In 1999 Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas bought a luxury motor home for $267,000. It was financed by a loan from his friend Anthony Welters, a health insurance millionaire.
In interviews, Welters said the loan had been "satisfied" in 2008 but declined to say just what that meant. So the Senate Finance Committee subpoenaed him to get the details. It turns out that Thomas was required only to make interest payments on the loan. The New York Times tells the rest of the story:
The principal amount borrowed would come due in a balloon payment on the loan’s maturity date, in December 2004....But in 2004, when the principal came due, Justice Thomas did not make good on his debt, according to records obtained by the committee and cited in their report. Instead, Mr. Welters granted him a 10-year extension, with the same interest-only terms....Then, in late 2008, Mr. Welters simply forgave the balance of the loan, according to the committee’s report.
As usual this has tax implications but isn't necessarily an ethics violation because the Supreme Court has virtually no ethics rules. A Supreme Court justice can essentially accept a gift of half a million dollars¹ and not bother disclosing it.
¹This is adjusted for inflation, natch.
at what point will fox start referring to the 'clarence thomas crime family'?
Never, Accounting for inflation, of course.
Forgiveness of debt results in income for the amount of such debt, and unfortunately if that lying fuckhead did not disclose such income on his 2008 tax return, the statute of limitation for tax fraud is 6 years so he can't be prosecuted by the IRS.
The statute of limitations for criminal tax fraud is six years. There is no statute of limitations for civil tax fraud. However, there are limits, between three and seven years, on how far back the IRS can audit a return. So, they cannot prove fraud in any instance farther back than that which would require evidence from the return.
More than tax implications. If he did not report the loan on his taxes, it's tax fraud. Which is illegal. Also known as a crime.
Lock him up! Screw the statute of limitations, he drove his stinking $275,000 free RV during a 60 Minutes interview while he bragged how much simple folk like him like to camp out in Wall Mart parking lots.
In the meantime, James Comer's impeachment committee is trying to make hay out of Biden giving his brother a short-term loan which he paid back after a few months.
FFS, we're seeing corruption among Republicans the like of which hasn't been seen since Boss Tweed's NY machine and the media and public are like "meh." Sure, you've got Bob Menendez, but the difference there is Democrats don't support him and want him gone. If he were a Republican, everyone would be calling the charges against him 'fake news' and he'd be leading in the primary.
Of course he didn’t…
So he's a liar, an authoritarian shitbag, and a tax cheat.
No wonder Republicans adore him.
Thomas is the guy who takes the roll of toilet paper home with him because the Supreme Court uses the softest, non-pilling TP at a premium price and by golly if it's good enough for SCOTUS, Thomas ought to share it with Ginni.
You expect him to get to Walmart on his own dime?
The man is busy! He has centuries of precedents to discuss with Leonard Leo!
Of course you can't have enforceable ethics rules--else you'd have to pay taxes.
We will never get justice for the abomination that is Clarence Thomas - all his criming seems to have run out the statute of limitations - but I am hopeful that maybe after he dies we can all take a piss on his grave. Perhaps if the world has become a second amendment hellscape, those of us that bear arms can even dig up his dead body and dump it into the ocean.
Supreme Court Justice, and his defense is he was told it was okay and not against the law.
Waiting with bated breath for the chief justice to weigh in on this latest example of self-regulation of members' ethics.
And to think of how our senators treated treated Anita Hill...
Including the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, then Senator Joe Biden. What a disgrace that was. Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania and Orin Hatch of Utah were especially nasty to Hill, while Ted Kennedy, whose aide summoned Hill to testify, failed to protect Hill from defamatory accusations by Republicans on the committee. Then Biden did not permit four witnesses who came to DC in support of Hill to testify.
He did (and does) make the rulings that the millionaires wants, so he did actually pay it back. A standard business model in politics.
+1
The problem isn't just that Thomas is crooked; everyone knows that now. It's that there is nothing to assure the public that its highest court of justice isn't entirely corrupt, so we can all assume that in every case they have been bought.
Which is to say that all thre branches of federal government are now for sale.
You just CANNOT adjust statutory amounts for inflation.
If a crime has a fine of up to $100,000 then you can't say the fine just $50,000 in 2005 because you adjusted it for inflation.
We should adjust for inflation more often than we do but you have jumped the shark. There is a grey area but you have gone far over the line where you are 1--% wrong.
Kevin wasn’t adjusting the fine. He was adjusting the amount of the gift to put it in context. The $267,000 amount that was forgiven is worth about a half million today.
The answer is in this article https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority?
Thomas is being bought off to ensure he doesn't decide to retire when a Dem holds the White House. And Thomas knows full well what's going on and milking it for all it's worth.
I, for one, am thankful to Judge Thomas for setting this precedent, and I look forward to not having to pay taxes for gifts and, to use a legal term, "things."