(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Were billionaire's gifts to Thomas taxable? Sen. Wyden wants to know [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-25 Tax law is clear. The judicial ethics side is less so, and on that front there’s another Thomas/Crow issue in the news. After ProPublica’s initial reporting on the gifts, Thomas not only said he thought they didn’t have to be reported, he offered up what he probably thought was an exonerating statement: Crow hadn’t been involved in any cases before the court, anyway. That was a mistake, Bloomberg reports, because there was indeed a case. In 2005, an architecture firm appealed to the Supreme Court seeking $25 million from Trammell Crow Residential Co. for allegedly misusing copyrighted building designs. That company was partly owned by Crow Holdings, and Harlan Crow was its chief executive officer and chair of its board at the time. Thomas did not recuse from the issue, and the court rejected the appeal. It’s possible that Thomas hadn’t read the briefs fully, since the case wasn’t going to be argued, and he had no idea that he had a potential conflict. This isn’t quite the blockbuster the ProPublica reports are, but it does show sloppiness, to put it generously, on Thomas’ part. That assertion that Crow never brought a case to the court was wrong, and it begs the question: What else has Thomas not been truthful about? That’s going to require digging by a different committee: the Judiciary Committee. So far, its chair isn’t showing the same zeal for transparency as Wyden. Sen. Dick Durbin, in fact, hasn’t even asked Thomas about any of this. Instead, he wrote a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, passing the Thomas ethics buck to him. Durbin asked Roberts to come testify before the committee about Thomas’ problems. Why not ask Thomas to come to the Senate? Good question. Good enough that even Chuck Todd thought to ask it on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” “I think I know what would happen to that invitation,” Durbin said. “It would be ignored.” Once again: What in the hell is Dick Durbin doing? Durbin’s response is hardly a vote of confidence in the power of his committee. It’s true that, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s absence from the committee, he doesn’t have the majority votes to issue a subpoena to make Thomas appear or provide documents. But he does have the power to put pressure on Thomas and then ask pointed questions about just what it is Thomas is trying to hide when he refuses to show up. In a divided Congress with a slim majority in the Senate, there are real limits to what the Democrats can do about the Supreme Court. They can’t force reforms legislatively, not with the current Republican-controlled House. They can, however, use the power they do have to press the issue of Supreme Court wrongdoing. That’s what Wyden is doing: reminding the court that there is a watchdog on the scene. And you better believe that’s what Republicans would be doing if they had the gavels. That’s unlikely to intimidate Thomas or to force him to start behaving as someone in his seat of immense power should. But being under the glaring light of public scrutiny might be tempering some of the other radical impulses of the conservatives on the court. Consider their most recent decision against banning abortion, refusing to block the sale of an abortion pill while the issue works its way through lower courts. The Supreme Court of 2021 behaved very differently, allowing Texas’ six-week abortion ban to stand while litigation continued. The court then went on to rule that all states could ban abortion in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case.The backlash from that decision, coupled with ongoing reports of the lack of ethics enforcement at the Supreme Court and the cratering public trust in the institution is making a difference. The Senate needs to be keeping up the pressure, and Wyden is doing that. Durbin needs to take a page from him, issue that invitation to Thomas to testify, and then raise public hell when he doesn’t. It’s literally the least he can do. Markos and Kerry are joined by Aaron Rupar today to discuss what he is seeing in the right-wing media landscape. Rupar is an independent journalist whose Public Notice Substack is a must-read for those who want to know how truly outrageous the conservative movement is. We are addicted to his Twitter account, with its never-ending stream of Republican lunacy all captured on video. 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