Struggling with student loans? Find a grand uncle on the Supreme Court with billionaire friends!

"Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition." - ProPublica

Crow paid for private school for a relative Thomas said he was raising “as a son.” “This is way outside the norm,” said a former White House ethics lawyer.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew, Mark Martin to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.” Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. - ProPublica

Follow the money, luxury trips and other benefits that billionaires have used to corrupt the Supreme Court with this relationship map. As deep throat advised reporters investigating Richard Nixon "Follow the money".

Follow the money (and luxury trips) behind the corruption

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

Dark money, by definition is hidden behind a network of fronts. Thanks to ProPublica we now have a better idea of the rot at the Supreme Court. But it's still hard to grasp the money flow with so many people and hidden transactions involved. The John Roberts' Supreme Court made it even harder to trace money and corruption in their Citizen's United ruling.

This relationship map created with the free Kumu app, visually represents how people, groups, rulings and billionaires are connected. Click on any item or link for more details. A relationship lets you explore the Supreme Court corruption from different perspectives. The map is online and DemLabs is updating it with new scandals as they are reported.

How to use the Supreme Court Corruption relationship map

Explore the facts like a detective

Zoom into just parts of the relationship map by clicking on the buttons in the top left. We created five for John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas. What benefits did their spouse get? Their mother? Their grand nephew? Who paid for those benefits? What rulings have the Supreme Court Justices made that could please their billionaire benefactors? You make the call.

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"

Billionaire generosity to Supreme Court Justice

ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski have a new report out on the billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow’s generosity to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The total amount Crow spent on Martin’s education is unclear, but if Crow “paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools,” Kaplan, Elliott and Mierjeski write. Thomas didn’t disclose Crow’s tuition payments, even though he did disclose another friend’s $5,000 gift for Martin’s education in 2002. - Washington Post

Way outside the norm

ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years. - ProPublica

TakeAway: Congress should impose a Code of Ethics on the Supreme Court otherwise billionaires will continue to get whatever laws they want passed.

Deepak
DemLabs

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