All posts tagged: political purposes

Clarence Thomas’s Good Behavior Project

Clarence Thomas’s Good Behavior Project

In addition to going on expensive vacations with wealthy right-wing donors who have interests before the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas has, ProPublica reported last week, secretly participated in fundraising efforts for organizations bankrolled by the Koch network, the right-wing advocacy organization founded by the billionaire brothers Charles and the late David Koch. Thomas was “brought in to speak,” staffers told ProPublica, “in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.” Although the failure to disclose the trip to Palm Springs, California, on the Kochs’ dime might have violated federal law, it’s hardly the only example of Thomas hiding financial relationships with wealthy conservatives. Harlan Crow, the right-wing billionaire who frequently brings Thomas on luxury vacations—although by no means the only right-wing billionaire who has done so—also owns the land Thomas’s mother currently lives on, and has paid private-school tuition for Thomas’s nephew, whom Thomas is raising. Thomas is not the sole right-wing justice benefiting from his cozy relationships with affluent ideologues; Justice Samuel Alito has also enjoyed the generosity of such …

The Real Weaponization of the DOJ

The Real Weaponization of the DOJ

In January, one of the first acts of the new Republican House majority was to establish a special subcommittee devoted to rooting out the ways the FBI and other federal bodies have supposedly been used as tools of political persecution. “We have a duty to get into these agencies and look at how they have been weaponized to go against the very people they’re supposed to represent,” said Representative Jim Jordan, the Trump ally who chairs the body. Even less Trumpy members, like the establishment GOP stalwart Tom Cole, agreed: “It is undeniable that in recent years, the executive branch of the federal government has abused its authority and violated the civil liberties of American citizens often for political purposes.” Since then, the subcommittee has held a string of meetings and pursued a variety of half-baked ideas, many of them related to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. What it hasn’t done is deliver any clear and convincing proof of government malfeasance, and certainly nothing on the caliber of the 1970s Church Committee, which Republicans have cited …