trying to be a part of this particular rarefied air, but in and of itself, the fact that he has access to bend ears, and vice versa, that these people have the ability to bend his ear, that is truly the issue here. do you think that it comes to the point where we have talked about reforms, talked about scotus, talked about making it better, tighter, and more ethical. do you think that s exactly why this kind of piece the written for the it s about transparency and disclosure, and that is kind of at the root of what we are doing as journalists. this is a case where one of the big takeaways is looking at the access that justice thomas gave this organization. not just to the supreme court, but to the courtroom itself to hold their annual inauguration of these numbers, this is very solemn ceremony. that s at the heart of this. there is a lot that goes into this, and a lot to consider, to think about those different ramifications and disclosures, and transparency around it.
crimes being committed. when you spoke to people about his threats to prosecute biden and his family, what did they tell you? look. there is a definite reservoir of skepticism among republicans, conservatives, people that staffed the last justice department about the handling of the hunter biden prosecution. i don t totally downplay that. however, i don t think that people the people from the first term who adopt this framework with that trump espousing at all. they don t think that there is this invariable tune track system of justice that one track is about pursuing him, the other track is about just letting everybody off. for the most part, people didn t buy this theory of the case, but found it worrisome. it s been one thing for people like you or me to be concerned about a scenario like this. we are concerned in the first administration, we were concerned about a potential second administration, but he s not telling us this very explicitly that this is what he intends to do. t
court justice supreme court justice counties thomas is no stranger to scandal. in the midst of the january 6th committee s investigation, we learned that his wife exchanged dozens of text messages with trump s new chief of staff in her attempts to overturn the 2020 election. despite the obvious conflict of interest, clears tomas refused to refuse himself from cases related to the election or january 6th. this, year pro republica broke a series of reports exposing a undisclosed relationship that the justice maintained with a billionaire republican donor named harlan crow. quote tug thomas on several all expensive paid luxurious look vacations where hundreds of thousands of dollars. he paid for his grandnephews private school tuition as well, and even purchased the justices mothers home. justice thomas did not disclose any of those lavish gifts. the washington post recently reported that federalist society chairman leonard leo directed tens of thousands of dollars of business to the te
nothing more than just a club or organization membership? it is what s disclosed and not disclosed. that s been a big theme in the ethics discussion around the supreme court and one of the reasons that this caught our eye, these types of relationships, the business relationships, the range of industries that come into play here. it comes down to, in some ways, a disclosure question. and it s a transparency issue. what actually is disclosed. in a lot of these cases, many of the cases that we noted, it was not disclosed. you report the justice thomas received a benefits quote from a broader cohort of wealthy and powerful friends. they have included major donors to conservative causes with broad policy and political interests, and much at stake for supreme court decisions, even if they were not directly involved in the cases. is there any way, steve, to be able to quantify the types of benefits the clarence thomas