and clarence thomas's wife. er for virginia thomas but he made some comments to the washington post for their exposÉ on virginia thomas in the newspaper today, pulling $600,000 from anonymous sources. but before i read you the lawyers email, let's just stop and consider where the supreme court is now, thanks to clarence thomas and virginia thomas but, a supreme court justice's wife is being written about in the washington post. and that supreme court justice 's wife has to hire a lawyer to respond to the story but. that has never happened before in the history of the united states supreme court. not once. and here is what the first lawyer in history hired to respond to reporters about a supreme court justice's wife said. quote, there is no plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to justice thomas. that is like saying there is no snow in alaska. there is a very plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to justice thomas. we just don't know how bad it is. and we probably never will. and maybe virg

justice clarence thomas was once suffering from what he called the crushing weight of student loans. thomas wrote law school students suggest he declare bankruptcy because of the staggering burden of his student loans. when he was nominated to the federal bench in 1999 thomas still had 10,000 of student loans to pay off. $10,000, which is exactly the amount of debt biden's plan would forgive for non-pell grant recipients. his comments today sounded pretty skeptical of the biden plan and he was not alone in that apparent skepticism. justice neil gorsuch was fixated on the idea of fairness, whether the biden plan was fair. what i think they argue that is missing is costs to other persons in terms of fairness. for example, people who have paid their loans, people who have planned their lives around not seeking loans, and people who are not eligible for loans in the first place and that a half a trillen dollars is being diverted to a one group of favored persons over others. one group of favored persons over others. if you help one group you are somehow harming the others. that seems to b

wanted to loosen regulations on businesses, i think that would pose an ethical compromise for clarence thomases here do, that's because she's a fringe figure, nicolle, the people that she brought together for this nonprofit that received $600,000 was a rogue gallery's of people that didn't belong in washington, d.c. the head of project ver tas has been prosecuted for the shady activities. ginni thomas is in league with all of them. this should be shocking and appalling on both sides of the aisle. it should be 100% uncontroversial at this point to impose a mandatory code of ethics on the supreme court so that clarence thomas has to account for his wife's activities. >> not for nothing, cleat ya mitchell's cameo in donald trump's call with brad rafensberger. >> how many ballots -- >> it's only two answers, dishonesty or imcompetence. look, there's no way. there's no way. there's no way these things could have been -- you have all of these different people that voted but they don't live in georgia anymore. >> they had a date when they moved from georgia, they registered to vote out of state. >>

it didn't affect the the political but in the clarence thomas anita hill clash that that summer after palm beach he might as well have put a paper bag his head because he was totally a wall. and we needed him and i have had the the the authors of the two major books about the clarence thomas anita hill clashed tell me that if the ted kennedy that opposed robert bork a few years earlier had shown that summer, then clarence thomas not be on the united states supreme court, that's an example of how the personal overlaps into the political and and changes our lives. but anyway, the 1994 campaign through a series of mishaps, including palm beach, by the time he got to september running for reelection, he was in the polls. mitt romney was was ahead of him. and it was quite possible that that he could lose. but but the people of massachusetts of had this feeling that they needed to a two by four and give them a good thwack on the head rather than really defeat him because every time he began to lapse in the polls the support came back because. they wanted to learn a lesson, but they didn't n

"the washington post" is reporting ginni thomas, wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations for a conservative group called crowdsourcers for culture and liberty. it's not the first time ginni and clarence thomas have come under scrutiny for conflict of interest issues. in 2020, ginni thomas urged white house chief of staff mark meadows to pursue efforts to overturn donald trump's election loss and pressured officials in arizona and wisconsin to choose pro-trump electors. justice thomas was the sole dissenter in the supreme court's 8-1 decision that led to the release of white house documents around january 6. in other news from washington, president biden and republicans remain at odds over how to handle the debt ceiling as republican house speaker kevin mccarthy requested a meeting with biden tuesday to push for spending cuts before agreeing to raising the debt limit. e white house and democrats have rejected this idea. republicans agreed to raising the debt ceiling with no-conditions during trump's presidency. yesterday, advocacy gro

justice clarence thomas was once suffering from what he called the crushing weight of student loans. at law school classmates suggested he declared bankruptcy after graduating because of the staggering burden of his student loans. when he was nominated to the federal bench in 1989, thomas still had $10,000 of student loans to pay off. and thousand dollars! which is exactly the amount of debt that biden's plan would forgive for non pell grants recipients. now, we have no idea where justice thomas will ultimately stand on student debt forgiveness. but his comments today sounded pretty skeptical of the biden plan. and he was not alone in that apparent skepticism. justice neil gorsuch was fixated on the idea of fairness. whether the biden plan was fair. but i think they argue, that is missing,. is costs to other persons in terms of fairness. for example, people who have paid their loans. people who planned their lives around not seeking loans. and people who are not eligible for loans in the first place. and that half a trillion dollars is being diverted to one group of favorite persons o

you probably heard clarence thomas the way they treated a second-class rate.not only did they have this denunciation of how it had been handling second amendment cases but they spelled out a specific test for how the lower courts should decide this moving forward. calling us democrat rick sorry i'm a little nervous. i was shot at twice at my own home. i do not know who did it, i do not know what kind of gun it was but it is making a pop pop pop like popcorn sound i was shot at it like a high half circle arch and the bullets rained down around myin house. and in that moment all of the work i didn't school the hard work in my job, everything went away and all that mattered was i lived in a house with theory thick stone walls and they ran to my house forec protection bui was so grateful for the stone walls that protected me. teand then after that i was very scared for a long time. and now i just feel betrayed by my own country because how could we let the situation get this bad? i am deeply concerned about the logic of our leaders. let's think outside the box. ca

this decision by clarence thomas is fundamentally far flood, and five different ways.he original historical context, that's we always remember the other part of the text, -- text of the second amendment that is not apparently applicable current days. second of all, and historic balance between gun rights in the public interest which was the historic context we see over and over in american history. you can take your guns into town in the old west. there's a number of reasonable restrictions that have been apart american history from the very beginning. let alone compare muskets to what we have today. -- as scientific fact. this law, the redefinition of, it needs historians come in and say, is what is the context, judges don't, here it is not ecological, it's historical. >> a lot of things are gonna be completely absurd, you try to test, because some things are never contemplated, there's a few real world examples here. as virginia striking down prohibition ended ghost guns, and 1771 fire mr. natural numbers. taking us from domestic abusers, when he looked exclusively a

and so that is about clarence thomas or sam alito. going forward, this is what you're signing up for, of course, when you are confirms to the court. these are the rules that are in place. but just again, to repeat in general, we have not changed the nature of the supreme court office. we are not making you ineffective side nuclear launch codes or something like that. we are not taking a judicial office and turning it into secretary of defense. we're just tweaking the office as we have done for 200 years, changing jurisdictions all the time. retroactively. >> are we making them ride horses again? >> again, any specific part of the duty, if you think it is actually adding too much to what the justices are doing or changing the nature of the job, you could take that off the list and i would actually welcome in the hearing, the congressional hearing we will have, testimony from existing justices as to whether or not they think this is too much or too little for existing justices and future emeritus justices. >> final question to roger. >>

. >> that was the wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas, and the man she was talking about is a major conservative fund-raiser and judicial activist and a friend of the thomas', a man known as donald trump's judge whisperer, leonard leo. leo was the source of president trump's list of approved conservative nominees for the supreme court. that is how we got justices neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett through trump's judge whisperer. through leonard leo. and in an epic new report today politico gave new meaning to ginni thomas' statement about leo. soon after leo became trump's advisor in 2016 he amassed a sort of unnatural amount of wealth. he bought two multi-million dollar mansions in maine, four new cars, spots in private schools for his children and a wine locker at morton's steakhouse. i don't know what a wine locker is but it sounds fancy and also unnecessary. mr. leo certainly didn't tell the public how he bought all of that, but thanks to politico we now have a pretty good idea. leo's personal wealth appears to have skyrocketed in tandem to major victo

those victories occurred after senate confirmation hearings for supreme court nominee clarence thomas outraged many american women due to the allegations of sexual harassment against him. sadly, he would not be the last supreme court justice accused of sexual violations of women. hey, there, brett kavanaugh. leading us to the present day. when a me too movement arguably predated by anita hill in 1991 continues to shake predators to their core, even putting some very powerful perpetrators behind bars. back to the political world, to date, 59 women have served in the united states senate, with 25 serving right now. a record 12 women are in governor's mansions, several in states that elected women for the first time, and some who unfortunately are eradicating their fellow women's rights as we speak. which brings us to the flipside of all this progress. alongside these breakthroughs for women and girls, for the first time since the 1970s women's lives have been completely upended, our rights eroding at alarming and grotesque speed. women have less bodily autonomy now than in most of our l

conservative activist group led by virginia ginni thomas, of course, the wife of supreme court justice clarence thomasllected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left. do you think we should know who donors are to that kind of organization? >> yeah, without a doubt, because there's more to it than just that. the thing that made much of those donations anonymous was a thing called donors trust, which has been called the koch brothers dark money atm. it's where you go to launder your identity off a donation. so, somebody is behind that and the fact that it's donors trust is a big fingerprint. it also shows up in the effort to pack the court with the right-wing justices. for instance, in 2019, donors trust funneled $7 million into the federalist society. in one year, $7 million into the federalist society, while it was the epicenter of the secret dealing that took place to get gorsuch and then cavanaugh and then barrett onto the court. $600,000 to the justice's wife when the exact same group has done $7 million to the court-packing scheme. there's a lot more here

. >> justice clarence thomas has repeatedly asked to hear these cases because he thinks big tech is wellond their infancy and acting abusively towards every single person here. truth social is not only dealing with whether you can get on the apple store. but you are also dealing with collusion in government. you are trying to get this thing launched. what is going on with all of these things? >> the russia hopes people never die. they always seem to follow donald trump around and me. the sec is run by a guy named gary gensler. he was the treasurer for the clinton campaign. he also helped launder the money through fusion gps that hired a british spy. when we came on board, they announced this financing mechanism for us to do. we had no problems, we will be transparent. typically, it takes 90 two 100 days -- 90-120 days. but then we found out that peter's wife is one of the lead investigators at the sec. we are a florida company. we should be handled in the florida regional office, but for some reason we are being handled here in washington dc and we got no information. we have proven that

committee and preside over a number of supreme court preparation sissies including robert bork and clarence thomashe makes changes with scalia, this book presents the real critical examination of joe biden's role in the glia confirmation process. the president today likes to boast about how many confirmation processes he's been involved in. he really did not distinguish himself in this glia process. if you look at the transcripts which we examine carefully, there are various moments in which senator biden had to retreat our product things that were of no interest to anyone and only extended the proceedings, points where he had to apologize, and he even said publicly that he thought that justice scalia would not be measurably more conservative than the man who he was succeeding effectivelye court, retchiejustice warren burger, and rehnquist who is becoming justice, -- chief justice, but that they could see was filled by scalia. and the suggestion that was no more conservative than him was the precise opposite of what everybody had been saying for 90 days. >> scion -- five minutes left, as we go int

. >> that was the wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas.and judicial activist, and a friend of the thomas's. a man known as donald trump's judge whisper. leonard leo. as i executive director of the federal society until 2020, and trump's on page additional advisor, leo was a source of president trump's list of approve conservative nominees for the supreme court. that is how we got justices and neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett through trump's judge whisperer. through leonard leo. and in an epic new report today, politico gave new meaning to ginni thomas's statement about leo. he doesn't tell all that he does, but i know enough to know that the man is a force of nature. soon after leo became trump's advisor in 2016, he amassed an actual amount of wealth. you've got to multi million dollar mountains in maine, along with four new cars, spots and private schools for his children, and a wine locker at mortise steakhouse, i mean i don't know exactly what a wine locker is, but it sounds fancy and maybe a necessary. mr. leo certa

justice clarence thomas encouraged his colleagues to go back and revisit obergefell now , justice samuelalito said. it's not going to happen. what we did. at least it's not going to happen based on what they did in dabs, but i say all bets are off now and you know that's the kind of thing that could occur down the road. i'm definitely not predicting it. but i did once upon a time say that they would never touch row. yeah a lot of people did. joan biskupic , author of nine black robes inside the supreme court's drive to the right and its historic consequences. can't wait to read it. thank you, joan. thanks and we are just hours away from wolf blitzer's big interview with the former vice president. mike pence right here on cnn. wolf joins us now, if you're gonna be setting the stage for this conversation up next in the situation room and laying out what's at stake for pence, and it's a lot it certainly is. pamela the stakes really are enormous for the former vice president of the united states. right now he's just been ordered by a federal judge to comply with the special counsel's subpoen

or investigating clarence thomas or whatever.portant, so i get concerned about that. let it go the way it should go. there's one issue, ari, i think we need to think about, that we sometimes miss. we say all these trump people, you know, a lot of people say they're crazy and everything else. maybe we ought to stop doing that. maybe we ought to try to figure out why these people are so upset and why they are so angry and why they find fault with institutions in the country that they think is not being fair to them. and we need to think about that. and then how do we bring them back into the fold? 70 million people voted for donald trump the last time. think about that. so you know, my sense is let's listen to them. and let's give them hope, and the candidate that can beat trump in the primary if it can be done is going to be somebody who can give people hope that tomorrow can be a better day. and that person, i don't think has emerged yet. >> you're not seeing that at least in the current choices. super interesting. governor john

. >> with the supreme court said what justice clarence thomas said as he can't balance the individual right against public safety, good sport -- violence and crime. you can only look at quote history l and tradition. the nra and other gun rights advocates are going to be a will to go to court and challenge hundreds of gun laws that have been upheld by the courts. >> a federal judge in texas has ruled it's no longer constitutional for felony indictment for buying b guns. the government can't stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against owning guns. >> the bottom line a lot of gun lobbies and a lot of jurisdictions are vulnerable with this new standard that the supreme court is come up with. >> for the record to bring decision came down a day before dethe dobbs decision which a course to a course drew a lot of public attention. gun lobby in the 2008 case the supreme court decision making clear the 2nd amendment as ana individual right but the gun lobby wasn't happy with more than 1500 cases that implemented heller in the lower courts. why? because those cases largel

. >> of the supreme court was justice clarence thomas said you can't bounce individual right against public safety, against violence and crime. you can only look at quote history and tradition. the nra and other gun rights advocates are going to go into court challenge hundreds of gun laws that have been upheld by the courts. >> a federal judge in texas has ruled it's no wonder constitutions to ban under felony indictment for buying guns. >> courts ruled yesterday to help domestic violence restraining order against them from owning guns. >> the bottom line, a lot of gun laws in a lot of jurisdictions. with this new standard the supreme court has come up with. but for the record the bruin decision came down the day before the dobbs decision which of course through public opinion. a supreme court decision we conclude the second amendment is an individual right. the gun lobby was not happy with more than 1500 cases implemented in the lower court, why? those cases largely upheld the gun laws on the books from constitutional challenge. said the laws passed muster then to step test that lo

what is going through the mind of the supreme court justice clarence thomas as he argues that the ar-5 military assault weapon was envisioned by the founding fathers when they wrote the second amendment? they were dealing with pouterred -- powdered wigs and flint-rock rifles, they couldn't have imagined this. what are we going to do about it? obviously, the question is what's next? i will tell you what's next. the american people are next. if they're fed up with the situation, as i am, and i know many of them are, they have to make it a condition when they vote for members of congress. currently the house of representatives is under the control of the republican party. the likelihood that they'll consider any gun safety legislation is minimal. we now have a scant majority in the senate but not enough to break a filibuster over an issue. so we have limited opportunities. what it takes is a decision by the american people to put an end to this madness. and the people that they elect to the house and senate, there has to be simple questions asked for people to understand where they are g

think you could also look at the fact that you have two very conservative supreme court justices, clarence thomasyour corset who have indicated the decisions that they would be open to revisit that case from 1964, the ruling called the sullivan, in which there is was is very strong protection put in for the press to have some running room to cover politics and debate and discuss it. and not to be precise in every detail because freedom of the press and freedom of each. it's just because about politicians without being narrow margins on this. if you have these two conservative justice and justin kagan before she joined the suggested that she might be interested in visiting it too. that would be a moment you think fox would look at such a thing. right now, it is clinging, it is clinging to the status as part of the news media. i did a story for npr, talking about the notion that fox is putting forward. i interviewed one of its attorneys, aaron murphy, if we get hit on this. if we lose this case it will have terrible effects for the rest of the media. it will be inhibit the ability of the press to c

and one of the supreme court justices, by name clarence thomas, made it clear this was just the beginning. he was going to call into question a lot of fundamental constitutional rights like the right to privacy, the right to reproductive freedom, the right to family planning. so now members of the senate have to making a decision in our time. what kind of america do we want for our granddaughters and daughters? a country in which their fundamental rights are safe and secure or one in which the constitution still -- still, 100 years after we started, fails to recognize the fundamental equality on the basis of sex? i think the hearing was very clear and i think the issue is very clear. i know what i want to be able to explain to my little granddaughter, she is only 3 and a half now, but i hope to one day sit down and have a serious conversation with her. and i want to tell her that during the course of my her life that her constitutional rights were at issue and that we did the right thing for her and her daughter and her daughter's daughter and everyone in america with guaranteeing quality

also, both bushes, clarence thomas and roberts were elected by both bushs'gentleman said that was theeginning of the conservative supreme court was dead on. i thank you for listening. you have a good day. host: let's go to arizona now. phil is on the democrat line. caller: one of the previous callers said everything i wanted to say about george bush and the lead up to the iraq war. to me, i could see before bush was elected and what he was talking about when he wanted to go into iraq and i knew it was a lie. you could see them getting the people ready to go into this war. we lost trillions of dollars, not to mention all the people that were killed. we lost all the soldiers and it was all a lie. that is all i have to say because everybody else has said what i wanted to say leading up to the war and weapons of mass instruction. host: this is an analysis piece written by cnn's national security analyst and he is writing on the 20th anniversary of the war and here is a portion of that analysis under the heading "uncomfortable similarities with russia's invasion today." he writes, the iraq

caller: in a perfect world, i would like to see clarence thomas retire in the next two years, maybe haveala harris go to the supreme court and have susan rice who i think is a more dynamic i think she is a real force. she is bright. she is from a ridiculously achieving family. i think the election is going to turn on women's votes. i don't think it is ever part of the discussion how bad trump overplayed his hand by forcing amy coney barrett onto the supreme court which is now going to take 50% of our country's population out of owning their own bodies. i think that is going to come back and haunt the republicans so badly. if i could just finish, if there is one thing every family is on their mind, every 25-year-old to 50-year-old family, it is when and if to have a child. host: there are others waiting. mark is in fort lauderdale. you say president biden run again in 2024? caller: yeah, i'm going to say biden basically for lack of anyone else i think is strong enough, seasoned enough, and ready enough to do it. also, i am against changing away from miss harris as vice president because y

also, both bushes, clarence thomas and roberts were elected by both bushs'gentleman said that was theeginning of the conservative supreme court was dead on. i thank you for listening. you have a good day. host: let's go to arizona now. phil is on the democrat line. caller: one of the previous callers said everything i wanted to say about george bush and the lead up to the iraq war. to me, i could see before bush was elected and what he was talking about when he wanted to go into iraq and i knew it was a lie. you could see them getting the people ready to go into this war. we lost trillions of dollars, not to mention all the people that were killed. we lost all the soldiers and it was all a lie. that is all i have to say because everybody else has said what i wanted to say leading up to the war and weapons of mass instruction. host: this is an analysis piece written by cnn's national security analyst and he is writing on the 20th anniversary of the war and here is a portion of that analysis under the heading "uncomfortable similarities with russia's invasion today." he writes, the iraq

caller: in a perfect world, i would like to see clarence thomas retire in the next two years, maybe haveala harris go to the supreme court and have susan rice who i think is a more dynamic i think she is a real force. she is bright. she is from a ridiculously achieving family. i think the election is going to turn on women's votes. i don't think it is ever part of the discussion how bad trump overplayed his hand by forcing amy coney barrett onto the supreme court which is now going to take 50% of our country's population out of owning their own bodies. i think that is going to come back and haunt the republicans so badly. if i could just finish, if there is one thing every family is on their mind, every 25-year-old to 50-year-old family, it is when and if to have a child. host: there are others waiting. mark is in fort lauderdale. you say president biden run again in 2024? caller: yeah, i'm going to say biden basically for lack of anyone else i think is strong enough, seasoned enough, and ready enough to do it. also, i am against changing away from miss harris as vice president because y

. >> justice clarence thomas has repeatedly asked to hear these cases because he thinks big tech is well truth social is not only dealing with whether you can get on the apple store. but you are also dealing with collusion in government. you are trying to get this thing launched. what is going on with all of these things? >> the russia hopes people never die. they always seem to follow donald trump around and me. the sec is run by a guy named gary gensler. he was the treasurer for the clinton campaign. he also helped launder the money through fusion gps that hired a british spy. when we came on board, they announced this financing mechanism for us to do. we had no problems, we will be transparent. typically, it takes 90 two 100 days -- 90-120 days. but then we found out that peter's wife is one of the lead investigators at the sec. we are a florida company. we should be handled in the florida regional office, but for some reason we are being handled here in washington dc and we got no information. we have proven that we can build the company. despite all the attacks, we are fully isolate