The Committee on Financial Disclosures in the Judicial Conference has received a complaint from Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, alleging that her income was not disclosed.
The Center for Renewing America – a conservative policy group – filed a complaint last month with the Judicial Conference, which oversees federal courts, alleging that Jackson had “willfully” failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s consulting income from malpractice for more than 10 years.
The group received notification on Dec. 21 that their complaint had been referred for an official review to the Financial Disclosers Committee.
Russ Vought (a former senior Trump Administration official and President of CRA) said in a Fox News Digital statement that he hoped the Judicial Conference would take a hard look at Justice Jackson’s ethics concerns and ensure there was no double standard.
He said that the Left had made a sport of attacking the conservative Supreme Court Justices’ character, but they were ignoring the actual indiscretions of the justices and the appearances of corruption.
The CRA letter suggests that, in the end, the Judicial Conference refer possible ethical violations of Jackson to Merrick Garland as Attorney General for an investigation and civil enforcement.
The letter stated that federal judges must disclose “the source of any earned income received by a spouse in excess of $1,000 from anyone… except… when the spouse is a self-employed business owner or professional, then only the nature and location of the business or profession should be disclosed.”
In her letter of nomination for the U.S. District Court for District of Columbia, Jackson revealed the names of the two clients of Dr. Patrick Jackson who had paid more than $1,000 to her husband in 2011.
The letter stated that Jackson had “repeatedly failed” to disclose her husband’s income from consulting fees for medical malpractice.
The letter said that Justice Jackson admitted in her amended 2020 disclosure form, which she filed when nominated for the Supreme Court, “that some of my previous filed reports inadvertently left out” her husband’s income derived from ‘consulting in medical malpractice cases’.”
Vought wrote in his letter that Jackson had not attempted to list all the years where her previous disclosures had omitted consulting income from her husband. In her amended 2020 disclosure form (filed 2022), Justice Jackson admitted only that “some” of her past disclosures were materially omitted.
Vought, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump, claims that Dr. Jackson does not qualify for “self-employment”. According to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, Justice Jackson must identify “the source of any earned income received by a spouse of a person that exceeds $1,000.”
The former OMB head argued that Jackson’s actions amounted to “willful” violations of the law because she was aware enough of the 2012 requirements to list specific sources of income in her first disclosure but did not do so in subsequent filings. She also admitted that some of her husband’s income had been left out.
Left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Democrats in Congress, have criticized Clarence Thomas (a conservative justice) and Samuel Alito (a Democrat), for failing to report vacations paid for by friends that are also GOP donors.
Both justices maintain that they have complied fully with the ethics requirements.
In November, the Supreme Court issued a “Code of Conduct”, following months of intense scrutiny by Senate Judiciary Democrats who pushed for new ethics laws to be passed for the highcourt.
The announcement read: “The undersigned justices promulgate this Code of Conduct in order to lay out concisely and collect in one place all the ethics rules, principles and guidelines that guide the behavior of Members of the Court.”
The new guide to conduct was, “for the majority… not new,” according to the justices.
The absence of an ethics code has, in recent years, led to a misunderstanding, that Justices of the Court are not bound by any ethical rules, unlike other jurists. We are issuing the Code to dispel any misunderstanding. It largely codifies principles we have always considered as governing our conduct,” said the justices.
Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/ketanji-brown-jackson-ethics-complaints-referred-to-judicial-conference-finance-committee