balance, or to vindicate the public interest in an ongoing criminal prosecution—the exercise of jurisdiction has been held warranted.”

On the facts before it, the Court concluded that a “merely private suit for damages based on a President’s official acts” did not serve those interests. The Court reasoned that the “visibility of [the President’s] office and the effect of his actions on countless people” made him an easy target for civil suits that “frequently could distract [him] from his public duties.”

The public interest in such private civil suits, the Court concluded, was comparatively
weak. (“[T]here is a lesser public interest in actions for civil damages than, for example, in
criminal prosecutions”).

Therefore, the Court held that a former President was immune from such suits.

In the context of a federal criminal prosecution of a former President, however, the danger to the functioning of the Executive Branch is much reduced. Further, as every
member of the Fitzgerald Court acknowledged, the public interest in a criminal prosecution is
far weightier. Applying the Fitzgerald balancing here should yield the opposite result. Instead, the majority elides any difference between civil and criminal immunity, granting Trump the same immunity from criminal prosecution that Nixon enjoyed from an unlawful termination suit.
That is plainly wrong.

1.
The majority relies almost entirely on its view of the danger of intrusion on the Executive Branch, to the exclusion of the other side of the balancing test. Its analysis rests on
a questionable conception of the President as incapable of navigating the difficult decisions his job requires while staying within the bounds of the law. It also ignores the fact that he receives robust legal advice on the lawfulness of his actions.

The majority says that the danger “of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch” posed by criminally prosecuting a former President for official conduct “is akin to, indeed greater than, what led us to recognize absolute Presidential immunity from civil damages liability—that the President would be chilled from taking the ‘bold and unhesitating action’ required of an independent Executive.” 

It is of course important that the President be able to ‘“deal fearlessly and impartially with” the duties of his office.’” (quoting Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 752).

If every action the President takes exposes him personally to vexatious private litigation, the possibility of hamstringing Presidential decision making is very real. Yet there are many facets of criminal liability, which the majority discounts, that make it less likely to chill Presidential action than the threat of civil litigation.

First, in terms of probability, the threat of criminal liability is much smaller. In Fitzgerald, the threat of vexatious civil litigation loomed large. The Court observed that, given the “visibility of his office and the effect of his actions on countless people, the President would be an easily identifiable target for suits for civil damages.” Although “‘the effect of [the President’s] actions on countless people’ could result in untold numbers of private plaintiffs suing for damages based on any number of Presidential acts” in the civil context, the risk in the criminal context is
“only that a former President may face one federal prosecution, in one jurisdiction, for each criminal offense allegedly committed while in office.” (quoting Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 753).

The majority’s bare assertion that the burden of exposure to federal criminal prosecution is more limiting to a President than the burden of exposure to civil suits does not make it true,
and it is not persuasive.

Second, federal criminal prosecutions require “robust procedural safeguards” not found in civil suits. The criminal justice system has layers of protections that “filter out insubstantial legal claims,” whereas civil litigation lacks “analogous checks.”

To start, Justice Department policy requires scrupulous and impartial prosecution, founded on both the facts and the law. The grand jury provides an additional check on felony prosecutions, acting as a “buffer or referee between the Government and the people,” to ensure that the charges are wellfounded. 

“[A] criminal prosecution cannot be commenced absent careful consideration by a grand jury
at the request of a prosecutor; the same check is not present with respect to the commencement of civil suits in which advocates are subject to no realistic accountability”).

If the prosecution makes it past the grand jury, then the former President still has all the protections our system provides to criminal defendants. If the former President
has an argument that a particular statute is unconstitutional as applied to him, then he can move to dismiss the charges on that ground. Indeed, a former President is likely to have legal arguments that would be unavailable to the average criminal defendant.

For example, he may be able to rely on a public-authority exception from particular criminal laws, or an advice-of-the-Attorney-General defense,

——————

See Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379, 384 (1937) (explaining that public officers may be “impliedly excluded from [statutory] language embracing all persons” if reading the statute to include such officers “would work obvious absurdity as, for example, the application of a speed law to a policeman pursuing a criminal or the driver of a fire engine responding to an alarm”); see also Memorandum from D. Barron, Acting Assistant Atty. Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to E. Holder, Atty. Gen., Re: Applicability of Federal Criminal Laws and the Constitution to Contemplated Lethal Operations Against Shaykh Anwar al-Aulaqi 12 (July 16, 2010) (interpreting criminal statute prohibiting unlawful killings “to incorporate the public authority justification, which can render lethal action carried out by a government official lawful in some circumstances”). 4Trump did not raise those defenses in this case, and the immunity

that the majority has created likely will obviate the need to raise them in future cases. Yet those defenses would have protected former Presidents from unwarranted criminal prosecutions much more precisely than the blanket immunity the majority creates today.

If the case nonetheless makes it to trial, the Government will bear the burden of proving every element of the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury of the
former President’s fellow citizens. See United States v. Gaudin (1995). If the Government manages to overcome even that significant hurdle, then the former President can appeal his conviction, and the appellate review of his claims will be “‘particularly meticulous.’”
Trump v. Vance, (2020) (quoting Nixon, 418 U. S., at 702). He can ultimately seek this Court’s review, and if past practice (including in this case) is any indication, he will receive it.

In light of these considerable protections, the majority’s fear that “‘bare allegations of malice,’”  would expose former Presidents to trial and conviction is unfounded. Bare allegations of malice would not make it out of the starting gate.

Although a private civil action may be brought based on little more than “‘intense feelings,’” (quoting Fitzgerald), a federal criminal prosecution is made of firmer stuff. Certainly there has been, on occasion, great feelings of animosity between incoming and outgoing Presidents over the course of our country’s history. Yet it took allegations as grave as those at the center of this case to have the first federal criminal prosecution of a former President.

That restraint is telling.

Third, because of longstanding interpretations by the Executive Branch, every sitting President has so far believed himself under the threat of criminal liability after his term in office and nevertheless boldly fulfilled the duties of his office. The majority insists that the threat of criminal sanctions is “more likely to distort Presidential decision making than the potential payment of civil damages.”

If that is right, then that distortion has been shaping Presidential decision making since the earliest days of the Republic. Although it makes sense to avoid “diversion of the President’s attention during the decision making process” with “needless worry,” one wonders why requiring some small amount of his attention (or his legal advisers’ attention) to go towards complying with federal criminal law is such a great burden. If the President follows the law that he must “take Care” to execute, he has not been rendered “‘unduly cautious,’” (quoting Fitzgerald). Some amount of caution is necessary, after all.

It is a far greater danger if the President feels empowered to violate federal criminal law, buoyed by the knowledge of future immunity. I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent
in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.

So what exactly is the majority worried about deterring when it expresses great concern for the “deterrent” effect that “the threat of trial, judgment, and imprisonment” would pose?

It cannot possibly be the deterrence of acts that are truly criminal. Nor does it make sense
for the majority to wring its hands over the possibility that Presidents might stop and think carefully before taking action that borders on criminal.

Instead, the majority’s main concern could be that Presidents will be deterred from taking necessary and lawful action by the fear that their successors might pin them with a baseless criminal prosecution—a prosecution that would almost certainly be doomed to fail, if it even made it out of the starting gate. The Court should not have so little faith in this Nation’s Presidents.

As this Court has said before in the context of criminal proceedings, “‘[t]he chance that now and then there may be found some timid soul who will take counsel of his fears and give way to their repressive power is too remote and shadowy to shape the course of justice.’”

The concern that countless (and baseless) civil suits would hamper the Executive may
have been justified in Fitzgerald, but a well-founded federal criminal prosecution poses no comparable danger to the functioning of the Executive Branch.

2.
At the same time, the public interest in a federal criminal prosecution of a former President is vastly greater than the public interest in a private individual’s civil suit. All nine Justices in Fitzgerald explicitly recognized that distinction.

The five-Justice majority noted that there was a greater public interest “in criminal prosecutions” than in “actions for civil damages.”

Chief Justice Burger’s concurrence accordingly emphasized that the majority’s immunity was “limited to civil damages claims,” rather than “criminal prosecution.” The four
dissenting Justices agreed that a “contention that the President is immune from criminal prosecution in the courts,” if ever made, would not “be credible.”

At the very least, the Fitzgerald Court did not expect that its balancing test would lead to the same outcome in the criminal context. The public’s interest in prosecution is transparent: a federal prosecutor herself acts on behalf of the United States.

Even the majority acknowledges that the “[f]ederal criminal laws seek to redress ‘a wrong to the public’ as a whole, not just ‘a wrong to the individual,’” such that there is “a compelling ‘public interest in fair and effective law enforcement,’” Indeed, “our historic commitment to the rule of law” is “nowhere more profoundly manifest than in our view that ... ‘guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.’”

The public interest in criminal prosecution is particularly strong with regard to officials who are granted some degree of civil immunity because of their duties. It is in those cases
where the public can see that officials exercising power under public trust remain on equal footing with their fellow citizens under the criminal law.

(“[W]e have never held that the performance of the duties of judicial, legislative, or executive officers, requires or contemplates the immunization of otherwise criminal deprivations of constitutional rights”)

 

(“[J]udicial immunity was not designed to insulate the judiciary from all aspects of public accountability. Judges are immune from §1983 damages actions, but they are subject to criminal prosecutions as are other citizens”)

(“We emphasize that the [civil] immunity of prosecutors . . . does not leave the public powerless to deter misconduct or to punish that which occurs. This Court has never suggested that the policy considerations which compel civil immunity for certain governmental officials also place them beyond the reach of the criminal law. Even judges, cloaked with absolute civil immunity for centuries, could be punished criminally”).

The public interest in the federal criminal prosecution of a former President alleged to have used the powers of his office to commit crimes may be greater still.

“[T]he President . . . represent[s] all the voters in the Nation,” and his powers are given by the people under our Constitution. Anderson v. Celebrezze, (1983).

When Presidents use the powers of their office for personal gain or as part of a criminal scheme, every person in the country has an interest in that criminal prosecution. The majority overlooks that paramount interest entirely.

Finally, the question of federal criminal immunity for a former President “involves a countervailing Article II consideration absent in Fitzgerald”: recognizing such an im-
munity “would frustrate the Executive Branch’s enforcement of the criminal law.” 

The President is, of course, entrusted with “‘supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.’” (quoting Fitzgerald). One of the most important is “enforcement of federal law,” as “it is the President who is charged constitutionally to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”(Article II, §3).

The majority seems to think that allowing former Presidents to escape accountability for breaking the law while disabling the current Executive from prosecuting such violations somehow respects the independence of the Executive. It does not.

Rather, it diminishes that independence, exalting occupants of the office over the office itself. There is a twisted irony in saying, as the majority does, that the person charged with “tak[ing] Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” can break them with impunity.

In the case before us, the public interest and countervailing Article II interest are particularly stark. The public interest in this criminal prosecution implicates both “[t]he Executive Branch’s interest in upholding Presidential elections and vesting power in a new President under the Constitution” as well as “the voters’ interest in democratically selecting their President.”

It also, of course, implicates Congress’s own interest in regulating conduct through the criminal law. Yet the majority believes that a President’s anxiety over prosecution overrides the public’s interest in accountability and negates the interests of the other branches in carrying out their constitutionally assigned functions. It is, in fact, the majority’s position that “boil[s] down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

Finally, in an attempt to put some distance between its official-acts immunity and Trump’s requested immunity, the majority insists that “Trump asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one [the majority has] recognized.”

If anything, the opposite is true. The only part of Trump’s immunity argument that the majority rejects is the idea that “the Impeachment Judgment Clause requires that impeachment and Senate conviction precede a President’s criminal prosecution.” That argument is obviously wrong.

Rejecting it, however, does not make the majority’s immunity narrower than Trump’s. Inherent in Trump’s Impeachment Judgment Clause argument is the idea that a former President who
was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for crimes involving his official acts could then be prosecuted in court for those acts.

(“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts, but only if that President is first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate”)

By extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official acts immunity even more expansive than the one Trump

argued for. On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a former President whose abuse of power was so egregious and so offensive even to members of his own party that he was
impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate still would be entitled to “at least presumptive” criminal immunity for those acts.

V.
Separate from its official-acts immunity, the majority recognizes absolute immunity for “conduct within [the President’s] exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.”

Feel free to skip over those pages of the majority’s opinion. With broad official-acts immunity covering the field, this ostensibly narrower immunity serves little purpose. In any event, this case simply does not turn on conduct within the President’s “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority,” and the majority’s attempt to apply a core immunity of its own making expands the concept of “core constitutional powers,” beyond any recognizable bounds.

The idea of a narrow core immunity might have some intuitive appeal, in a case that actually presented the issue. If the President’s power is “conclusive and preclusive” on a
given subject, then Congress should not be able to “ac[t] upon the subject.” (Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952)

In his Youngstown concurrence, Justice Robert Jackson posited that the President’s “power of removal in executive agencies” seemed to fall within this narrow category.

Other decisions of this Court indicate that the pardon power also falls in this category. (see United States v. Klein, 1872) (“To the executive alone is intrusted the power of pardon; and it is granted without limit”), as does the power to recognize foreign countries. (see Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 2015) (holding that the President has “exclusive power . . . to control recognition determinations”).

In this case, however, the question whether a former President enjoys a narrow immunity for the “exercise of his core constitutional powers,” has never been at issue, and for good reason: Trump was not criminally indicted for taking actions that the Constitution places in the
unassailable core of Executive power. He was not charged, for example, with illegally wielding the Presidency’s pardon power or veto power or appointment power or even removal
power. Instead, Trump was charged with a conspiracy to commit fraud to subvert the Presidential election. It is true that the detailed indictment in this case alleges that Trump
threatened to remove an Acting Attorney General who would not carry out his scheme.

Yet it is equally clear that the Government does not seek to “impose criminal liability on the
[P]resident for exercising or talking about exercising the appointment and removal power.”

If that were the majority’s concern, it could simply have said that the Government cannot charge a President’s threatened use of the removal power as an overt act in the conspiracy. It says much more.

The core immunity that the majority creates will insulate a considerably larger sphere of conduct than the narrow core of “conclusive and preclusive” powers that the Court previously has recognized.

The first indication comes when the majority includes the President’s broad duty to “‘take
Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’” among the core functions for which a former President supposedly enjoys absolute immunity. That expansive view of core power will effectively insulate all sorts of noncore conduct from criminal prosecution. Were there any question, consider how the majority applies its newly minted core immunity to the allegations in this case.

It concludes that “Trump is . . . absolutely immune from prosecution for” any “conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” That conception of core immunity expands the “conclusive and preclusive” category beyond recognition, foreclosing the possibility of
prosecution for broad swaths of conduct. Under that view of core powers, even fabricating evidence and insisting the Department use it in a criminal case could be covered. The
majority’s conception of “core” immunity sweeps far more broadly than its logic, borrowed from Youngstown, should allow.

The majority tries to assuage any concerns about its made-up core immunity by suggesting that the Government agrees with it. That suggestion will surprise the Government. To say, as the Government did, that a “small core of exclusive official acts” such as “the pardon
power, the power to recognize foreign nations, the power to veto legislation, [and] the power to make appointments” cannot be regulated by Congress, does not suggest that the Government agrees with immunizing any and all conduct conceivably related to the majority’s broad array of supposedly “core” powers.

The Government in fact advised this Court to “leav[e] potentially more difficult questions” about the scope of any immunity “that might arise on different facts for decision if they are
ever presented.” That would have made sense.

The indictment here does not pose any threat of impermissibly criminalizing acts within the President’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority. Perhaps for this reason, even Trump discouraged consideration of “a narrower scope of immunity,” claiming that such an immunity “would be nearly impossible to fashion, and would certainly involve impractical line-drawing problems in every application.”

When forced to wade into thorny separation-of-powers disputes, this Court’s usual practice is to “confine the opinion only to the very questions necessary to decision of the case.”

There is plenty of peril and little value in crafting a core immunity doctrine that Trump did not seek and that rightly has no application to this case.

VI.
Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal immunity for former Presidents, the majority goes a dramatic and unprecedented step further. It says that acts for which the President is immune must be redacted from the narrative of even wholly private crimes committed while in office.

They must play no role in proceedings regarding private criminal acts.

Even though the majority’s immunity analysis purports to leave unofficial acts open to prosecution, its draconian approach to official-acts evidence deprives these prosecutions of any teeth. 

If the former President cannot be held criminally liable for his official acts, those acts should still be admissible to prove knowledge or intent in criminal prosecutions of unofficial acts. For instance, the majority struggles with classifying whether a President’s speech is in his capacity as President (official act) or as a candidate (unofficial act).

Imagine a President states, in an official speech, that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act).

Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.

The majority’s extraordinary rule has no basis in law.

Consider the First Amendment context.

Although the First Amendment prohibits criminalizing most speech, it “does not prohibit the evidentiary use of speech,” including its use “to prove motive or intent.” Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 1993.

Evidentiary rulings and limiting instructions can ensure that evidence concerning official acts is
“considered only for the proper purpose for which it was admitted.” Huddleston v. United States, 1988. The majority has no coherent explanation as to ...

—————— 

The majority suggests, in a footnote, that a “prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act,” so long as the prosecutor does not “invite the jury to inspect” the act in any way. Ante, at 32, n. 3. Whatever that suggestion is supposed to accomplish, it does not salvage the majority’s nonsensical evidentiary rule.

... why these protections that are sufficient in every other context would be insufficient here. It simply asserts that it would be “untenable” and would deprive immunity of its “‘intended effect.’” (quoting Fitzgerald).

The majority hazards an explanation that the use of official-acts evidence will “raise a unique risk that the jurors’ deliberations will be prejudiced by their views of the President’s policies and performance while in office.”

That “unique risk,” however, is not a product of introducing official-acts evidence. It is simply the risk involved in any suit against a former President, including the private-acts prosecutions the majority says it would allow.

VII.
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents immunity for their official acts is deeply wrong. As troubling as this criminal immunity doctrine is in theory, the majority’s application of the doctrine to the indictment in this case is perhaps even more troubling.

In the hands of the majority, this new official-acts immunity operates as a one-way ratchet.
First, the majority declares all of the conduct involving the Justice Department and the Vice President to be official conduct, yet it refuses to designate any course of conduct alleged in the indictment as private, despite concessions from Trump’s counsel. Trump’s counsel conceded, for example, that the allegation that Trump ...

—————— The majority protests that it is “adher[ing] to time-tested practices”

by “deciding what is required to dispose of this case and remanding” to

lower courts to sort out the details. Ante, at 41. Yet it implicitly acknowledges that it reaches far beyond what any lower court considered or any party briefed by designating certain conduct official in the first instance.

See ibid. (noting “the lack of factual analysis in the lower courts, and the

lack of briefing on how to categorize the conduct alleged”). In reaching

out to shield some conduct as official while refusing to recognize any conduct as unofficial, the majority engages in judicial activism, not judicial restraint.

... “turned to a private attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results” “sounds private.” He likewise conceded that the allegation that Trump “conspired with another private attorney who
caused the filing in court of a verification signed by [Trump] that contained false allegations to support a challenge” “sounds private.” (Trump’s counsel explaining that it is not “disputed” that such conduct is “unofficial”). Again, when asked about allegations that “[t]hree private actors ... helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct
the certification proceeding, and [Trump] and a co-conspirator attorney directed that effort,” Trump’s counsel conceded the alleged conduct was “private.”

Only the majority thinks that organizing fraudulent slates of electors might qualify as an official act of the President, or at least an act so “interrelated” with other allegedly official acts that it might warrant protection. If the majority’s sweeping conception of “official acts” has any real limits, the majority is unwilling to reveal them in today’s decision.

Second, the majority designates certain conduct immune while refusing to recognize anything as prosecutable. It shields large swaths of conduct involving the Justice Department with immunity, but it does not give an inch in the other direction.

The majority admits that the Vice President’s responsibility “‘presiding over the Senate’” is “‘not an “executive branch” function,’” and it further admits that the President “plays
no direct constitutional or statutory role” in the counting of electoral votes. Yet the majority refuses to conclude that Trump lacks immunity for his alleged attempts to “enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.”

Instead, it worries that a prosecution for this conduct might make it harder for the President to use the Vice President “to advance [his] agenda in Congress.” Such a prosecution, according to the majority, “may well hinder the President’s ability to perform his constitutional functions.” 

Whether a prosecution for this conduct warrants immunity should have been an easy question, but the majority turns it into a debatable one.

Remarkably, the majority goes further and declines to deny immunity even for the allegations that Trump organized fraudulent elector slates, pressured States to subvert the legitimate election results, and exploited violence at the Capitol to influence the certification proceedings.

It is not conceivable that a prosecution for these alleged efforts to overturn a Presidential election, whether labeled official or unofficial under the majority’s test, would pose any “‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch,’” and the majority could have said as much.

Instead, it perseverates on a threshold question that should be immaterial.

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark.

The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 1944.

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the
world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.

• Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.
• Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune.
• Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.
• Immune
• immune
• immune

"Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be."

That is the majority’s message today.

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

*   *   *

The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were
not so single-minded.

In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the
Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a
republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” (The Federalist #77, p507)

The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.”

The answer after today is no.

Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law.

Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.

With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

Close To The Edge

The abyss yawns menacingly before us.

It's like we're playing out the scene from Men In Black where K explains the bigger picture to J.

ie: We're always on the brink of disaster in one way or another, and the only way we get through it is to make sure normal everyday people don't know what's actually going on.

So we're learning about more of the skullduggery that Trump was (and undoubtedly still is) pulling, and the prospects just seem to get worse.

But some revelations can be both demoralizing and maybe a little hopeful at the same time.

As we see billionaires starting to come clean about their efforts (and successes) at buying their way to power, it seems like the rest of us are losing, but maybe that knowledge gives enough people enough of a peek at how fucked up it is to allow these rich fucks to own government that we start to work at changing what we see in the Overton Window, and drag our politics back to a more reasonable position.

As usual, I dunno. Maybe I have no fucking clue about anything - or I have the wrong idea about everything - but even though part of me prefers to be blissfully ignorant, I can't stop watching.

Overheard

Trump was easily the worst POTUS ever. He's an inveterate liar. He's a petty, vindictive, jealous and unforgiving narcissist. He's homophobic, misogynist, racist, and favors ethnic cleansing. He's a serial predator and proud of it. He's a capricious bully and a self-dealing grifter with no conscience. The man has no honor, and no sense of duty - he feels no obligation to live his life among decent civilized humans.

And I'll support him 100% if he's my party's nominee - because I just can't vote for a Democrat.

SCOTUS Fuckery

Every judge, but especially every Justice of the US Supreme Court, is supposed to be very much aware of the need for the public to perceive impartiality on the part of the courts, and with avoiding even the appearance of being influenced by anything other than even-handed administration of the law.

A Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court should be the one who's most sharply attuned to those concerns, as he is the boss of the entire Article 3 Branch of our government.

Assoc Justice Clarence Thomas has been over the line on more than a couple of occasions in just the last few years. The antics of both he and his wife give the appearance that SCOTUS is - or is becoming - less than legit.

This has been going on for quite a while, so what am I to discern from the way Chief Justice Roberts seems to be doing nothing about it?

And also too: The Roberts court - with Roberts being the deciding vote - opened the flood gates with the Citizens United decision.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he 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.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. When she was on the bench, Gertner said, she was so cautious about appearances that she wouldn’t mention her title when making dinner reservations: “It was a question of not wanting to use the office for anything other than what it was intended.”

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”

“When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” said Canter, now at the watchdog group CREW. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”

ProPublica uncovered the details of Thomas’ travel by drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow’s employees and interviews with dozens of people ranging from his superyacht’s staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor.

Federal judges sit in a unique position of public trust. They have lifetime tenure, a privilege intended to insulate them from the pressures and potential corruption of politics. A code of conduct for federal judges below the Supreme Court requires them to avoid even the “appearance of impropriety.” Members of the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts has written, “consult” that code for guidance. The Supreme Court is left almost entirely to police itself.

There are few restrictions on what gifts justices can accept. That’s in contrast to the other branches of government. Members of Congress are generally prohibited from taking gifts worth $50 or more and would need pre-approval from an ethics committee to take many of the trips Thomas has accepted from Crow.

Thomas’ approach to ethics has already attracted public attention. Last year, Thomas didn’t recuse himself from cases that touched on the involvement of his wife, Ginni, in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. While his decision generated outcry, it could not be appealed.

Crow met Thomas after he became a justice. The pair have become genuine friends, according to people who know both men. Over the years, some details of Crow’s relationship with the Thomases have emerged. In 2011, The New York Times reported on Crow’s generosity toward the justice. That same year, Politico revealed that Crow had given half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, which also paid her a $120,000 salary. But the full scale of Crow’s benefactions has never been revealed.

Long an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics, Crow has spent millions on ideological efforts to shape the law and the judiciary. Crow and his firm have not had a case before the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it, though the court periodically hears major cases that directly impact the real estate industry. The details of his discussions with Thomas over the years remain unknown, and it is unclear if Crow has had any influence on the justice’s views.

In his statement, Crow said that he and his wife have never discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas. “We have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he added.

In Thomas’ public appearances over the years, he has presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes.

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance.

“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”

“You Don’t Need to Worry About This — It’s All Covered”

CROW’S PRIVATE lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, sits in a remote corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Closed off from the public by ornate wooden gates, the 105-acre property, once the summer retreat of the same heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, features an artificial waterfall and a great hall where Crow’s guests are served meals prepared by private chefs. Inside, there’s clear evidence of Crow and Thomas’ relationship: a painting of the two men at the resort, sitting outdoors smoking cigars alongside conservative political operatives. A statue of a Native American man, arms outstretched, stands at the center of the image, which is photographic in its clarity.

The painting captures a scene from around five years ago, said Sharif Tarabay, the artist who was commissioned by Crow to paint it. Thomas has been vacationing at Topridge virtually every summer for more than two decades, according to interviews with more than a dozen visitors and former resort staff, as well as records obtained by ProPublica. He has fished with a guide hired by Crow and danced at concerts put on by musicians Crow brought in. Thomas has slept at perhaps the resort’s most elegant accommodation, an opulent lodge overhanging Upper St. Regis Lake.

The mountainous area draws billionaires from across the globe. Rooms at a nearby hotel built by the Rockefellers start at $2,250 a night. Crow’s invitation-only resort is even more exclusive. Guests stay for free, enjoying Topridge’s more than 25 fireplaces, three boathouses, clay tennis court and batting cage, along with more eccentric features: a lifesize replica of the Harry Potter character Hagrid’s hut, bronze statues of gnomes and a 1950s-style soda fountain where Crow’s staff fixes milkshakes.

Crow’s access to the justice extends to anyone the businessman chooses to invite along. Thomas’ frequent vacations at Topridge have brought him into contact with corporate executives and political activists.

During just one trip in July 2017, Thomas’ fellow guests included executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. The painting of Thomas at Topridge shows him in conversation with Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right.

In his statement to ProPublica, Crow said he is “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.”

“These are gatherings of friends,” Crow said.

Crow has deep connections in conservative politics. The heir to a real estate fortune, Crow oversees his family’s business empire and recently named Marxism as his greatest fear. He was an early patron of the powerful anti-tax group Club for Growth and has been on the board of AEI for over 25 years. He also sits on the board of the Hoover Institution, another conservative think tank.

A major Republican donor for decades, Crow has given more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions. He’s also given to groups that keep their donors secret — how much of this so-called dark money he’s given and to whom are not fully known. “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose,” Crow once told the Times.

Crow has long supported efforts to move the judiciary to the right. He has donated to the Federalist Society and given millions of dollars to groups dedicated to tort reform and conservative jurisprudence. AEI and the Hoover Institution publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories, and fellows at the think tanks occasionally file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court.

On the court since 1991, Thomas is a deeply conservative jurist known for his “originalism,” an approach that seeks to adhere to close readings of the text of the Constitution. While he has been resolute in this general approach, his views on specific matters have sometimes evolved. Recently, Thomas harshly criticized one of his own earlier opinions as he embraced a legal theory, newly popular on the right, that would limit government regulation. Small evolutions in a justice’s thinking or even select words used in an opinion can affect entire bodies of law, and shifts in Thomas’ views can be especially consequential. He’s taken unorthodox legal positions that have been adopted by the court’s majority years down the line.

Soon after Crow met Thomas three decades ago, he began lavishing the justice with gifts, including a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, which Thomas disclosed. Recently, Crow gave Thomas a portrait of the justice and his wife, according to Tarabay, who painted it. Crow’s foundation also gave $105,000 to Yale Law School, Thomas’ alma mater, for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.

Crow said that he and his wife have funded a number of projects that celebrate Thomas. “We believe it is important to make sure as many people as possible learn about him, remember him and understand the ideals for which he stands,” he said.

To trace Thomas’ trips around the world on Crow’s superyacht, ProPublica spoke to more than 15 former yacht workers and tour guides and obtained records documenting the ship’s travels.

On the Indonesia trip in the summer of 2019, Thomas flew to the country on Crow’s jet, according to another passenger on the plane. Clarence and Ginni Thomas were traveling with Crow and his wife, Kathy. Crow’s yacht, the Michaela Rose, decked out with motorboats and a giant inflatable rubber duck, met the travelers at a fishing town on the island of Flores.

Touring the Lesser Sunda Islands, the group made stops at Komodo National Park, home of the eponymous reptiles; at the volcanic lakes of Mount Kelimutu; and at Pantai Meko, a spit of pristine beach accessible only by boat. Another guest was Mark Paoletta, a friend of the Thomases then serving as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget in the administration of President Donald Trump.

Paoletta was bound by executive branch ethics rules at the time and told ProPublica that he discussed the trip with an ethics lawyer at his agency before accepting the Crows’ invitation. “Based on that counsel’s advice, I reimbursed Harlan for the costs,” Paoletta said in an email. He did not respond to a question about how much he paid Crow.

(Paoletta has long been a pugnacious defender of Thomas and recently testified before Congress against strengthening judicial ethics rules. “There is nothing wrong with ethics or recusals at the Supreme Court,” he said, adding, “To support any reform legislation right now would be to validate these vicious political attacks on the Supreme Court,” referring to criticism of Thomas and his wife.)

The Indonesia vacation wasn’t Thomas’ first time on the Michaela Rose. He went on a river day trip around Savannah, Georgia, and an extended cruise in New Zealand roughly a decade ago.

As a token of his appreciation, he gave one yacht worker a copy of his memoir. Thomas signed the book: “Thank you so much for all your hard work on our New Zealand adventure.”

Crow’s policy was that guests didn’t pay, former Michaela Rose staff said. “You don’t need to worry about this — it’s all covered,” one recalled the guests being told.

There’s evidence Thomas has taken even more trips on the superyacht. Crow often gave his guests custom polo shirts commemorating their vacations, according to staff. ProPublica found photographs of Thomas wearing at least two of those shirts. In one, he wears a blue polo shirt embroidered with the Michaela Rose’s logo and the words “March 2007” and “Greek Islands.”

Thomas didn’t report any of the trips ProPublica identified on his annual financial disclosures. Ethics experts said the law clearly requires disclosure for private jet flights and Thomas appears to have violated it.

Justices are generally required to publicly report all gifts worth more than $415, defined as “anything of value” that isn’t fully reimbursed. There are exceptions: If someone hosts a justice at their own property, free food and lodging don’t have to be disclosed. That would exempt dinner at a friend’s house. The exemption never applied to transportation, such as private jet flights, experts said, a fact that was made explicit in recently updated filing instructions for the judiciary.

Two ethics law experts told ProPublica that Thomas’ yacht cruises, a form of transportation, also required disclosure.

“If Justice Thomas received free travel on private planes and yachts, failure to report the gifts is a violation of the disclosure law,” said Kedric Payne, senior director for ethics at the nonprofit government watchdog Campaign Legal Center. (Thomas himself once reported receiving a private jet trip from Crow, on his disclosure for 1997.)

The experts said Thomas’ stays at Topridge may have required disclosure too, in part because Crow owns it not personally but through a company. Until recently, the judiciary’s ethics guidance didn’t explicitly address the ownership issue. The recent update to the filing instructions clarifies that disclosure is required for such stays.

How many times Thomas failed to disclose trips remains unclear. Flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration and FlightAware suggest he makes regular use of Crow’s plane. The jet often follows a pattern: from its home base in Dallas to Washington Dulles airport for a brief stop, then on to a destination Thomas is visiting and back again.

ProPublica identified five such trips in addition to the Indonesia vacation.

On July 7 last year, Crow’s jet made a 40-minute stop at Dulles and then flew to a small airport near Topridge, returning to Dulles six days later. Thomas was at the resort that week for his regular summer visit, according to a person who was there. Twice in recent years, the jet has followed the pattern when Thomas appeared at Crow’s properties in Dallas — once for the Jan. 4, 2018, swearing-in of Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho at Crow’s private library and again for a conservative think tank conference Crow hosted last May.

Thomas has even used the plane for a three-hour trip. On Feb. 11, 2016, the plane flew from Dallas to Dulles to New Haven, Connecticut, before flying back later that afternoon. ProPublica confirmed that Thomas was on the jet through Supreme Court security records obtained by the nonprofit Fix the Court, private jet data, a New Haven plane spotter and another person at the airport. There are no reports of Thomas making a public appearance that day, and the purpose of the trip remains unclear.

Jet charter companies told ProPublica that renting an equivalent plane for the New Haven trip could cost around $70,000.

On the weekend of Oct. 16, 2021, Crow’s jet repeated the pattern. That weekend, Thomas and Crow traveled to a Catholic cemetery in a bucolic suburb of New York City. They were there for the unveiling of a bronze statue of the justice’s beloved eighth grade teacher, a nun, according to Catholic Cemetery magazine.

As Thomas spoke from a lectern, the monument towered over him, standing 7 feet tall and weighing 1,800 pounds, its granite base inscribed with words his teacher once told him. Thomas told the nuns assembled before him, “This extraordinary statue is dedicated to you sisters.”

He also thanked the donors who paid for the statue: Harlan and Kathy Crow.