Opinion: Why isn’t the House Judiciary Committee looking into red flags about Clarence Thomas?

Publisher’s note: Dean Obeidallah, a former lawyer, is the host of the Siriusxm Radio daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show”. Follow him @ Deanobeidallah @ masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this comment are his. See no more opinions on CNN.

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On Monday, the Chamber’s judicial committee controlled by the GOP – chaired by Donald Trump Ally Jim Jordan – should hold a field audience in New York called “Victims of violent crimes in Manhattan”. A press release invoices at the hearing as an examination of the way the judicial committee said that the policies of the Manhattan Alvin Bragg District Prosecutor “led to an increase in violent crimes and a dangerous community for New York residents”.

In response, the Bragg’s office criticized Jordan’s hearing as “a political blow” while noting that the data published by the New York Police Service show that crime has broken down in Manhattan with regard to murders, burglaries, flights and more until April 2, compared to the same period last year.

In reality, this audience led by Jordan does not speak of ending the crime but of defending Trump – who has recently been accused by a Grand Jury in Manhattan with 34 crimes. Trump pleaded not guilty of the criminal charges resulting from an investigation into a payment of silent money to an adult cinema actress. The former president also faces criminal investigations in other jurisdictions on efforts to cancel the 2020 elections and the management of classified documents in Mar-A-Lago.

Bragg continued Jordan and his committee last week before a federal court, accusing the president of the judicial committee of a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” his office for his investigation and his prosecution of Trump by requesting confidential documents and testimonies.

While Jordan and his committee seem to be focused on the discreditation of the Trump investigation, why are they not examined in two recent reports from Propublica which raised red flags on the financial relationship of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas with the megadonor of Gop Harlan Crow? After all, the website of the Chamber’s Judicial Committee explains that it has jurisdiction about “questions relating to the administration of justice in the federal courts” – for which the revelations concerning Thomas correspond perfectly.

First of all, we learned in early April that Crow had provided Thomas and his wife, Ginni, for decades with luxurious holidays, especially on the donor yacht and the private jet towards distant places such as Indonesia and New Zealand. This information has never been revealed to the public. (In a rare public declaration, Thomas replied that he had been informed at the time that he did not have to report the trips. The judge said that the directives to report personal hospitality had changed recently. “And, of course, this is my intention to follow these directives in the future,” he said.)

Then, Propublica reported that Thomas had not disclosed a real estate agreement in 2014 implying the sale of three properties that he and his family had in Savannah, in Georgia, to this same Megadoneur GOP, Crow. One of Crow companies made the purchases of $ 133,363, according to Propublica. A federal disclosure law adopted after Watergate requires that the judges of the Supreme Court and other civil servants make public the details of most real estate sales of more than $ 1,000.

As Propublica detailed, the federal disclosure form that Thomas filed for this year included a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, but Thomas left this space. Four ethical law experts have told propublica that not to report to Thomas that he seems to be a violation of the law. (Thomas did not answer the questions of propublica on his report; CNN contacted the Supreme Court and Thomas to comment.)

The Chamber’s Judicial Committee has long addressed questions such as those surrounding Thomas. In fact, the Committee is the place where the surveys and the dismissal of federal judges often begin.

A recent example came in 2010 with judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr., which the committee investigated and recommended for dismissal.

The working group of the judicial dismissal committee said that the evidence has shown that fake statements and important representations intentionally under the pain of perjury, engaged in a program of corrupted bribes, requested and accepted illegal donations and intentionally deceived the Senate during its confirmation procedure. “The Senate then declared Porteous guilty of four dismissal articles and removed it from the bench.

However, the judicial committee has neither published nor statements or tweets Lift alarm ringtone about Thomas. Instead, his Twitter thread is filled with Repeated tweets whine C-SPAN will not cover Monday’s New York field audience. Worse, the committee retweeted gop Tweet of the representative Mary Miller Defend Thomas as being attacked “because he is a deep man of faith, who loves our country and believes in our constitution”.

The use by Jordan of his committee to help Trump should not surprise anyone. The Committee’s Report of January 6 of the Chamber called the Ohio Republican “an important player in President Trump’s efforts” to overthrow the elections. The report detailed the legislators’ efforts to help Trump, notably on “January 2, 2021, representative Jordan led a conference call in which he, President Trump and other members of the Congress discussed the delay strategies of the joint session of January 6”. Consequently, the Committee of January 6 assigned Jordan to testify – but he refused to cooperate.

Unlike the chamber panel, the Senate’s judicial committee – led by the Democrats – announced following the report on Thomas that he plans to hold an audience “on the need to restore confidence in the ethical standards of the Supreme Court”. Beyond that, the Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and representative Hank Johnson of Georgia sent a letter on Friday calling for a reference of Thomas to the American prosecutor for “potential violations of the 1978 law on ethics in government”.

The website of the Judicial Committee of the Chamber Note: “The judicial power committee was called the lawyer for the House of Representatives.” Under Jordan, this description must be updated to declare that the judicial power committee is now “Donald J. Trump’s lawyer”. And the worst is that taxpayers are those who pay Jordan’s work on behalf of Trump.