to the request that it exercise its authority to refer associate justice of the supreme court clarence thomas to the u.s. attorney general on the ground he willfully failed to comply with the financial disclosure requirements applicable to judges with the ethics act of 1978. the judicial conference said today that justice thomas has promised to do better and in effect, that is good enough for them. they said they don't know if they actually have the authority to refer a supreme court justice for investigation by the attorney general. the judicial conference said quote there. the announcement came on the day when president biden today thanked the united states senate for making him the 21st century record holder as the president who has appointed more federal judges in four years than any other 21st century president. >> the senate recently assigned its 235th federal judge, the largest number of confirmations in a single presidential term since the early 80s . that includes one supreme court justice, 45 circuit court of appeals judges, 187 district court judges, and two judges on the court of

the judicial conference, which has now created the news of the day where they're saying, well, clarence thomasto do better, that's good enough for us. >> yeah. as you know, because you've followed this so closely, lawrence, i've had an ongoing correspondence with the -- met with them repeatedly, the judicial conference, for years now, to direct their attention to the misconduct of various supreme court justices. and by and large, i've had a pretty good response from them. slow for sure. cautious for sure. but always moving in the right direction. and so this letter is a little bit hard to fathom. it's full of seeming contradictions. the letter says that judges have an obligation to amend erroneous filings that goes back six years. and yet they did not require justice thomas to go back and correct his filings for the past six years. they said that there was confusion, unstated confusion in the guidance about the personal hospitality rule, which is very clear. it says, food, lodging, or entertainment. and it's never said transportation, and it's never been read to mean transportation. and a lot

and she's not going to probably be in the same boys club that justice alito and clarence thomas and showerede should get his billionaire harlan crow, to give her her own jet and a house and build a house for her and her mom and all that good stuff. give the gifts. that's why clarence thomas is feted by harlan crow to stay in the group, because other republican presidents have appointed people who become liberal. so keep giving gifts, and he stays with them. so they have to start giving her gifts. but look, i'm not going to go crazy saying it's a great move what she did. but there are moments we've seen now where she seems to be breaking a little from alito and kavanaugh and the other guy. so we'll see how it plays out in the long run. >> you know, i wanted to get your reaction to this news that actually broke as well, that justice samuel alito, it was revealed, you know, right before that he had this phone call with donald trump. you know, alito said they did not discuss the case. and the subject of the call was over. a former law clerk of his regarding his qualification to serve in the trum

the ownership question came up at the start and it was one of the very first that justice clarence thomas put to the lawyer representing tiktok, saying in essence are you conflating the ownership question and requirement being imposed by the government with the free speech issue you are trying to raise? are you trying to mix apples and oranges? other suggestions were that there could be other fish in the sea, users finding other platforms to take their speech. today we have seen shares of snap, snap chat, rising 9%, the most we have seen that stock jump since the end of october. so, there is a lot at stake here. vonnie: is there indication of how scotus is leaning right now? >> indications based on the questioning are that it will probably fall in the favor of the government, but it is not necessarily dispositive. the justices are famed for asking tough questions and it doesn't necessarily mean or translate into a loss for tiktok. we also don't know how quickly they will act. it's entirely possible that they put a temporary pause in the enforcement of the law to give themselves time to wr

>> clarence thomas has been a remarkable justiceand i think we should honor his legacy while he still alive . >> and to you congressman pappas. >> not clarence thomas but how about david souter, evenhanded level headed guy who's investing a lot of his time into education right now which is so important . >> let's move back to the question. >> if us aid to ukraine is cut off and vladimir putin and russia ultimately prevail in the conflict message is america sending to the rest of the world, to you first. >> that's a completely hypothetical question and we need to ensure that does not happen and take a step back and recognize why the war in ukraine has happened in the first place because we have hi the weakest commander in chief in american history who has not invested in our military but politicized it, allow for an invasion where our adversaries certainly take a note of that and that's why we've seen vladimir putin invade and why china inputting and why we see north korea testing missiles at a higher frequency than ever before so we need to ensure that we are governing from a place of

this is what they did to clarence thomas. what they did to brett kavanaugh. they did it to me during my election. when they can't argue on policy or substance, when they know that they are wrong with what the american people want, this is what the democrats do. they resort to smear anonymous allegations, character assassination, because they know they can't talk about the disgrace of the afghan withdrawal. they can't talk about the disgraceful state of our military recruitment. we can't build enough ships, can't build enough planes. we haven't won a war in a long time. and our military spending three times more on dei initiatives now than we were four years ago. so they know that on policy, the u.s. department of defense is in tatters right now, and therefore, they couldn't spend two seconds talking about policy, and they decided to smear this, this young man who's going to do a great job. we support him. and that's why my questions were directed the way they were. i wanted to remind people what this job was really about. and it's supporting the war fighter a

the first question from clarence thomas was whether tiktok was trying to convert restriction on bytedance's ownership onto a restriction on the freedom of speech of tiktok and its users. caroline: reading the tea leaves , shares of snap and meta are on the higher side. it does not seem like the arguments are going in tiktok's favor. frank mccourt is with us to keep the conversation going. founder of project liberty who just made a formal offer to acquire tiktok. you call it the people's bid. why is your consortium the right owners if bytedance says it will divest? frank: i think we are the right buyers because we have put all the pieces together. we have the funding. we have worked through all of the legal issues. we have a full offered front of bytedance. most importantly we have the clean american tech stack to move the user base over to and we do not need or want the chinese algorithm. the algorithm is something china is very beholden to and has said clearly they will not going to be selling it. we do not need it or want it. as a matter of fact we are the leading bidder right now. caroli

this is what they did to clarence thomas and brett cavanaugh. when they can't argue on policy or substance, when they know that they are wrong with what the american people want, this is what the democrats due. they resort to smear, anonymous allegations, character assassination because they know they can't talk about the disgrace of the afghan withdrawal. they can't talk about the state of our military recruitment. can't build enough planes or ships. we haven't won a war in a long time and our military spending three times more on di initiatives that we were four years ago. they know that on policy the u.s. department of defense is in tatters right now. therefore they couldn't spend two seconds talking about policy we support him and that's why my questions were directed away there wear. i want to remind people what this job is really about and supporting the war fighter and protecting america. >> it was one of the few moments along with some other republicans of substance which was desperately needed. they spend so much time on issues involvin

alito, one of the most politically compromised supreme court justices in history on par only with clarence thomasays before he is supposed to be sentenced knowing he is fighting disparately to stop that sentencing and i'm going to ask donald trump the favor of hiring a friend of mine who used to work for me. joining our discussion tonight is professor lawrence tribe. professor tribe, you have the floor on what happens next with the supreme court. >> it's hard to focus on things as absurd as justice alito's claim he had no idea this was coming when everybody in the legal world knew it was coming. it is hard to focus on that wheel los angeles burns. i'm sorry. but your house, i have children, grandchildren who have evacuated, who live in los angeles. i'm grateful to the firefighters there. but that's not what you need me to discuss. what you need me to discuss is the absurd attempt by president trump's lawyers to claim not just an absolute privilege of extraordinary scope for a sitting president but for a president-elect. there is no president-elect privilege. leapfrog the state courts in this way

he even helped radicalize clarence thomas, according to a documentary by pbs "frontline." >> he wouldhe was doing the long commute, and he would have court staff tape record it so he could listen to it when he was commuting. >> limbaugh, who ultimately became a billionaire, fit the '80s and '90s perfectly, the lifestyles of the rich and famous era, even making a star out of pretend billionaires like failed real estate developer donald trump, who was born rich and squandered his fortune on failed real estate deals before he was bailed out by banks and russia, allegedly. rush -- a slew of copy cats, sean hannity and more, each of whom had the same message, brown immigrants bad, feminism, definitely bad. but the wealthy and oil companies and big business? good. >> charles koch and david koch have been outspoken of the free market for years. >> this should send chills down the spines of everyone watching fox right now because you might not have the money to defend yourself. >> rush was followed by roger ails who are went to work for billionaire rupert murdoch building fox news, which took

the only positive was clarence thomas spent the two-hour hearing slapping brett kavanaugh with a a tortilla ] [ slap ] that's right. in six days, we may not have tiktok. but don't worry. once rfk jr. takes office, we'll still have plenty of things that go viral. [ laughter ] if the ban goes into effect, americans can still see tiktoks, but the app will stop working due to a lack of updates. it's pretty much what happened to president biden. [ laughter ] [ cheers and applause ] speaking of president biden, he now hahas just o more week left -- in office. [ laughter ] put that on the same card! don't put that on two cards. [ laughter ] one week left in office. >> steve: yes. >> jimmy: meanwhile, this weekend biden called pope francis and awarded him the presidential medal of freedom. yep, it's the highest honor a a civilian can receive except for being pope. [ laughter ] so more political news. today melania trump went on "fox & friends" and said she plans to live at the white house full time. >> steve: oh. >> jimmy: you know you got an interesting marriage when the big question is, "are you

they have shown at every turn with alito and his family and his phone call, clarence thomas and that gives, they are incapable of doing that. it will take congressional supervision. to justice coney barrett, there's a phrase in football when the quarterback throws the ball across the field and the receiver drops it and gets drilled by the linebacker, you might as well catch it because they will hit you anyway. going forward, shown yourself as having the courage to stand up to him. they will hit you on this. we will need that type of courage going forward. for her to not be bullied by trump. he is on her list and that will be evident in the days ahead. >> i was slightly surprised she joined that immunity decision. sort of ad hoc and her questions in oral argument i thought were sharp and shown genuine concern with the gravity of what had been committed. i want to play a little of a colleague of yours, i'm sorry, read a letter of colleague jamie raskin calling on alito to recuse on this case which obviously he did not. he said justice alito's decision to have a personal phone call with

conference rejecting democratic senator sheldon whitehouse 2023 requests that it refer justice clarence thomasfor supposedly g disclosure rules. this is part of sheldon whitehouse ongoing to harass and delegitimize justice as he does not wipe to the conferences whether it straightforwardly reminded him justice thomas has followed all the rules as they were written at the time this is not its job but sheldon whitehouse knows all of this but it was a welcome rebuke for amanda talks about rules a lot but does not follow them himself. >> are right alicia? >> what's is a mystic california governor gavin newsom who earlier announced the cost had ballooned to $100 billion. gavin newsom definition of efficiency spend more taxpayer money more so late. >> talk sorry dan? what is a common saying all of the planets are aligned to make some great projects happen here to hit to the fact all planets are about to get in line on january 21 with 6 of the seven plants will be in the line out there from mars, jupiter, uranus, neptune, venus, saturn, mercury catc touches upon fabri. a lot of people are going to sa

one of the most politically compromised supreme court justices in history, on a par only with clarence thomasre, i'll get on the phone with donald trump yesterday afternoon, two days before he's supposed to be sentenced, knowing he's fighting desperately to stop that sentencing, and i'm going to ask donald trump in favor of hiring a friend of mine who used to work for me. joining our discussion tonight is professor laurence tribe, who has taught constitutional law at harvard law school for 5 decades. professor drive, you have the floor on what happens next with the supreme court. >> it's hard to focus on things as absurd as justice alito's claim that he had no idea that this was coming, when everybody in the legal world knew it was coming. it's hard to focus on that while los angeles burns. i'm sorry about your house. i have children and grandchildren who have evacuated, who live in los angeles. i'm grateful for the firefighters there. that's not what you need me to discuss. what you need me to discuss is the absurd attempt by president trump's lawyers to claim not just an absolute privilege

judge cannon took a little piece of clarence thomas', one of his concurrences and stretched that elastic to say that jack smith was wrongfully and unconstitutionally appointed. she aused that to throw out th documents case in which donald trump took home classified documents and put them in his bathroom. now we have a question of whether or not jack smith's work product, which belongs to the american people, will be seen by the american people. where do you suppose that that is going in terms of whether the justice department, whether jack smith, whether merrick garland, i should say, will fully release both of these two reports that much produced for the american people on the insurrection and on the document theft? >> so, what i think it's important for people to know is right fonow judge cannon said y cannot release either volume one having to do with the january 6th case or volume two having to do with the mar-a-lago documents part. there is so much to say about her decision and why it's wrong. i mean, starting with the fact that she had no jurisdiction, she didn't wait for the gover

they have shown at every turn, with alito and his family, alito and his phone call, clarence thomas and all the gifts, that they're incapable of doing that. so it's going to take congressional supervision. but to justice coney barrett i would say this, there's a phrase in football when the quarterback throws the ball across the field and the receiver drops it and then gets drilled by the linebacker. you might as well catch it because they're going to hit you anyway. going forward, you have now shown yourself as having the courage to stand up to him. you have done it. they're going to continue to hit you on this, so we're going to need that type of courage going forward, and for her to not be bullied by trump. he's now on her list, and that's going to be evident in the days ahead. >> that's interesting. i was slightly surprised she joined that immunity decision because i found the immunity decision so lawless. and sort of ad hoc. and her questions and oral arguments were quite sharp and showed genuine concern with the gravity of what had been committed, unlike a lot of her peers. i want

. >> i think clarence thomas.is broken glass ceilings, he's been remarkable justice on the bench and we should honor his legacy while he still alive. how about that? >> definitely not claris thomas but i would say how david souter, if her state with supreme court justice, and evenhanded levelheaded guy said that his time is civics education which is so important. >> lets me back to the tougher questions. >> if u.s. aid to ukraine is cut off next year and putin and russian alton prevail in the conflict, what message is america sending to the rest of the world? >> that's a hypothetical question. we need to ensure that doesn't happen. we need to take a step back and recognize why the war is happen in the first place. it's because with the weakest commander-in-chief in american history. was not invested in our military but politicized it. who was allowed for an engagement on our southern border where our adversaries enemies round the world taken note of that. that's why we've seen vladimir putin that ukraine. that's w

look at you had clarence thomas and that team, if you're, for lack of a better term, trying to do just that. but you had people who stood up on the supreme court and did what appears to be the right thing, and that's justice. and then take the appeal. and if the appeal is successful, it's successful. >> i mean, that was kind of their bottom line, which was it was a54 decision, mind you, as we are pointing out, it wasn't unanimous. they didn't all say, yeah, let's let the sentencing move forward. and mr. president, you can eventually, you know, appeal the conviction itself. but that is what the majority said. right. >> i think if anybody wanted the supreme court yesterday, it was justice mershon. justice mershon did something very successful, which is he signaled in advance. no prison time, no conditions. i'm not going to impose on the presidency this burden you think that made a difference with? i think it made a big difference. the supreme court said in their brief ruling, quote, the burden that sentencing will impose on the president elect's responsibility is relatively insubstantial

i think it's clear clarence thomas gets vacations. he does what he's told samuel alito he and his wife are flying pro-trump flags, and he's on the phone with trump trying to get his ex aide a sweet deal, a gig at the justice department, making sure. oh, no, sir, he's he's loyal. you should hire him. that's the kind of sort of corruption he's used to. the only shock here is that john roberts decided to have a little dignity. and maybe he was just cornered by judge merchan, who was like, yeah, i'm not going to sanction him to any jail time. john roberts, you got anything for that? >> but that's the problem, though, right? because there was that notation in the decision from scotus. joy, that because donald trump wasn't looking at a sentence. >> i've told people donald trump didn't get a sentence right. >> he may be a convicted felon, but there was no teeth to what happened. >> and so that's the reason why you saw amy coney barrett and john roberts decide to join with the liberal side of the scotus bench. there was no consequence. it kin

literally, the first question out of the mouths of justices clarence thomas, john roberts, sam alito,ectively, was some form of why does chinese owned bytedance have a free speech right under the united states constitution? ali mustafa is back with me now. so take us through what you called in the nation. tiktok's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in court. >> so tiktok wants us all to talk about this case as if it's a free speech case, right? that tiktok has a free speech right to partner with the chinese government if it wants to. right. people want us to talk about tiktok creators and their free speech, right? to use the platform of their of their choice to promote whatever content they feel like promoting. and i am all for that. i completely agree with the speech rights of tiktok and tiktok content creators, but in this case, gave me an opportunity to do something that, as a lefty, progressive, woke liberal i love doing. it gave me an opportunity to change my mind when i got more facts right. and the facts of the law here are that this country, historically speaking, preve

he had been through the clarence thomas hearings. the supreme court was something that was very familiar territory to him. and i think he knew that's where this would lead eventually. it wasn't just district court judges or even appeals court judges or executive nominations, but it would eventually lead the supreme court. and he had a choice, though. he could have said, well, i'm not going to take that path. instead, he didn't. he took it as an opening and he remade the supreme court sort of in a right leaning conservative image. let's go forward three years to 2016 after this. and the death of supreme court justice antonin scalia. mitch mcconnell had become majority leader by then and declared this about the vacancy. mr. president, the next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the supreme court and have a profound impact on our country. so, of course, of course, the american people should have a say in the court's direction. it is a president's constitutional right to nominate a supreme court justice, and it is the sen

she she concurred, but distanced herself from clarence thomas and the court in some areas.econd thing that people should be looking at that think that every federal judge is going to lay down over the next four years to not do their job, is it wasn't any circuit court yesterday that ruled it was the 11th circuit. right. which is the most conservative, i would say the most conservative circuit court. so i think madison lives. there will be checks and balances over the next four years. we can catastrophize and bad things will happen. but i'm not so sure that federal courts are ready to just roll over. >> yeah, we have reason to hope. we have reason to hope and to and to expect. i think, yes, that that that the judiciary, the court system, as it did during trump term one will will stand up and will interpret and execute the laws as the laws are and not as donald trump would, would have them be. so we do have reason, you know. that let's, you know, come out of the cocoon. it's it might be okay. >> and let me just say this, let me just say this because my wife is oh, come on, we

you have clarence thomas sitting on the supreme court with his wife, part of the big lie and stop theteal. alito, you know. and also with him talking about winning the cases in florida? he did not win anything. he was a corrupt trump judge who happens to be married to a friend of trump's who has connections to the mob. who dismissed those cases. those cases which happened to be him stealing top-secret nuclear documents. for lord knows what purpose. that's all. i'm just so tired of his lies and the public buying it. thank you. host: elizabeth, your reaction? guest: i think what we are hearing is frustration a lot of people are hearing on all sides of the ideological spectrum. there is this loss of confidence in the judiciary and coming out, we see it at the supreme court with a lot of the ethics scandals that have happened. the caller mentioned justice thomas and justice alito and that has really dampened public confidence in the courts. particularly the supreme court. i think there is greater confidence in the trial judges. particularly because they often work with a jury of everyday

telling that amy comey parrott, in the immunity case, she concurred by distanced herself from clarence thomas and the court in some areas. it was amy coney barrett yesterday who ruled 5-4. i have to say, the second thing that people should be looking at, that think that every federal judge is going to lay down over the next four years and not do their job, is it wasn't any circuit court yesterday that ruled. it was the 11th circuit. >> that's right. >> the most conservative, i would say, the most conservative circuit court. >> yeah. >> so i think madison lives. there will be checks and balances over the next four years. we can catastrophize, and bad things will happen, but i'm not so sure that federal courts are ready to just roll over. >> yeah. we have reason to hope. we have reason to hope. and to expect, i think, yes, that the judiciary, the court system, as it did during trump term one, will stand up and will interpret and execute the laws as the laws are, not as donald trump would have them be. so we do have reason. you know, let's come out of the cocoon. it might be okay. >> let's just