Via Above The Law, Bloomberg News (paywalled) reports that the federal judiciary was already aware that Clarence Thomas was less than stringent about disclosure back in 2012. Many of us remember this, but what you may not have known is that his failure to report his wife’s income was supposed to be referred to the U.S. attorney general. (Spoiler: It was not reported.)
In 2011, Thomas had come under scrutiny for failing to report years of income earned by his wife, Ginni Thomas, a conservative political consultant and activist. [US District Judge Mark] Wolf repeatedly expressed concern that the Judicial Conference of the United States, the judiciary’s policymaking body, was being kept in the dark and shut out from potentially doing its own review of the complaints, according to letters, internal reports, and other materials reviewed by Bloomberg News in addition to two people familiar with the matter.
Instead, the financial disclosure committee of the Conference decided that it was not “willful” and didn’t report anything about their inquiry to the rest of the Conference. Judge Wolf disagreed, describing the allegations as a “series of material omissions.” The thing is, Judge Wolf wasn’t even gunning for Thomas — he’s a straight-laced Reagan-appointee himself — he’s just a guy who appreciates ethics trapped in a judiciary that doesn’t seem to care.
Wolf’s letters that year don’t indicate that he had an opinion about whether or not Thomas committed misconduct. The root of his concern, he explained, was that federal law required the Judicial Conference to refer a case to the US attorney general for investigation if it had “reasonable cause” to believe a violation had taken place. He questioned whether the body could fulfill that responsibility if it wasn’t aware of complaints at all.
Well now! Above The Law asks:
What’s the Judicial Conference poised to do this time? It can’t rightly blow the recent allegations off for lack of willfulness given the record. Does the current Conference membership possess the requisite backbone to send a referral to Merrick Garland?
Given the state of the federal judiciary, the answer is probably no.
