condemn. the proud boys stand back and stand by. the proud boys celebrated that shout-out from then president trump during a debate in 2020. months later, members of that group would be heavily involved in the violence on january 6th. and now they are facing serious prison time for their actions. much more on yesterday s guilty verdicts in just a moment. meanwhile, in new york jurors in donald trump s civil rape trial heard more of his video deposition yesterday while taking through some of that testimony, and also ahead, more ethics issues for supreme court justice clarence thomas. this doesn t sound it s not good. it keeps on coming, and i m not sure what the consequence is here but it looks really bad. there is new reporting that clarence thomas wife was paid nearly $80,000 by a nonprofit that had a case before the high court. and her payments to her would come with instructions from leonard leo not to tell anybody she s getting the money. seems pr
rule-abiding, and whether it s perceived that way. so when we keep talking about what the rules require, we ought to also ask ourselves, what is the perception? and you mentioned earlier that chief justice roberts, who i often disagree with but admire is an institutionalist. if you re really truly an institutionalist you would care deeply about the perception of the institution. so whatever the rules actually require, the perception is deeply damaged right now, and that s a problem for all of us. and, mika, the supreme court s perception. uh-huh. on, based on polling, lower now than any time. just take it to clarence thomas. just look at this, and i know that the technicalities here, maybe didn t understand how to write a disclosure document but does extreme details on cases this makes no sense. okay? flies in the face of logic
known for years or suspected that supreme court justices were taking trips that weren t disclosed. actually an effort that i m aware of on senate judiciary committee trying to track that going to the martials trying to get records but were unsuccessful. they couldn t penetrate the veil of secrecy and now good journalists have done that and it s important that we re learning this. and by the way, we re going to hear b.s. from the usual defenders of clarence thomas. oh, they re just picking op him, because he s a conservative and they hate black conservatives. this challenges the, blah, blah all of this other nonsense. if we were reporting on the story this morning that chuck schumer s wife got paid you know, tens of thousands of dollars and that there had been a direction from the biggest lobbyists in the democratic party to keep the payments quiet, we d be saying the same thing here today, and that is a
her husband are receiving gifts and payments from some of the movie influential on the right who have business in front of the supreme court. right. it s appalling, frankly. it is appalling. if you look at, you know, the bowl that justice thomas has in deciding some of these cases. the role. look at the post story this morning about the leonard lee other money, the case in front of justice thomas following that payoff, essentially, was voting rights. voting rights act case. these are this influence and this attempt to, to hide influence is, is having a, has a massive and real-life impact on things that matter to people. we re talking about your, protecting your right to vote. we re talking about somebody who sits on the court and makes a decision about whether people who have historically been disenfranchised in this country have access to the ballot box. don t lose sight of that, too. the underlying case we re
throughout the show this morning, but there s still so much to get to. still ahead on morning joe, with the supreme court already facing scrutiny for ethics issues, we are following new reporting this morning about personal payments made to justice clarence thomas wife ginni thomas. plus a look how former president trump is returning to themes of his successful 2016 bid and stepping away from the word republican. also ahead, much more on the historic coronation of king charles iii tomorrow in britain. we ll be joined by british ambassador of the united states karen pierce and london mayor sadiq khan and a programming note tonight at 10:00, sitting down with president joe biden for an exclusive interview. first since announcing his re-election bid. she ll ask him about the campaign, the current debt ceiling crisis and more.