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jane sullivan roberts
Watchdog Sends Mobile Billboard to Roberts' Country Club, Demanding: 'Clean Up Court'
"It's never a bad day to remind SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts of the rampant corruption and scandals that plague his Court," said Accountable.US.
Apr 29, 2023
As the latest polling showed a majority of Americans believe U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should step down from his lifetime appointment, government watchdog Accountable.US deployed several trucks to Capitol Hill Saturday to display mobile billboards plastered with Thomas' and other right-wing justices' images and recent headlines regarding allegations of ethics violations.
An image of Thomas was shown alongside a headline reading, "America's Supreme Court Faces a Legitimacy Crisis," while Chief Justice John Roberts was displayed with the message: "Justice Roberts: Clean Up Your Court."
"It's never a bad day to remind SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts of the rampant corruption and scandals that plague his Court," said the group, which also sent a mobile billboard to Roberts' country club.
\u201cIt\u2019s never a bad day to remind SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts of the rampant corruption and scandals that plague his Court\u2026\n\n\u2026and we went to some of his fave spots (hello country club) to make sure he got the message.\u201d— Accountable.US (@Accountable.US) 1682792645
The campaign took place a day after progressive think tank Data for Progress published survey results showing that 53% of respondents believed Thomas should resign following revelations that he's financially benefited for years from trips and other gifts given to him by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, as well as from a property sale to Crow.
Seventy percent of people told Data for Progress the previously undisclosed property sale was unethical and 64% said the same about his vacations and gifts.
Thomas was the first right-wing judge in recent weeks to come under scrutiny for his failure to disclose his financial ties—a violation of federal law, according to legal experts.
Earlier this week Politico reported that Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a property to a law firm CEO days after being confirmed to the court—but didn't disclose the name of the buyer on federal forms. The CEO's firm has been involved in nearly two dozen cases that have gone before the court since Gorsuch was appointed.
On Friday, whistleblower documents sparked renewed interest in the earnings of Roberts' wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, who made $10.3 million in commissions from a legal recruiting firm she worked at between 2007 and 2014, placing lawyers at firms—including at least one that argued a case before the high court. Roberts did not specify that his wife had earned that money in commissions from law firms on his federal disclosure forms.
"In addition to Clarence Thomas and his issues, we have Justice Gorsuch and his issues, and we've got the chief justice's wife and her issues," said U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) on Saturday at a stop for the Just Majority campaign, a nationwide tour organized by 30 progressive groups to demand accountability on the high court. "It tells you that unaccountability leads to corruption. The American people need and deserve a fair and ethical Supreme Court."
Watson Coleman also called for an expansion of the court, which has been endorsed by numerous progressives in Congress and legal advocacy groups.
The Supreme Court is not bound by a code of ethics, as other federal courts are. Forty-eight percent of respondents told Data for Progress that they supported binding rules, including 67% of Democrats.
"These revelations have renewed pressure on the court to follow an explicit code of conduct," said the think tank. "While all nine justices have so far been resistant to the idea, voters clearly support ensuring that the Supreme Court justices are held to an ethical standard, and also support consequences for justices who fail to do so."
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John Roberts' Wife Made Millions From Elite Law Firms, Major Companies: Whistleblower Docs
"It almost makes you wonder whether the Supreme Court of the United States is suffering a massive, systemic ethics crisis," said one critic.
Apr 28, 2023
A whistleblower from the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa says Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, was paid $10.3 million in commissions over seven years from her job as a headhunter at the company, where she placed attorneys with law firms—including at least one that argued a case before the Supreme Court after the placement was made.
Sullivan Roberts was paid the money between 2007 and 2014, having taken a job with the company two years after her husband was confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a report out Friday from Business Insider.
The whistleblower, Kendal Price, said in a sworn affidavit in December that he believed "at least some of [Roberts'] remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse's position."
Price's complaint was reported on earlier this year by Politico and The New York Times, and Insider published new documents regarding the case.
"When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong," Price, who worked alongside Sullivan Roberts from 2011-2013 at Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Business Insider. "During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane's clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It's natural that they'd do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive."
Insider noted that a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told The New York Times in a prior statement that all nine of the court justices are "attentive to ethical constraints" and obey federal financial disclosure laws.
However, Price's whistleblower complaint was released weeks after ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas financially benefited for years from gifts from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, and sold property to him—none of which was previously disclosed to the government as is required by law.
Earlier this week, Politico revealed that days after his confirmation, Justice Neil Gorsuch sold his share of a property to the CEO of a major law firm—and disclosed the sale, but not the buyer.
Sullivan Roberts' $10.3 million commission at her legal recruiting firm was listed as "salary" on Roberts' financial disclosure forms.
"The balance of Roberts' income did not come at a steady rate from a single employer, as 'salary' suggests," reported Insider. "It was paid by the deal and based on a sizable cut of her clients' salaries—a compensation model which varies from year to year depending on her ability to capitalize on her network. The ultimate sources of her income were the firms hiring Major, Lindsey & Africa-backed candidates. Their identities and the specific amounts that they paid Roberts for her services remain unknown."
Price called the justice's characterization of his wife's commissions "misleading."
"Characterizing Mrs. Roberts' commissions as 'salary' is not merely factually incorrect; it is incorrect as a matter of law," Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University, wrote in a memo supporting Price's claims. "The legal distinction between these terms is clear, undisputed, and legally material. If the chief justice's inaccurate financial disclosures were inadvertent, presumably he should file corrected and amended disclosures."
Considering the recent reports on Gorsuch and Thomas, court observers suggested the latest news is more evidence that the Supreme Court is "suffering a massive, systemic ethics crisis."
\u201cMost of Jane Roberts' business comes through referrals: "Successful people have successful friends."\n\nIt almost makes you wonder whether the Supreme Court of the United States is suffering a massive, systemic ethics crisis. https://t.co/7cH3lBzlnO\u201d— Jonathan Guyer (@Jonathan Guyer) 1682707183
"What's the public confidence in a system," asked Joshua Dratel, an attorney for Price, "when the firms which are appearing before the court are making decisions that are to the financial benefit of the chief justice?"
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The Corruption of the Right-Wing Supreme Court
We may be subject to the court's authority and bound by its rulings, but we can and must call out the court’s hypocrisy and its betrayal of democracy.
Feb 11, 2023
Under the guise of the regressive legal theory of “originalism,” the United States Supreme Court Republican-appointed majority has issued a series of ultra-right rulings on such vital issues as voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, and campaign finance. The end goal appears to be nothing less than the dismantling of the last vestiges of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement.
But in addition to being reactionary, is the court also guilty of corruption? The answer depends on how we define and think of corruption.
In the strictest legal sense, the justices appear to be in the clear. Under federal law, “public corruption” is defined as “a breach of the public’s trust by government officials who use their public office to obtain personal gain,” asking for or receiving anything of value in exchange for an official act. In a 2016 decision reversing the bribery conviction of former Virginia GOP Governor Bob McDonnell, the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of public corruption to require strict proof of a “quid pro quo”—a swap of money or another benefit in return for a specific governmental favor.
But from a larger moral and political perspective, the court’s Republican majority is far from innocent. We expect all federal judges—and particularly those at the top of the judicial pyramid—not only to be law-abiding but to be free of political bias and conflicts of interest. We expect them to honor the enormous faith we have placed in them to use their lifetime appointments to be forthright stewards of justice and democracy.
That faith has been breached time and again.
Ethical Cannon 2A of The Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires those who don the robe to “respect and comply with the law,” and “to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Cannon 2B further advises that a “judge should not allow family, social, political, financial, or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment.”
There also is federal statute, found at Title 28, section 455 of the United States Code, that requires judges to disqualify themselves when they have a personal bias or prejudice toward a party, or when the judge or their spouse has a financial interest in a proceeding, or they or their spouses have “any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome” of a proceeding before them.
The problem is that the Code of Conduct does not apply to the Supreme Court. And there is no mechanism for enforcing the disqualification criteria against a sitting justice. The Supreme Court stands alone as the only tribunal in the nation without any ethical accountability beyond impeachment, which for all practical purposes is an ineffective remedy. (Only one Justice in our entire history has been impeached—Samuel Chase in 1804—and he was acquitted by the Senate.)
The most obvious offender is Clarence Thomas, who has gotten away with flagrant misconduct as a result of this lack of accountability. Under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, all high-ranking federal officials are required to file yearly financial disclosure statements for themselves and their spouses to safeguard against conflicts of interest. But for many years, Thomas failed to report his wife Ginni's earnings on the mandatory annual financial disclosure forms that he signed under penalty of perjury, indicating that his spouse had no non-investment income. In fact, she was steadily employed in high-level jobs as a policy analyst and an outspoken conservative activist.
According to Common Cause, Ginni—who is also a lawyer—received more than $686,000 between 2003 and 2007 working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, claiming incredulously that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, Thomas amended his financial disclosures, which can now be examined on the OpenSecrets.org website.
Thomas again generated headlines when he refused to recuse himself in cases involving the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, despite Ginni’s prominent role as an organizer of the “stop the steal” campaign.
Thomas is not the only justice with a spouse whose work has raised conflict-of-interest questions. According to The New York Times, Chief Justice Roberts’ wife Jane has made millions in her career as a recruiter for high-profile law firms, some of which litigate cases before the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice, however, has never recused himself from a matter involving his wife’s recruits and has never disclosed her client list on his annual financial reports.
Additional potential conflicts of interest have surfaced around donations made to the Supreme Court Historical Society, a non-profit charity founded in 1974 to promote and celebrate the court’s legacy. Over the past two decades, the society reportedly raised more than $23 million from corporations, law firms, and other groups. The donors, in turn, receive special access to the Justices, who regularly attend the society’s annual black-tie dinner as well as lectures and other functions the society sponsors.
Among those who have attended society events and helped raise donations on its behalf is the Reverend Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister and anti-abortion crusader. In a June 2022 letter to Chief Justice Roberts and in later interviews with The New York Times, Schenck claimed he was told in advance of the court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which held that the owners of for-profit corporations may lawfully refuse to fund health insurance coverage for employees for contraception on religious grounds. The source of the leak, Schenck alleged, was Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Hobby Lobby majority opinion.
Alito also has been at the center of the scandalous leak last May of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which Alito wrote, overruling Roe v. Wade.
After an eight-month internal investigation, the court announced in January that it has been unable to determine the source of the leak. Rightwing zealots like Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, have suggested that a clerk for one of the court’s liberal justices is the likely culprit. Pundits on the left, such as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, have argued that Alito more likely was the source, seeking to lock in the votes of the Justices Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined his opinion.
Additional potential conflicts of interest have surfaced around donations made to the Supreme Court Historical Society, a non-profit charity founded in 1974 to promote and celebrate the court’s legacy.
Alito, for his part, has denied all wrongdoing in connection with both the Hobby Lobby and Dobbs leaks. However, neither Alito nor any of the other members of the court were questioned under oath as part of the Dobbs probe.
Any discussion of Supreme Court corruption would be incomplete without mentioning the serious defects that attend the confirmation process for high-court nominees. The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW) has reported that rightwing dark money groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network raised staggering sums to support the nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett in an effort to push the court hard to the right. The dark money forces won, unbeknownst to the general public.
And then there are the Senate confirmation hearings, which are also critically flawed. The nominees testify under oath, but pay no price for making false, misleading, and possibly perjurious statements. Every member of the five-vote Dobbs majority arguably lied about their true views on the precedential value of Roe and the constitutional right to abortion during their confirmation hearings—Thomas in 1991, Alito in 2005, Gorsuch in 2017, Kavanaugh in 2018, and Barrett in 2020.
All six Republicans on the court are also current or former members of the Federalist Society, yet another fact that calls their impartiality into question.
Unfortunately, there is little that can be done in the near term to rein in corruption at the Supreme Court. Even a modest bill introduced by Senate Democrats to pass an ethics code for the court has little prospect of getting through the MAGA-dominated House of Representatives.
But we are not powerless. We may be subject to the court’s authority and bound by its rulings, but we can and must call out the court’s hypocrisy and its betrayal of democracy at every possible turn.
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