joining us now is jane mayer, who wrote that piece. eat to have you back, we had a bit of a technical issue. you are telling us about the conflicts of interest involving some of the conservative groups that she leads, or sits on the boards of, and the cases that come before the courts involving those conservative groups. one of the shocking examples of stood out to me from your piece, in terms of conflict, is the muslim ban decision in 2018. not just because i was on myself, clarence thomas was one of the justices who up hilled trump's muslim ban, without revealing that genie was a paid consultant to one of the far-right groups that had submitted an amateurs brief in favor of the ban, saying islam needs to be confronted. he never revealed that. >> absolutely. she was paid a lot. over two years, it was about $234, 000, in order to represent frank gaffe needs group. he's the anti-muslim activist. he's admitted an ambitious brief to the court on the issue, and clarence thomas heard the case, nobody ever mention that she was being paid by o

the they did whatever minioning they do together and their conversation got out to jane mayer, who wrote about it and this was the issue they said to each other, we can't dirty this up. no matter how hard we try to put a good spin on this, voters hate dark money corruption. our voters hate it just as much as their voters so this is our chance to fix this, to take out the dark money behind the voter suppression effort in all of these states. this isn't happening, folks. it is being done and we've got to pay attention to who is doing it. and when we do, we'll restore that fundamental voting right of all americans to know who is talking to them in their elections, to have ours be a democracy without masks, without subterfuge and without dark money. i yield the floor. mr. schumer: would my colleague yield for pa brief comment? -- for a brief comment? mr. whitehouse: gladly. mr. schumer: i want to thank my colleague, this is very much part of our bill, it is universally or virtually universally supported and it is one of the great scourges of our politics. if we don't move forward on these bi

the author, jane mayer, joins me now. she is the chief washington correspondent for the new yorker. is fascinating and i was just saying she has been doing this for years, but now there may be some consequences for it. good evening to you. you know, you lay out several conflicts of interest that jenny thomas is really involved in and i just want to get more specific on some of those before you respond. but first, you title this piece is jenny thomas a threat to the supreme court? most people have never even heard of her name so what is your answer to -- to that question? >> of course, we don't write the titles ourselves. but i -- i hope people will read the piece, and they can make up their own minds. i think that, um, you know, she's posting some really, really disturbing questions about the court's independence, about her husband's independence. um, politically, from -- from the activity she's involved in because she is actually engaged and has close ties to many of the cases that are before her husband's court. >> so, let's lay out some of the reasons why you ask this question, r

jane mayer wrote that piece. we had a technical issue a moment ago.talking about the conflict of interest of some of the conservative groups she leads and her husband has in the court. one of the things in terms of conflict is the muslim ban if 2018, not because i am muslim, myself, clarence thomas uphead the muslim ban without revealing ginni was a paid consultant to one of the far right groups that submitted an amicus group if favor saying islam needs to be confronted. >> absolutely. she was paid a lot over two years, it was i think $234,000 in order to represent frank gaffney's group, the anti-mus lick activist. he submitted an amicus brief on the issue. clarence thomas heard the case. nobody mentioned she was being paid by one side in the case. if you look at clarence thomas' disclosures, you see no evidence of this whatsoever. the only way i found it was by having to look at the irs filings from the group frank gaffney runs. so it's, i mean, there are rules and they do apply to almost every judge in this country that say that if your spouse has a

referring to an article that came out from the new yorker, jane mayer, the headline of the article thomas from a threat to the supreme court's mayor reports in december, chief justice john roberts released a report on the federal judiciary 22 a recent poll that we read from the supreme court has its lowest approval rating in history, it's viewed as overly politicized. resident joe biden price recently established a bipartisan commission to consider reforms in the report and members of congress have introduced legislation that would require justices to adhere to the same ethics standards as other judges. roberts report defiantly want everyone to back off, judiciary power to manage internal affairs, insulate courts from inappropriate political influence. his statement followed defensive speeches for members of the court conservatively which now super majority to three, extensive piece that you can read at new yorker.com. a couple more calls and we will go to maryland. tom on the democrats line. >> i just wanted to comment on a few things from earlier, the representative republican represent

the they did whatever minioning they do together and their conversation got out to jane mayer, who wrote about it and this was the issue they said to each other, we can't dirty this up. no matter how hard we try to put a good spin on this, voters hate dark money corruption. our voters hate it just as much as their voters so this is our chance to fix this, to take out the dark money behind the voter suppression effort in all of these states. this isn't happening, folks. it is being done and we've got to pay attention to who is doing it. and when we do, we'll restore that fundamental voting right of all americans to know who is talking to them in their elections, to have ours be a democracy without masks, without subterfuge and without dark money. i yield the floor. mr. schumer: would my colleague yield for pa brief comment? -- for a brief comment? mr. whitehouse: gladly. mr. schumer: i want to thank my colleague, this is very much part of our bill, it is universally or virtually universally supported and it is one of the great scourges of our politics. if we don't move forward on these bi