Supreme Court bombshell sends shockwaves through the Court
Democrats hate that the Supreme Court was filled with conservative Justices by Trump. They’ll stop at nothing to nullify its power.
And this Supreme Court bombshell sends shockwaves through the Court.
The Left has been pushing everything from Court packing schemes to slander and libel against the Supreme Court’s most conservative Justices.
One of their favorite targets has been Justice Clarence Thomas, a clarion constitutional conservative.
They’ve tried to paint his vacations with friends he’s had for decades as some form of bribery scheme and called for him to resign.
But one of the organizations most vocal in reshaping the Court just imploded thanks to its harebrained executive director.
The Washington Examiner has learned that an advocacy nonprofit group pushing a campaign demanding Supreme Court “transparency” rules on finance disclosures unintentionally leaked its own funders.
Fix the Court, a nonprofit group managed by the liberal dark money behemoth and for-profit company Arabella Advisors, spun off in 2021 after being a project of the New Venture Fund, is part of a seemingly coordinated campaign calling for Supreme Court justices to disclose more about their finances.
The group is now in turmoil as a result of unintentionally sharing with the Washington Examiner unredacted copies of its own contributors in 2021 and 2022.
“As you can see if you’ve reviewed the forms, I’m not a good fundraiser,” Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court and a former vice president at Democratic consulting firm SKDK, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
“I’m not a good accountant.” I’m a klutz. Schedule B is not something that is sent out, right? It’s not made public. Like, if you’re donating to a 501(c)(3), the IRS gets to see who donates to you, but the general public doesn’t.”
“I mean, basically, I’ve tried to donate money; I have failed,” Roth added. “I tried to raise money; I have failed. I have only two foundations that give me money, and if their names become public, they’re never going to talk to me again, and Fix the Court is over. My screwup this morning probably cost me my job.”
The executive director added, “I really just don’t know what to do here” and that he “just f***ed up in a minute” after the group had been operating for almost a decade.
Fix the Court has recently targeted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in response to several revelations that he did not formally disclose certain gifts, including from Texas billionaire and real estate mogul Harlan Crow.
According to ProPublica, it received Supreme Court security data in connection with a 2016 flight Thomas took on Crow’s jet, as well as subsequent visits. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court finally revised gift disclosure standards on March 14, 2023, many months after the flights, leaving it unclear whether the justice broke federal law.
The Washington Examiner contacted Roth on Tuesday to learn why Fix the Court did not initially submit a Form 990 in 2021, despite the New Venture Fund disclosing a $111,677 contribution to the advocacy group on its own 2021 tax returns.
According to a Washington Examiner investigation of the IRS tax-exempt database, nonprofit groups that earn $50,000 or less per year may file a Form 990-N postcard, which Fix the Court had previously done.
Following this, Roth emailed over copies of his Schedule B’s for 2021 and 2022 to Examiner staff, replying one minute later, “S***, I’m not legally allowed to send you those. I really messed up. Can you call me now?”
Multiple tax professionals said it is not illegal for charitable organizations to disseminate this information to the public.
“There’s certainly nothing illegal,” said Alan Dye, a partner at Webster, Chamberlain, & Bean who has specialized in nonprofit law since 1975.
“It’s a mistake. It’s been made before by a lot of organizations. Overdisclosure is not a crime. There’s nothing wrong with overdisclosure. Underdisclosure would be penalized.”
According to 2022 tax filings, Roth received $162,138 from Fix the Court for 40 hours of work per week in 2022, which was close to the group’s estimated $195,512 revenue that year.
Fix the Court’s “panicked reaction” to exposing its contributors demonstrates that the organization “is not serious about transparency,” according to Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher with the conservative think tank Capital Research Center.
Roth further told the Washington Examiner that he “wanted to fix the mistake as soon as possible” since his “donors don’t want their names out there.”
“They have attempted to smear honorable men like Justice Thomas over his own financial disclosures but are apparently terrified at the thought of someone obtaining their own,” Thayer said.
Stay tuned to DC Daily Journal.
