“We write to request that you appoint a Special Counsel to investigate possible violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Over the past year, public reporting and Senate investigations have uncovered evidence of repeated and willful omissions of gifts and income from Justice Thomas’s financial disclosure reports required by the Ethics in Government Act. The Senate is investigating these omissions as it considers improvements to ethics and tax laws,” write Dem Senators Sheldon White House and Ron Wyden in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and damn it’s about fucking time, fellas.
Continued: “The scale of the potential ethics violations by Justice Thomas, and the willful pattern of disregard for ethics laws, exceeds the conduct of other government officials investigated by the Justice Department for similar violations. The breadth of the omissions uncovered, and the serious possibility of additional tax fraud and false statement violations by Thomas and his associates, warrant the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate this misconduct. The Senate is not a prosecutorial body, and the Supreme Court has no fact-finding function of its own, making the executive all the more important if there is ever to be any complete determination of the facts.”