Clarence Thomas must be impeached over revelations of megadonor gifts, says AOC – as it happened

It is now 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:

• For over 20 years, Clarence Thomas has accepted multiple luxury trips from Harlan Crow, a Republican real estate developer and megadonor, according to a new ProPublica investigation. Despite accepting these luxury trips for over two decades, Thomas has not listed them on his financial disclosures, according to the report. Crow and his wife denied wielding any political influence over Thomas via these luxury trip offerings.

• New York congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has called for conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s impeachment. AOC’s calls follow reports that Thomas failed to disclose luxury gifts that he accepted from Republican billionaire, Harlan Crow, a megadonor to conservative organizations.

• Robert F Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine activist and Democrat, has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission. The 69-year old son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, will be challenging President Joe Biden as a Democrat.

• The judge involved in Donald Trump’s arraignment has received multiple threats alongside his family following the arrest of the former president. On Thursday, NBC reported that since Trump’s arrest and arraignment earlier this week, judge Juan Merchan and his family have received “dozens” of threats, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

• Apropos of the reported threats to the judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, J Michael Luttig, the retired conservative judge and sometime adviser to Mike Pence who came to national prominence with testimony to the House January 6 committee, has warned the former president he risks a gag order over his attacks on the judge in his New York criminal case. “There is no court that would want to impose a gag order on a president of the United States,” Luttig told Axios. But “if the former president forces the Manhattan criminal court, the court will have no choice”.

• Democrats and campaigners outraged by a party switch that gives Republicans a veto-proof majority in the North Carolina state house have hit out at their former colleague. Tricia Cotham’s decision to change parties is “a deceit of the highest order”, the state Democratic party chair, Anderson Clayton, told reporters on Wednesday. “It is a betrayal to the people of Mecklenburg county with repercussions not only for the people of her district but for the entire state of North Carolina.”

• A former employee who worked at Infowars, the fake news website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has been sentenced to four months of home detention over his role in the January 6 riots. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced 37-year old Samuel Montoya who previously served as an Infowars video editor and had participated in the January 6 riots.

• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the recent slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have been passed across various states this week during a Thursday briefing. “This has been one of the worst weeks…[in] 2023 so far in terms of anti-LGBTQ bills becoming law in states across America … Just yesterday, the North Dakota senate passed 10 anti-LGBTQ bills in just one day, a single record.”

• National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that president Joe Biden’s decision to “end the war” in Afghanistan was “the right one.” “While it was always the president’s intent to end that war, it is also undeniable undeniable that decisions made and the lack of planning done by the previous administration significantly limited options available to him,” he said.

That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.

The leading Republican alternative to Joe Biden may be Donald Trump, the first president ever to be criminally indicted – and that not even in the case in which he incited a deadly attack on Congress – but according to a new CNN poll only a third of Americans think the Democrat deserves to be re-elected.

The CNN poll also gives Biden an approval rating of 42% (with 57% disapproving) and says 54% of Democratic-aligned voters would prefer someone else as their candidate in 2024.

That, in short, ain’t likely, particularly at a time when the declared alternative Democratic candidates are the vaccine-denying Robert F Kennedy Jr and the self-help author Marianne Williamson.

Biden is widely expected to announce his campaign for re-election soon. Already the oldest president ever, if he runs and wins he will be 82 by the time he is sworn in for a second four-year term.

Some further reading:

There are some remarkable pictures coming out of Nashville, Tennessee, where three Democratic state representatives face expulsion from the house by Republicans over a protest for gun control in the wake of the Nashville school shooting last week. Here are just three:

Three nine-year-old children and three adults were killed at the Covenant school in Nashville last week, by a shooter who was killed by police.

Republicans who control Tennessee state government have refused to consider gun control reform.

Here’s the AP report on today’s events in Nashville:

John Kirby acknowledged the complexity surrounding intelligence that was delivered and received at the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal, comparing it to a “mosaic.”

“Intelligence is a hard business…and there were some pieces here that weren’t accurate and we’re being nothing but honest…with the American people about what those inaccuracies were and how they shaped some of the decision-making that was laid before the president,” said Kirby.

He added that the summary which was shared with various governmental agencies and House and Senate committees “isn’t about accountability today, it’s about understanding.”

“You got to look at when [president Joe Biden] came into office, what he was walking into. He didn’t negotiate with the Taliban. He didn’t invite the Taliban to Camp David. He didn’t release 5,000 prisoners. He didn’t reduce force levels in Afghanistan to 2,500 and he didn’t have an arrangement with the Taliban that they won’t attack our troops.

“He came in with a certain set of circumstances. He had no ability to change. He had to deal with it based on what was inherited… He had to take eight months to plan because whatever plans there might’ve been done by the previous administration, we didn’t see and it was not apparent that there was a lot of planning done. So yes, he took some time… I don’t think he could be blamed for that.”

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that president Joe Biden’s decision to “end the war” in Afghanistan was “the right one.”

Kirby’s comments came amid the release of a government summary on the August 2021 withdrawal of American troops from the country, resulting in a swift Taliban takeover and multiple deaths and Afghans rushed to escape.

“While it was always the president’s intent to end that war, it is also undeniable undeniable that decisions made and the lack of planning done by the previous administration significantly limited options available to him.

President Biden inherited a force presence in Afghanistan or some 2,500 troops. That was the lowest since 2001. He inherited a special immigrant visa program that had been starved of resources and he inherited a deal struck between the previous administration and the Taliban that called for the complete removal of all US troops by May of 2021 or else the Taliban, which had stopped its attacks while the deal was in place, would go back to war…

Transitions matter. That’s the first lesson learned here and the incoming administration wasn’t afforded much of one,” said Kirby.

He went on to add that another lesson learned “was the need to plan early and extensively for low probability, high risk scenarios.”

Kirby added that “no comments about this withdrawal would be complete without mention” of the deadly attack on the Abbey Gate at Kabul International Airport in which 183 people were killed in an Islamic State attack. Among those who died included 13 members of the American military.

“He trusted the best judgment of his leaders on the ground to make all operational decisions, including with regard to Abbey gate. The president and the first lady will always honor the sacrifices of the 13 service members who were killed in that attack,” Kirby said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the recent slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have been passed across various states this week during a Thursday briefing.

“This has been one of the worst weeks…[in] 2023 so far in terms of anti-LGBTQ bills becoming law in states across America… Just yesterday, the North Dakota senate passed 10 anti-LGBTQ bills in just one day, a single record.”

“This is a dangerous attack on the rights of parents to make the best healthcare decisions for their own kids… This is awful news. LGBTQ+ kids are resilient, they are fierce, they fight back…and we have their back. This administration has their back…

“We are so proud of the kids across the country who have organized protests and school walkouts to tell the politicians in their states to stop this legislative bullying.”

Jean-Pierre went on to cite a new hotline established by the Biden administration to assist with mental health crises among LGBTQ+ kids.

“This is a new service that the Biden administration is proud to offer during these incredibly hard times for these trans kids,” she said.

A former employee who worked at Infowars, the fake news website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has been sentenced to four months of home detention over his role in the January 6 riots.

On Wednesday, a judge sentenced 37-year old Samuel Montoya who previously served as an Infowars video editor and had participated in the January 6 riots. At the riots, Montoya filmed a police officer fatally shooting Ashli Babbitt, another rioter who ended up dying from her wounds.

Prior to his sentencing, Montoya said that he was a “member of the media” and expressed regret towards his “approach to filming and reporting on the events that day,” the Associated Press reports.

“Nothing like what happened at the Capitol that day should ever take place again,” Montoya said. “I truly hope my apology offers a bit of closure to my fellow countrymen as we recover and heal together,” he added.

In response, US district judge John Bates said that just because Montoya considers himself a journalist doesn’t mean he gets a “free pass,” and that he was more than an “observer…he was a participant.”

The chairman of the House judiciary committee, the Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, has issued a subpoena to Mark Pomerantz, an experienced New York prosecutor who resigned from the team working under the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, before Bragg brought felony charges against Donald Trump over his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels.

Jordan is a leading figure in Republican attempts to use their control of House committees to hit a range of Democratic targets – all while complaining about the “weaponisation” of the federal government by their political foes.

CNN reported the Pomerantz subpoena, which it said came “as House Republicans attempt to frame the recent indictment against the former president as politically motivated”.

Pomerantz resigned from Bragg’s team last year, publicly clashing with the DA over what he said was a reluctance to move against a former president he deemed “guilty of numerous felony violations” relating to his tax affairs.

This February, Pomerantz released a book, People vs Donald Trump: An Inside Account, which described the Manhattan investigation and notably called the Stormy Daniels hush money payment a “zombie” case, because it would not die.

This week, the case bit Trump: he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.

According to CNN, Jordan now writes to Pomerantz: “Just this month [sic], you published a book excoriating Bragg for not aggressively prosecuting President Trump, laying bare the office’s internal deliberations about the investigation and your personal animus toward President Trump.

“It now appears that your efforts to shame Bragg have worked … Your book again unfairly disparaged President Trump, and now opens the door to examination about the district attorney’s office commitment to evenhanded justice.”

Jordan told Fox News this week Pomerantz represented “an easier route” than serving Bragg with a subpoena. The New York DA has angrily rejected attempts by Republicans in Congress to see his workings, protesting about the separation of state and federal affairs.

According to CNN, Pomerantz faces a deposition date of 20 April.

Further reading, about further reading, here:

Democrats and campaigners outraged by a party switch that gives Republicans a veto-proof majority in the North Carolina state house have hit out at their former colleague.

Tricia Cotham’s decision to change parties is “a deceit of the highest order”, the state Democratic party chair, Anderson Clayton, told reporters on Wednesday.

“It is a betrayal to the people of Mecklenburg county with repercussions not only for the people of her district but for the entire state of North Carolina.”

Cotham, the Associated Press reports, is “a 44-year-old former teacher and assistant principal who served in the [state] house for nearly 10 years through 2016 before returning in January”.

Cotham “switched because, she said, the Democratic party and her Democratic colleagues were no longer willing to accept different viewpoints.

“The ‘modern-day Democratic Party has become unrecognizable to me’, Cotham said. ‘If you don’t do exactly what the Democrats want you to do, they will try to bully you. They will try to cast you aside.’”

The AP continues: “Cotham said the turning point for her to consider a switch came when people started criticizing her for using the American flag and praying-hands emojis on social media and on her vehicles.

“‘It’s been very clear to me this was about control on day one at the legislature,’ she said. ‘They picked the wrong chick for that.’”

North Carolina has a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. The state senate already had a Republican veto-proof majority.

As the AP puts it, “Whether the switch by Cotham will soon result in further abortion restrictions in the nation’s ninth-most populous state remains unclear, given her support for abortion rights during her earlier stint in the general assembly.”

Cameron Pruette, of the the LGBTQ Democrats of Mecklenburg county, said: “Hurt voters deserve to know right now where [Cotham] stands on abortion access in this state. Will she protect trans kids?”

Apropos of the reported threats to the judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, J Michael Luttig, the retired conservative judge and sometime adviser to Mike Pence who came to national prominence with testimony to the House January 6 committee, has warned the former president he risks a gag order over his attacks on the judge in his New York criminal case.

“There is no court that would want to impose a gag order on a president of the United States,” Luttig told Axios.

But “if the former president forces the Manhattan criminal court, the court will have no choice”.

Luttig’s words would’ve carried weight even before his January 6 testimony, given his status as a senior voice in conservative legal circles deemed unlucky never to have reached the supreme court.

In New York on Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts relating to his hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels.

Prior to his arraignment, he stoked controversy with inflammatory social media posts about the case, the Manhattan district attorney and calls for protest in his support.

On Tuesday the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, warned the former president to “refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence and civil unrest”.

He also told a Trump lawyer: “I don’t share your view that certain language is justified by frustration.”

Hours later, in a speech at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Trump called Merchan “a Trump-hating judge”; attacked the judge’s family; and went after the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg (“a criminal”); the DA of Fulton county, Georgia (“a local racist Democrat”); the justice department special counsel Jack Smith (“a radical-left lunatic known as a bomb-thrower”); and other foes.

Mike Scotto, a former Rackets Bureau Chief for the Manhattan DA, told Axios: “A gag order is used to protect the defendants’ rights to a fair trial and also the government’s rights to a fair trial, so that the potential jurors don’t learn anything about the case that they’re not going to learn in court.”

Here’s more from Judge Luttig, about Trump:

The far-right conspiracist and congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing backlash online after calling New York City disgusting, filthy and repulsive.

Following Greene’s visit to the city in support of Donald Trump during his arraignment on Tuesday, the Georgia representative went on Fox News and told host Tucker Carlson:

“I compared it to what I called Gotham City … The streets are filthy, they’re covered with people basically lying, on drugs. They can’t even stand up. They’re falling over. There’s so much crime in the city. I can’t comprehend how people live there.”

Greene’s comments stirred backlash, with blogger Aaron Rupar writing: “Imagine if [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] went on MSNBC and said this about a town in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district. Republicans would try to expel her from Congress.”

The Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast tweeted: “She’s welcome to not come back.” Kim Masters, an editor at the Hollywood Reporter wrote: “NY would say the same about her.”

The advocacy organization Stand Up America has issued a statement criticizing Clarence Thomas over recent reports of his failure to financially disclose luxury vacations offered to him by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

“Justice Thomas accepted and failed to disclose lavish vacations gifted to him by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow in a shameless abuse of power and an affront to the American people. Sadly, these actions are part of a pattern of corruption that betrays Thomas’ deep-seated contempt for the rule of law. No one is above the law–not even Supreme Court justices,” said Brett Edkins, the organization’s managing director of policy and political affairs.

“Our highest court must be held to a higher ethical standard. Congress has a constitutional duty to act quickly by passing a Supreme Court code of ethics and investigating the full extent of Justice Thomas’ wrongdoing,” he added.

The judge involved in Donald Trump’s arraignment has received multiple threats alongside his family following the arrest of the former president.

On Thursday, NBC reported that since Trump’s arrest and arraignment earlier this week, judge Juan Merchan and his family have received “dozens” of threats, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The threats, which have also been directed towards Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg as well as other officials in his office, have come in the form of calls, emails and letters, the outlet reported.

In addition to increased security by court officers surrounding Merchan and the court, NYPD is also providing “extra security to all affected staff members,” according to NBC.

As part of other precautionary measures, the online bios of the employees at Bragg’s office have also been removed from the DA’s website, a source told the outlet.

New York congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has called for conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s impeachment.

AOC’s calls follow reports that Thomas failed to disclose luxury gifts that he accepted from Republican billionaire, Harlan Crow, a megadonor to conservative organizations.

“This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached,” she tweeted.

“Barring some dramatic change, this is what the Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights,” she added, referring to chief conservative justice John Roberts.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a anti-vaccine activist and Democrat has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

The 69-year old son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, will be challenging president Joe Biden as a Democrat.

Kennedy has a history of spreading myths surrounding vaccines and has had his activism work be described as misleading and dangerous by public health experts and even members of his own famous family.

In 2021, Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, told the Associated Press that her brother is “completely wrong on this issue and very dangerous.”

In 2020, the revenues of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, doubled to $6.8 million, the Associated Press reports.

Kennedy has advocated for unproven Covid-19 treatments including the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine that was championed by former president Donald Trump, as well as the parasitic drug ivermectin.

For over twenty years, Clarence Thomas has accepted multiple luxury trips from Harlan Crow, a Republican real estate developer and megadonor, according to a new ProPublica investigation.

The report found that the conservative justice frequently travels internationally on Crow’s luxury 162ft yacht, often wearing custom polo shirts gifted by Crow to commemorate the trips which included scuba diving in Indonesia and a cruise in New Zealand.

Thomas also flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. At one point, Thomas even used the plane for a three-hour trip from Dallas to Dulles to New Haven, Connecticut before flying back on the same day on February 11, 2016. ProPublica found no reports of Thomas making any public appearances on that day.

Thomas has also visited the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male retreat in California with the Texas businessman.

The justice also frequently visits Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks known as Camp Topridge. In addition to being served by private chefs, Thomas has mingled with top Republican executives at these retreats. In July 2017, Thomas was accompanied by “major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank,” the investigation found.

Despite accepting these luxury trips for over two decades, Thomas has not listed them on his financial disclosures, according to the report.

Crow and his wife denied wielding any political influence over Thomas via these luxury trip offerings.

“The hospitality we have extended to the Thomas’s over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends… We have never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” Crow said.

ProPublica found that Crow has donated over $10m in publicly disclosed political contributions. He has also donated to groups that conceal their donors and once said, “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”

Despite Crow’s denials, ethics experts have criticized Thomas’ lack of transparency surrounding the disclosure of these luxury offerings.

“When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel of the watchdog group CREW, told ProPublica.

Good morning US politics readers. A new investigation by ProPublica has found that conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas accepted multiple luxury trips from Harlan Crow, a Republican real estate developer and megadonor.

For over twenty years, Thomas has “accepted luxury trips virtually every year” from Crow without disclosing them, the report found. In addition to taking trips to Indonesia and New Zealand on Crow’s superyacht, Thomas regularly flies on the Texas businessman’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet and spends a week every summer at Crow’s private Adirondacks resort.

According to ethics law experts interviewed by ProPublica, the absence of these luxury trips on Thomas’ financial disclosures appears to violate a law that requires justices to disclose most gifts they receive.

Crow pushed back against the findings and denied wielding any political influence through these luxury trip offerings.

“My wife Kathy and I … have never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he said.

In its investigation, ProPublica found that Crow has donated over $10m in publicly disclosed political contributions. He has also donated to groups that conceal their donors and once said, “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”

As we bring you the latest on today’s US politics, here are other key developments today:

• Rightwing legal activist Leonard Leo has been accused of misusing $73m from nonprofit groups and may be funneling the money illegally into his businesses.

• Anti-vaccine activist and Democrat Robert F Kennedy Jr is running for president against Joe Biden, joining self-help author Marianne Williamson, who declared her candidacy last month.