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--:-- John Bickley: The Supreme Court has issued several landmark decisions over the last few years, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade and more recently, the end of Chevron deference. Many of these decisions fell along party lines and have raised the ire of progressive activists. Among the biggest targets have been Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both accused of bias and ethical violations.
--:-- John Bickley: Why is the left so focused on undermining the conservative justices? And is the barrage of criticism influencing public opinion? In this episode, we talk with a Supreme Court biographer and former Trump administration attorney about the crusade against the conservative court.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's June 29th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. We'll be right back.
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--:-- John Bickley: Joining us now to discuss the increasingly hostile handling of the conservatives on the Supreme Court is Mark Paoletta, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America and co-editor of Created Equal Clarence Thomas in his own words. Mark, thank you for coming on.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
--:-- John Bickley: So first of all, you wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently saying it's open season on the Supreme Court, and especially Clarence Thomas, who you know very well and you've written a book on. What is driving the attacks and why are they coming now?
--:-- Mark Paoletta: The left is furious that they don't control the Supreme Court anymore. For decades, the left has had a reliable ally in the court to implement their left-wing agenda. You know, think abortion on demand, race-based affirmative action, all of these things that were upheld by the Supreme Court acting as a sort of super legislature. And Justice Thomas, whose confirmation I worked on back in 1991, was the beginning, long ago, of the seeds, the foundation of an originalist court.
--:-- John Bickley: And because he is a black conservative, the left is triggered by Justice Thomas because of their racist views of how a black person should think.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: And so he has been unbowed for 30 years, more than 30 years on the Supreme Court. And all of these recent cases over the past few years with this kind of more originalist court, from the Dobbs decision to the affirmative action decision last year, taken on the administrative state, religious liberties, all of these things are things that Justice Thomas has been writing about for more than 30 years.
--:-- John Bickley: And what you see, John, is that in the past several years, when it's springtime and the court's going to be coming down with blockbuster decisions, sort of dismantling this left-wing body of law, they want to undermine the court to either intimidate the justices so that they change their opinions, trim their sails on some of the opinions, And ultimately, if they're not successful with that, they're laying the groundwork to pack the court if they win in 2024, if they win the White House, if they win the House and Senate.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: I do believe they will pack the Supreme Court, which means they will try and add four new justices to the court to kind of wipe away this conservative majority that's in place now. Justice Thomas has been the person they've been targeting for 30 years. You know the high tech lynching in 1991 the belittling of him as a justice when he went on the court Absolutely racist Absolutely despicable Despite what they tried to do to him It the Thomas court They lost the battle of ideas Thomas has never bowed to them As he always says, I just do my job, my J-O-B, and they hate him for it.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's why they go after him time and time again. And his wife, you know, in terms of just how can we make life difficult? How can we try and undermine Justice Clarence Thomas, who, in my opinion, is the greatest Supreme Court justice and our greatest living American. And it's why it's necessary and important to defend him and for people to write and push back on these lies.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: This fix the court chart that came out a couple of weeks ago is just filled with dishonesty, deception, false information. It is just shocking to me, and I've been doing this for a while, how bad and dishonest this chart is that claims to show how many gifts Justice Thomas received during his time on the court.
--:-- John Bickley: Let's talk more about this group, Fix the Court. First, who are they? And second, what do you make of their claims about his supposed $4.2 million worth of gifts?
--:-- Mark Paoletta: So Fix the Court is a group headed by Gabe Roth. It's funded by lots of left-wing billionaires. They like to position themselves as this non-partisan, good government group, but they're anything but. They are a partisan attack dog to try and take down this court.
--:-- John Bickley: With respect to their claims on Justice Thomas, the first thing is they count as gifts vacations that he took with his friends, longtime friends, that the judicial conference, the body that regulates the judiciary, has already ruled back in 2012 aren't required to be reported on their forms.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Just how idiotic this is, is that Justice Thomas, and again, I'll say some of his friends' names, Harlan Crow is his good, good friend for 30 years. He goes and visits them. The Thomases go and visit the Crows up in their summer home in the Adirondacks. That literally shows up as a $280,950 gift over the years. This is their home. I've been there. Okay. I've been on some of these vacations. It's their home. That's where they go for the summertime. They host their friends and they count that as a gift. That's absolutely idiotic.
--:-- John Bickley: Okay. There's no other justice on this chart whose visits to their friends are counted as gifts. Justice Thomas went on a trip to Indonesia with the crows. Okay. Again, full disclosure, I was on that trip. They count that trip as a $500,000 gift. Okay. This is how they get there. Assuming that he chartered the boat and the plane for himself. That's how they get a $500,000 tab.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Now, the most dishonest thing they do is Justice Thomas would go speak at an event. Okay. He went down to Dallas to speak at a civil rights conference. He went up to New York to speak at a dedication of a statue. He went to some schools to give speeches. Okay. They count those trips, many of them as gifts, and they counted up it like the one to Dallas was a $68,000 trip they put down.
--:-- John Bickley: But there's no other justice who shows up on the chart with similar trips. Okay, so like Stephen Breyer took 230 trips over the period issue, which is 2004 to 2023. And he went on 63 international trips. 17 of those trips were funded by the Pritzker family, big Democrat family. He sat on their something that's called the Pritzker Architecture Prize Board. Okay, what is Supreme Court Justice is doing sitting on this board? I don't know. But he was flown to London and Paris and Copenhagen and Ireland and Spain and Beijing, all around the world. And none of those trips are counted as gifts on this Fix the Court chart.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: So it's this complete disconnect of inconsistent definition of a gift. There is a scholarship that the Horatio Alger Association had named in Justice Thomas' son's name to go to two schools that Justice Thomas had been involved with to kind of honor him. He didn't get any benefit from it. It didn't go to any family members. But they count that fix the court as a $35,000 gift to Justice Thomas, right? When they don't count a million dollar gift that Justice Ginsburg got from the Berguin Institute where she accepted it and then she the one who decided where this money would go to all of these organizations She donated it But the apples and oranges or the inconsistent treatment of what a gift and what not just to me shows the dishonesty of fix the court
--:-- John Bickley: Last one is even football tickets. Justice Thomas went to a football game out in the University of Nebraska. The ticket price on the ticket itself is $65 to sit in the suite. They counted it as, I think, $987. dollars. They come up with these ridiculous figures. They don't apply them to the other justices in the same consistent way. And they piggyback off of a lot of ProPublica's work. And ProPublica has been the organization, another kind of attack dog, left-wing funded group that's been going after Justice Thomas for the past year.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: And one of the things ProPublica had written about is that there was a yacht trip that Justice Thomas went on to the Bahamas with a friend. It's absolutely false. It's a complete lie. It never happened. The owner of the boat wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying this is completely false. But ProPublica kind of quietly updates their piece, but doesn't change the first half of their story, which talks about this Bahamas trip and it shows photos of this boat. Justice Thomas has never even put eyes on this boat. I know this for a fact. And the owner has written to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
--:-- John Bickley: So these are these falsehoods, these lies that the truth never catches up with. And they create this narrative to paint Justice Thomas in the worst possible light, the most dishonest light.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: And how have we seen the legacy media handling these claims? Are they just parroting these claims or are they pushing back and doing their own fact checking?
--:-- John Bickley: They are pushing them on steroids. They're not even looking at these numbers. They're not doing any kind of due diligence on how are you coming up with these numbers? They assumed that Justice Thomas, when he went up to the Adirondacks, flew every year on Crow's plane for the past 20 years. So I think that's a $680,000 gift. Let me just see what I have here. Yeah. 613,323. Again, this is based on a calculation that he's chartered the plane himself and he goes up there every year.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Well, on the trips to the Adirondacks, the Thomases have drove 95% of the time in their, own vehicle. So it's a complete lie in terms of this calculation. Another one was $997,000 for flights out to California that they tagged for Justice Thomas. Again, some of these trips where he's traveled, he's going to give a speech. He's going to participate in a conference or something like that. Every other justice who does that, they don't count that as a gift. But with Justice Thomas, they do. That's the fundamental dishonesty with this chart and this representation.
--:-- John Bickley: The media has been awful on it. It's been very frustrating. There was a ethics complaint filed in 2011 by 20 members of Congress, Democrat members of Congress, of course, led by Louise Slaughter, saying that Justice Thomas was violating the law, the Ethics and Government Act law, by not disclosing his trips with Harlan Crow. This was back in 2011. There had been a New York Times report about how Justice Thomas was traveling with his friend Harlan Crow. The judicial conference came out with a letter in 2012 that they sent to Congress that said, we've looked at this. Justice Thomas has not failed to put down anything he's required to put down on his forms.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: So this was dealt with in 2012. When ProPublica first did their initial attack on Justice Thomas last year, they never mentioned that letter. They kind of memory hold it, which is to me dishonest or incredibly sloppy. I called them out on it over the year, even again last week when they wrote on Justice Thomas because there was a similar tax on it. They failed to mention this 2012 letter, which, in my view, addresses this issue with respect to, again, these are your friends. These are not strangers that you're traveling with or visiting with.
--:-- John Bickley: Last thing here on this point, I contrast that with Joe Biden as vice president and president has literally gone to donors, billion donors and said, I want to use your house for a vacation. And they take their home over for the week or whatever the time period is. They have the whole Biden clan come down. David Rubenstein's house up in Nantucket, a $33 million home, I think. Homes down in Kiowa Island and I think down in St. Croix. Biden has never disclosed these vacations, these trips, these stays at these, palatial mansions when the guest isn even there and they not even friends right
--:-- Mark Paoletta: And the only folks who have written on that is the New York Post Stephen Nelson who done a great job on it But there you have Joe Biden taking advantage of donors staying at homes It's not personal hospitality. It's not visiting friends. It's just taking over somebody's home to have a vacation there. And the Democrats, the media are absolutely radio silent on it. I've pushed it out there. I've written about it and put it up on X and all that stuff. But that's the double standard.
--:-- John Bickley: Justice Jackson got after Justice Thomas for not disclosing things. Justice Jackson, for 10 years, she failed to disclose her husband's consulting income on her forms. I pointed that out. It clearly seems to be wrong. CRA, the group I'm with, Center for Renewing America, filed a complaint on her not disclosing this information. And she still hasn't corrected her forms. It's like in a bubble that nobody hears because they don't want to hear, right? They just want to attack this court and conservative justices.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Do you believe these attacks are actually working? We've seen polls that show Americans have lost faith in major institutions that includes the Supreme Court. What are your thoughts about the impact of these attacks?
--:-- John Bickley: Great question. I do think the attacks on the court are having an impact. I always point out, John, that I think the court's around 35, 37% approval. That is low historically. But Congress is down in about 13%. It doesn't rise above 18% with a disapproval rate of like 78%. So I've literally testified before Congress to the Democrat members saying, and they had introduced this as part of their opening statements, that the court has this low approval rating and something must be done. It's broken. And I'm like, your approval rating's at 18%. You know, it's a joke that Congress is using the low approval ratings as a reason to say that something must be done with the court. Nothing is wrong with the court.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: The other thing is, of course, the Supreme Court's not supposed to be sort of a popular organization or institution. It's supposed to protect our rights and interpret and apply the Constitution come what may. So, you know, some opinions are going to be controversial, You know, in the way the left will play it, it will push their approval ratings down. This part about the ethics and all that, which I believe is completely made up and is meant to drive it down so that they can try and pack the court if they win in 24.
--:-- John Bickley: So it is having an effect. It's dangerous. It's terrible. I go back to John March of 2020 when Chuck Schumer, who's the Democrat leader in the Senate, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and literally threatened by name two Supreme Court justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, that they better vote a certain way on an abortion case or they will release the whirlwind, as he said, and you won't know what hit you.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: And I think there's a direct through line from that threat, and it was a threat, and in my view, a physical violence threat, to the assassination attempt of Justice Kavanaugh around the Dobbs time, which was another abortion case. So the left has wanted to tarnish and muddy and slime up the justices and the court so that people don't have faith in it. And then they want to stir them up to actually want to go protest in front of their house in a dangerous way, want to threaten these justices.
--:-- John Bickley: The justices now, I've known the justices, Justice Thomas certainly for more than 30 years. I know a number of other ones, too. And they're all under 24-hour protection now. This is unprecedented, right? And this was never the case a few years ago. They are now under 24-hour protection. They have actionable death threats. And I blame this all on the Democrats in Congress, the left-wing groups.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: The Justice Department has not enforced a law that makes it a crime to protest in front of a justice's house for purposes of intimidation. It's all very much out of hand and dangerous. And it's all because they don't like what the Supreme Court is doing. And it's the last sort of independent entity that's protecting our liberties, you know, protecting our constitutional rights.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's why I've been out there a lot trying to defend the court against these lies and these misrepresentations and these dishonest attacks.
--:-- Mark Paoletta: Well, Mark, thank you so much for talking with us.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks, John. I appreciate it.
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--:-- John Bickley: That was Mark Paoletta, Senior Fellow at the Center for Renewing America, and this has been a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Next week. Next week.
