Justice Clarence Thomas’s recently released 2022 financial disclosure refutes accusations of ethics violations.
The disclosure also includes material corresponding with new Judicial Conference rules.
One of the updated regulations was that “transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation” would not be considered in the personal hospitality exemption.
The disclosure corrects a company’s former name that was listed on Thomas’s earlier forms.
“Due to the similarity in names, filer inadvertently carried the old name on prior reports during the covered period,” the disclosure notes.
“After reviewing Justice Thomas’s records, I am confident there has been no willful ethics transgression, and any prior reporting errors were strictly inadvertent,” wrote Elliot Berke, a Berke Farah LLP managing partner who worked with Thomas.
“No Justice, Justice Thomas included, should be subjected to such political blood sport,” according to Berke.
“It is painfully obvious that these attacks are motivated by hatred for his judicial philosophy, not by any real belief in any ethical lapses. Several other Justices have been accused of ethics infractions of late as well, and while I do not represent them, I have seen no evidence to suggest their conduct was anything other than consistent with the rules in effect at the time the reports were filed, or due to inadvertent mistakes – as is the case with Justice Thomas.”
Reporting from The Daily Caller:
Over the past months, Thomas has been the subject of a number of reports by ProPublica and others alleging he violated ethics rules through accepting gifts from wealthy friends. Daily Caller News Foundation investigations revealed ProPublica, the outlet that has published the most on Thomas, shares many of the same donors with left-wing groups calling for the justice to resign or be investigated, in addition to citing ethics experts that overwhelmingly donated to Democrats.
