Clarence Thomas warns: leak changed SCOTUS

As the nation waits for the Court to release “one or more opinions” tomorrow, Justice Clarence Thomas warns that the basic trust that was part of how the Supreme Court works is now broken.

Clarence Thomas speaks out

Clarence Thomas is now the senior member of the Supreme Court. On Friday he spoke at the Old Parkland Conference. According to organizers, this conference exists

to discuss alternative proven approaches to tackling the challenges facing Black Americans today.

Clarence Thomas frankly worries how much longer we’ll even have a Supreme Court. The leak of a draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has changed the Court forever.

The learned Justice said:

In the past, if someone said that, “one line of one opinion would be leaked, the expose would be disregarded by the public as illegitimate.”

Readers will recall that CNAV expressed high skepticism about the authenticity of the leak, until Chief Justice Roberts authenticated it. And sure enough, the Justice went on to say:

The response would have been, “Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that.”

Now that trust or that belief is gone forever.

I do think what happened at the court is tremendously bad…I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them. And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized what we will have as a country. And I don’t think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them.

Good questions.

Clarence Thomas laments the loss of trust

He also talked about how it feels to lose the trust the Court had, in fellow members, clerks, and other staff.

When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it.

Clarence Thomas also had a few words for those who are carrying on in front of Justices’ homes.

Conservatives never resort to employing those intimidation tactics.

You would never visit Supreme Court justice’s houses when things didn’t go our way.

We didn’t throw temper tantrums. I think it is…incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.

He’s right. Even the Marches for Life always stopped on First Avenue East, in front of the Supreme Court. Then the Marches dispersed – and no one, ever, talked about marching to people’s houses. And in all the Marches your editor attended – four of them – never once did anyone do anything violent.

The protests are against the law

Those home protests, by the way, break a specific federal law against trying to intimidate a judge – any judge. Title 18, United States Code, Section 1507 makes this clear. People can go to jail for this kind of activity for up to a year. Peaceful or not, they’re illegal. Period. End of memo. Which is why the Governors of Virginia and Maryland have written the U.S. Attorney General to do his job.

But the White House is openly egging them on. On Tuesday, Jen Psaki tried to engage in some tu quoque.

She forgets that:

• January 6 was a false-flag pseudo-operation (which The New York Times admitted by accident), and
• The only violence at any of those school board meetings has been by overzealous guards.

The school board protests have largely given place to upset board defeats in school elections, as is right and proper.

As for the abortion clinics, we haven’t seen any violence against them for more than ten years. That kind of violence was never appropriate, and has given way to watching them fold because no one will darken their doors anymore.

Sources:

• NBC News
• Axios
• The Guardian
• The Intelligencer (New York Magazine)
• Yahoo! Insider
• DefCon News
• Title 18 USC Section 1507: <https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-procedure/18-usc-sect-1507.html>