For years, Clarence Thomas has been showered with gifts. Flights on a billionaire’s private jet, lavish vacations cruising on his superyacht, summer stays at his Adirondacks compound, tuition for a child Thomas was raising, a quarter-million-dollar motorhome a wealthy friend paid for.

Those gifts were income, and income belongs on a tax return. Thomas treated them as nothing, and no public record shows he ever reported a dollar of it. Under Virginia law, leaving income that size off a return, if it was done to cheat the state, is a felony. The evidence is already public, and he could be charged on Monday.

Virginia law makes it a felony to file a state income tax return with a false statement on it, made with intent to defraud the Commonwealth. The statute is Virginia Code section 58.1-348, it carries up to five years in prison per count, and the clock has not run out on the returns Thomas filed for tax years 2020 through 2024. That is the whole case, and unlike everything else, it is a case a county prosecutor in Virginia has the plain authority to bring.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    45 minutes ago

    That asshole really needs to fall for all the corruption he has been part of.
    But it’s doubtful it will ever happen.
    Americans simply don’t do enough against corruption, no matter how bad and no matter how obvious.

  • DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works
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    51 minutes ago

    Jesus Christ.

    There’s a difference between possible and probable. This headline is extremely misleading. It might as well say Clarence Thomas could have monkeys fly out of his butt on Monday.

    Is it possible? Yes.

    Is it probable? No.

    I understand this is “a call to action” but the headline is disingenuous.

  • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    No, he won’t.

    Should he? Yes, he should have been dragged out behind the courthouse 20 years. But he’s not going to ever face any consequences for betraying this country or for taking bribes, even though he’s made a career out of doing both.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    I’ve got to say it. This is a case the Biden DOJ could have brought too. And Obama. The Democrats have got to stop playing games. They should have immediately changed it up when Obama was denied justice picks.

  • BilSabab@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    how is this guy still employed? honest question - dude has litany of corruption accusations going back decades and he’s still holding a position? How does that work?

      • blargh513@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        NOBODY should be appointed for life. That shit stinks of dictatorship real bad.

        What bad could come of letting someone make important decisions, someone who has become deranged as their brain atrophies and also desperate as death looms large, someone with no future and no stake in the consequences of their decisions?

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          The idea behind the SC being lifetime appointments was to insulate it from political pressure, unlike the president and Congress which are suceptible to removal. The SC is (supposed to be) a rather apolitical body that determines if the laws passed are unconstitutional, in order to preserve basic rights.

          Right now, it’s rife with partisan hacks, and it need to be removed and rebuilt from the ground up. Absolutely none of the current Republican justices meet the qualifications nor strength of character to be SC jucsticies.

    • kinther@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      The filing should be easy. Proving it might be tough. He knows enough to deny, defend, depose.

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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    24 hours ago

    The worst part of this is that even if he is convicted and removed from the judiciary, Trump gets to pick his replacement, so it will not only not fix anything but will very likely make it worse.

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      23 hours ago

      The least reliable members of the facist block of SCOTUS are those appointed by Mr. Trump.

      He’s really, really bad at the job.

      • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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        22 hours ago

        thats a pretty astute observation. still, narrowly missing a “state-level charlie kirk” because the fascists are just fucking bad at the job is not the type of comfort I hope for.

        • auntieclokwise@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Not really a new thing for fascists. Hitler screwed the German army so hard with dumb projects that had no chance of going anywhere, poor decision making, poor management of the government, etc. For example, the V-2 program is widely seen as a net loss for Germany - it cost too much, consumed too many resources, and never proved to do meaningful damage. Then there’s Germany’s obsession with giant tanks that were never going to be practical, even if they somehow made them reliable.

    • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I mean the trial will take time and if Democrats get to control Congress after midterms they could just not confirm any of Trump’s picks. Who am I joking, the Democrats would never.

      • auntieclokwise@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        It needs to be delayed till January of next year, when the next Congress comes in session. If Thomas has any sense he’d resign if this looks like it’s going somewhere so Trump can sneak an appointment in. My best guess for what the Democrats would do, if they were able to block a Supreme Court pick, is come up with some sort of compromise. Maybe appoint somebody who’s a moderate, not a Trump acolyte. I doubt they’d want the optics of not confirming a justice for 2 years.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Are memories really that short? If you keep giving them help while they spit on you every chance they get then you’re just helping them. They blocked Obama and then had their candidates straight up lie to congress. There is a very strong case for not giving them the time of day much less a hearing in the Senate.

          • auntieclokwise@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            I agree they shouldn’t even give them the time of day. But I don’t know if they’d be willing to take the pressure of putting off a hearing for 2 years. I suspect they’d eventually buckle. Probably the best course of action is to just drag the whole thing out. You get hearings, but we’ll schedule it a ways out, turn down anyone where there’s even a hint that they’re lying, etc. That way they can claim they’re taking action, but Trump keeps sending them bad candidates, candidates who go against the clear expressed will of the American people, candidates who lie to Congress, candidates who have conflicts of interest, etc.