our main story tonight concerns the courts the dignified palaces of Justice which during covid brought us spectacular moments like this Mr ponton I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings it is and I don't know how to remove it I've got my assistant here she's trying to but uh I'm prepared to go forward with it that's I'm here live it's not I'm not not a cat perfect you know a hearing's off to a shaky start when a lawyer has to clarify that he is and I quote not a cat and I did not want him to uncat himself there I wanted that man to spend the rest of the hearing as a photorealistic kitten looking like he just witnessed a double homicide specifically we're going to talk about the Supreme Court which is set to have a Monumental year not only will it take on cases concerning the availability of myth of prisone and whether Trump's immune from prosecution for his role in January 6th it's also considering a case centering on something called Chevron Defence which I know sounds like the title of a spy novel that you'd burn through in an airport but it's a vitally important legal president that says that when there is ambiguity in the letter of a law Court should defer to Regulatory Agencies expertise very basically do you like it when the EPA regulates pollution or the FDA regulates drugs much of their ability to do that comes from Chevron Defence and if the court guts it it'll be much easier for private Industries to block government regulations so this is going to be a huge year for a court that has seldom been more powerful and yet respect for it has seldom been lower the Court's public approval rating has dropped to a 50-year low with just 18% expressing great confidence it's true and it's hard to think of anything people have less confidence in right now aside from maybe the window seats in Boeing planes and there are understandable reasons for that from the unpopular decision overturning roie Wade to the fact that onethird of the Court was appointed sometimes under dubia circumstances by a man who never won the popular vote but the past year has also introduced to a whole new reason to question the Court's Integrity thanks to a steady drum beat of stories like these Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is facing new allegations he accepted luxurious vacations and gifts from wealthy individuals and didn't properly disclose them political reported Justice Neil Gorsuch sold property he owned to the head of a Major law firm Justice Samuel Alo defended himself after he didn't report a luxury trip to Alaska and a private jet flight the report details that in July of that year they stayed at the king salmon Lodge and were served multi-course meals of Alaskan king crab legs or Kobe filet they also enjoyed wine that cost $11,000 a bottle now Alito Den he did anything wrong there and specifically said if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000 which I hope is true for multiple reasons namely that wine should never cost $1,000 because wine is not that good a drink I'm serious think about the words people use to describe good wine complex that's just a fancy word for confusing earthy that's literally dirt flavor and smooth your best compliment is that it didn't fight you on the way down it's a bad drink but the cost of the wine which again should be zero isn't the point here the fact is stories like those have further undermined public trust in the court which is a big problem because it's an institution that relies on respect it can't enforce its own rulings and without public Buy in it could theoretically be ignored chief justice Roberts himself recently wrote public trust is essential not incidental to our function so these scandals are a huge issue for it and given that tonight we thought we'd look at how deep this Court's problems go and a possible solution that might go one nth of the way towards helping things get better and and let's start with a striking fact cuz when it comes to what ethical rules the court is required to follow there basically aren't any Congress can impeach a Justice in extreme scenarios but short of that the court essentially regulates itself and that has happened in the past in the 60s Justice Abe forus was involved in a number of scandals including taking money to advise a businessman who wound up having a case before the court but despite the fact that getting paid for outside work was legal and that F has both returned the money and recused himself from the case the mere appearance of impropriety caused lawmakers of both parties to call for his resignation and he stepped down saying that he was doing so for the good of the court and just a few weeks later the US judicial conference unveiled a new ethics policy for federal judges with just one tiny exception see if you can spot it the United States judicial judicial conference today issued a code of ethics which forbids all federal judges except Supreme Court Justices from accepting fees gifts or compensation of any kind for offbench activities yeah the Supreme Court Justices were exempt so that new rule solved every problem except for the one they just had and there have been multiple tweaks of the code of ethics over the years with the one constant being that the Supreme Court Justices are not covered by it and even laws that apply to them are basically unenforceable the argument is that because they are the highest court in the land there is no one they can answer to now over the years the justices have noted that they voluntarily follow certain rules for instance they're required to report any gifts worth more than $480 that is how we learned about Ruth b Ginsburg receiving a $4,500 Opera costume katangi Brown Jackson receiving a floral arrangement from Oprah worth $1,200 and Antony Scalia receiving two firearms and $950 worth of dictionaries which is slightly weirdly phrased because $950 worth of dictionaries could either mean one very luxurious dictionary or 120 regular ones but while those gifts were disclosed others haven't been Scalia had a habit of not disclosing trips that other people paid for and actually died while staying for free at The Hunting Lodge of a business executive whose company had recently had a case before the court and I bet that executive was very glad that he got the ruling before that very fun sounding visit and as you already seen some justices have run with that precedent remember alito's fishing trip when it came to light he said that he didn't think the rules required disclosing it and attempted to justify the free private jet flight with a laughable argument Alo explaining that on that private jet flight he was in what would otherwise have been an unoccupied seat oh come on Alito is considered one of the sharpest conservative legal minds and that's the best he's got of course if you hadn't been in the seat it would have been empty Samuel that's not so much a defense of your behavior as it is an explanation of how seats work also it's a private jet all the seats are otherwise unoccupied they don't overbooked them like it's the 505 Spirit Airlines flight from Myrtle Beach to Vegas and that feels ethically dicey even before you learn that one of his host on that trip was a hedge fund manager whose companies have since had 10 cases before the court and that's not a one-off for years Neil Gorsuch had been trying unsuccessfully to sell a 40 acre piece of property that he co-owned in Colorado but coincidentally just nine days after he was confirmed he managed to sell it and while he did disclose that sale he left the identity of the purchase at blank on the form which isn't great cuz it turned out to be the chief executive of one of the nation's biggest law firms which has since been involved in at least 22 Supreme Court cases and if you wonder what that weird sound is right now I'm pretty sure it's the ghost of Abe forus going are you kidding me are you kidding me but the biggest offender on the current court is unquestionably Clarence Thomas if you are unfamiliar with his work I truly Envy you but very quickly he's an extreme originalist known for adopting hard-right positions years before other justices come around to them from overturning gun laws to undermining the Voting Rights Act he's also questioned whether poor people have a right to a lawyer saying the Constitution only guarantees you the right to hire a lawyer not to have one provided for you and he once said that black civil rights leaders moan and moan whine and whine and sure why can't the people fighting for basic equality just have the chill good time Vibes that we all ass at with Clarence Thomas he's so fun to be around ask almost any woman who's ever worked for him for years there have been stories about Thomas accepting lavish gifts but things escalated recently with a series of pro public investigations revealing Thomas's relationship with these four conservative billionaires the report says the four Moguls collectively treated Thomas to 38 destination vacations 26 private jet flights plus an additional eight by hel helicopter a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica and one standing invitation to an Uber exclusive Golf Club the dollar value likely in the millions just one of those vacations was a 9-day Indonesian super yacht voyage that if he paid for it himself could have exceeded over half a million dollar and the way Pro public tracked down some of those trips is pretty great because the host of that Indonesian vacation and multiple others was Haron Crow a billionaire who's given Millions to efforts to move the law and the Judiciary to the right Crow likeed to give out commemorative polo shirts for the trips that he took people on so propublica just started looking at the shirts Thomas was wearing in photos which helped them uncover some of these trips look journalism is a crapshoot sometimes you spend weeks hunting down leads painstakingly building a timeline other times you target posts a photo of himself on Facebook wearing a t-shirt that says secret Undeclared R yacht vacation 2003 and gives the whole game away those reporters also track down photos and cards that Thomas's wife jinny sent a friends to commemorate their trips with fun captions like five couples ready for river rafting the soals took four lucky couples to the first Nebraska football misspelled game of the season and this photo of a trump Administration attorney and his wife captured Mark Andric Peta sang a special tribute to Clarence they created and every single one of those photos looks like it was on the mood board for get out but wait wait cuz I'm still not done they also found this photorealistic painting that Harland Crow commissioned of one of those vacations featuring him Thomas Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist society and a statue of a Native American man seemingly praying for lightning to strike this exact spot but if you're thinking that that is the worst piece of art that Haren Crow owns you are mistaken published Reports say Dallas Tycoon Harland Crow's controversial collection includes Hitler's notorious autobiography mine comp signed by Hitler oil paintings by Hitler and linen napkins embroidered with the Nazi swastika The Collection is housed at Crow's mansion in Dallas I can't get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia said one guest who saw the Nazi Treasure Trove you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room yeah I bet you do because that is a bit of a red flag specifically this red flag now Pro says is controversial artifacts a part of a collection meant to preserve a part of our history and to understand how we all got here and I'm guessing his guests ask that exact same question when they see his signed copy of Mind camp for the first time how the did I get here though bad news for Haren about at least one of his Hitler paintings an expert has since deemed it definitely not authentic which I guess he probably should have seen coming as it was signed a Hitler and not the Hitler Crow has also repeatedly flown Thomas out on his jet for trips to the Bohemian Grove the California retreat for the rich and Powerful where he and the Coke brothers apparently developed a bond here is Thomas with one of them and Ken Burns for some reason Thomas has also incidentally attended Coke donut events at least twice serving as a fundraising draw for an organization that regularly brings cases before the court now his excuse for not reporting any of this was that he sought guidance from my colleagues and others and was advised that this sort of personal Hospitality from close friends was not reportable and while it is true the judicial guidelines have an exception for personal Hospitality experts will point out that means dinner at someone's house not a 9-day all expenses paid yacht trip a pretty good rule of thumb is if it could be a prize on the prices right it's not personal hospitality and Thomas has received more than just Hospitality anyway in 2014 one of harand Crow's companies bought a string of properties in Savannah including Thomas's childhood home where his mother still lives Crow also reportedly paid for two years of private school for Thomas's Grand nephew who apparently Thomas has raised as a son and which based on the tuition rates at the time amounted to roughly $100,000 neither of those were disclosed at the time either and it gets pretty hard to square the lavish vacations the real estate the tuition with Thomas's insistence that he's an iconic clastic voice for the little guy in appearances like this one from two years ago where he thanked the people who'd shown up to support him during his 1991 confirmation hearing the regular people showed up and it was always us against the elites and that's the way it has been for the last 40 plus years I've been in public life us against the elites oh I get it so the 38 destination vacations were just part of your US versus the elites plot right lull them into a false sense of security then presumably on the 39th vacation Viv revolu I love it what a plan but but that sounds like horeshit even before you see that this is how that talk started I'm sure you and all of us want to join uh Haren uh thank Harlen Crow and his family for making this wonderful facility available to I know Haron hates that I know so I knew we had that's why I wouldn't say it I knew we had to do it I like to keep that friendship oh I bet you would I'm sure friendship is definitely the thing that you like the most about knowing har and Crow not the laish yacht trips or the private jet flights it's the simple human companionship of an aging Nazi napkin collector perhaps the item that perfectly sums up the distance between Thomas's regular guy persona and his high-end tastes is his motor home it is his prize possession he even showed it off during his 60 Minutes interview one of his passions is this 40ft long motor home that he and his wife used to explore the United States in their downtime you find this relaxing oh yeah it's away from the sort of the meanness that you see in in Washington you get here with just the regular folks and it's so pleasant I can see that you know people in Washington can be so mean can't they I've heard some even make decisions in Landmark cord cases that loosen gun regulations limited affirmative action and strip women of their constitutional right to an abortion so I get the impulse to want to get out of town to avoid those sociopaths Thomas loves his motor home so much he could actually be a bit of a snob if asks inaccurately about it one of you enjoys uh traveling cross country with your spouse in a 40 foot RV who's that well that's technically incorrect it's not an RD it is a motor coach is that bigger than an RV well it could be but it is a better vehicle than an RV an RV is normally built on a light truck chassis a motor coach is a tour bus I mean it's it's old but it's really nice honestly if Thomas had caused so much human misery him liking Big Comfy trucks that go vroom vroom would be genuinely Charming every man in the 70s has picked a vehicle that occupies way too much space in his brain and heart some like trains that go choo choo some like boats that go GL glub and others love motor coaches based on a non-light truck chassis and I'm not saying that these men love their vehicles more than their families it's just it's easier for them to say I prefer O scale trains because historically that's what this country's finest model trains have been since the 1800s than I'm proud of you son but about that bus it it is apparently the rollsroyce of motor coaches a custom preo Marathon or as Thomas himself once put it a condo on Wheels and if you're thinking that's a pretty pretty big purchase for a Supreme Court Justice to be able to afford about that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been an RV evangelist for decades traveling the country in a 40ft Luxury Motor Coach that he purchased in 1999 after borrowing more than a quarter of a million dollars from a wealthy friend but a new report from Democrats on the Senate finance committee alleges Thomas's friend forgave a substantial amount of that massive loan and 9 years later his friend forgave all the debt well that sounds like a sweet deal honestly it's starting to feel like Thomas doesn't so much have friends as a collection of human ATMs and his wealthy friends will say there is nothing to see here they're just doing for Clarence what they would do for anyone else Haren Crow pulled that exact move in a statement Harlen Crow the Dallas real estate billionaire who picks up the tabs for the trips says he and Thomas have been friends since 1996 writing the hospitality we have extended to the Thomases over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends okay but it is different though because while you may have been friends with Clarence Thomas for a long time you didn't start being friends with him until 5 years after he was made a Supreme Court Justice in fact each of his four major benefactors appears to have first met Thomas after he ascended to the Supreme Court which is inherently telling even socially Adept high schoolers can figure that out if Brena Jackson and Ash only start hanging out with you after you get a job at Coldstone it's not about you it's about the free scoops and thankfully there is a way for justice to avoid the appearance of impropriety and that is recusal any justice is required to disqualify themselves in any proceeding where their impartiality might reasonably be questioned but as with everything else you've seen tonight for the Supreme Court it's essentially just a suggestion the justices themselves decide if they are able to be impartial and those decisions cannot then be appealed and even when it comes to recusals Thomas is an outlier he almost never accuses even when he clearly should take one recent case where he had a flagrant conflict of interest orbe it not a financial one because the court recently took up a number of appeals involving cases surrounding January 6th and as it happens a major cheerleader to overturn Biden's win was Thomas's own wife jinny as her text to then white house chief of staff Mark Meadow's show in one Thomas writing quote help this great president stand firm Mark Biden in the left is attempting the greatest Heist of our history and in another just days after the 2020 election Thomas writing do not concede on November 24th Meadows wrote Thomas this is a fight of good versus evil Thomas replied thank you needed that this plus a conversation with my best friend just now wow I will say jinny Thomas looks exactly like a person who would try to speak to the manager about a presidential election but but despite that conversation with my best friend line jinny insists that she never talked to her husband about the election challenges which is a bit weird because he says this a lot and it's a particular honor to be here with my wife Virginia who's totally my best friend in the world love to spend time with my wife who's totally my best friend in the whole world and I love being here with my bride Virginia who's a gift from God and my totally best friend in the whole world okay first if jinny is indeed a gift from God I guess it's nice that Clarence Thomas got at least one gift from someone who is not a billionaire but but also it has seemed that either jimy Thomas was keeping her husband up to date on her ongoing coup attempt or she's clarence's best friend but he isn't hers and that is rough there's going to be a lot of awkward silences on their next motor coach trip but the fact is a Justice's wife inserted herself into efforts to overturn the last election yet in multiple cases involving January 6 Thomas didn't recuse himself even in one concerning whether White House files which could have contained more of jinny's texts had to be handed over to the January 6th Committee in that case Thomas was the Lone dissenter saying that they should remain secret and if that is not a conflict of interest I honestly don't know what one is but look the fundamental corruption here might be bigger than anything one recusal could cover because I'm not saying that Thomas is only voting the way he is because of the trips and the gifts his opinions were horrible before he ever set foot on a yacht but that doesn't mean those billionaires haven't had a real impact on him because for years Thomas repeatedly talked about money in the 1980s he told a reporter he planned to be rich and said that that means more than just a few hundred, a year but unfortunately for him that's exactly what being a Supreme Court Justice currently pays just under $300,000 and he's been pretty vocal about his dissatisfaction with that sometimes even publicly the job is not worth doing for what they pay it's not worth doing for the grief but it is worth doing for the principal you sure about that cuz your job is writing opinions in a bathrobe and it pays six figures most bloggers do that for free and they don't get to enjoy seeing their worst takes become everyone else's law it was right around that time in the early ort that Thomas reportedly said to a republican member of Congress that unless it gave Supreme Court Justices a pay raise quote one or more will leave soon may be in the next year that set off alarm bells in conservative quarters as that lawmaker Thomas spoke to recalls it his importance as a conservative was Paramount we wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly unfortunately for Thomas Justice's salaries haven't been raised Beyond inflation since then but it may not be a coincidence that a handful of billionaires have suddenly stepped in to make sure that Thomas was never anything less than extremely comfortable and in recent years he seemed much less worried about his paycheck right now what is the compensation of a Justice of the Supreme Court oh goodness I think it's plenty well it's it's not quite where you are but it's I have no my wife and I are doing fine we don't we don't live extravagantly but we are fine here's a fun fact for you that was in early June of 2019 guess where he was at the end of that month on Haron Crow's Indonesian yacht trip that is the comfortable laugh of a man looking forward to a free trip and fingers crossed a free shirt to go with it basically what I'm suggesting is it's not that these billionaires have paid Thomas to change his views is that they like his views so they're paying for him not to leave which is different but not better and if that was their plan it has worked because Thomas is now at the heart of the new conservative super majority on the court and has plans to go further in his concurrence in the dobs case he said the court should reconsider previous erroneous rulings on sodomy birth control and gay marriage and despite being known for the consistency of his views there is one key issue on which he's evolved because remember that Chevron Defence that I mentioned earlier 20 years ago Thomas actually wrote a majority opinion that expanded chevron's protections but since then there's been a massive conservative push to get rid of Chevron led by the Coke organization you know clarences vacation friends and a few years ago Thomas renounced his earlier decision writing that he determined that the doctrine is actually unconstitutional after all now what caused that change of heart I don't know was it 15 years of marinating in right-wing money and vacationing with businessmen who could massively profit from it being overturned we can't say for sure but we can all think it together can't we ready let's do that 1 2 3 yes it's because of the money oh sorry I thought it so hard it came out of my mouth and look I know we focused a lot on Clarence Thomas tonight but this story isn't just about his Integrity it's about the courts from the beginning America like most countries was built on polite fictions by men who could somehow hold in their heads the idea that all men were created equal at the exact same time that they were drawing up the Three-Fifths Compromise and while we've shared a lot of those fictions we still cling to the idea of the Supreme Court as a body separate and apart from politics it retains a certain amount of Mystique and ceremony we literally put the justices on a pedestal and let them wear robes like Wizards in their confirmation hearings they pretend to have no idea how they'll rule on hot button issues and we all have to pretend to believe them before we appoint them to a job that they can hold until they die we don't treat them like what they are which is people who can be motivated by ideology and greed like anybody else but polite fictions can only be bent so far before they break and right now it feels like the Supreme Court is at a Breaking Point and there are small ways to fix that from a real enforceable ethics code to term limits to even potentially expanding the court and honestly if it were up to me they'd also be dressed not in robes but as Walmart greeters to emphasize they're not magic they're humans like everyone else but if we're not going to do any of that if we're going to keep the bar of accountability this low perhaps it's time to exploit that low bar the same way billionz have successfully done for decades and that finally brings us to the solution that I mentioned at the start of this piece because caros Thomas is arguably the most consequential Justice on the court right now and he's never really seemed to like the job he said it's not worth doing for the grief so so what if he could keep the luxury perks that he clearly enjoys without having to enure all of that grief well I think there might actually be a way to do that because Justice Thomas we have a special offer for you tonight we are prepared to offer you $1 million a year for the rest of your life if you simply agree to leave the Supreme Court immediately and never come back it is is that simple just sign this contract resign and the money is all yours this is not a joke if you watch our show you know jokes aren't really our thing this is real a million dollars a year until you or I die we have spoken to experts who've all told us the best they can tell this is somehow legal which seems crazy to me cuz it really feels like it shouldn't be but as they keep pointing out there are no rules in place to stop me from doing this and let me be clear HBO is not putting up the money for this I am personally on the hook you can make me really regret this I can been doing standup tours to pay for your retirement for years but this officer is not this offer is not forever you have exactly 30 days from midnight tonight to make your resignation effective and if you are still on the fence I actually have a little deal sweetener that I'm excited to show you so please come with me just come come this way because we know you've got got a lot on your plate right now from stripping away women's rights to hearing January 6th cases you definitely shouldn't be hearing to potentially helping roll back Decades of federal regulations and you deserve a break you know away from the meanness of Washington so you can be surrounded by the regular folks whose lives you made demonstrably worse for decades now and the good news is I think we can help you there because since your favorite mode of travel might be in need of an upgrade we are excited to offer you this brand new top-of-the-line preo Marathon motor coach look at this beauty Clarence it's worth $2.4 million and it's got a full bedroom yes that is a king bed one and a half baths a fireplace four TVs a washer dryer and and I quote a residential sized fridge and if you're thinking what would my friend say if I take this off will they judge me as they sit in their boardrooms and mega yachts and Hitler shrines will they still treat me to luxury vacations and sing songs about me off their phones well that's the beauty of friendship Clarence if they're real friends they'll love you no matter what your job is so I guess this might be the perfect way to find out who your real friends actually are so that's the offer a million dollar a year Clarence and a brand new condo on Wei and all you have to do in return is sign the contract and get the off the Supreme Court talk it over with your totally best friend in the whole world because the clock starts now 30 days Clarence let's do this that's our show thank you so much for watching we'll see you next week good night how is this legal your move Clarence your move [Music] w
