Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could lose her job after this secret dropped
Joe Biden has only gotten one appointment to the Supreme Court. Now, even that could be taken away from him.
Because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could lose her job after this secret dropped.
A conservative policy group has filed an ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for “willfully” failing to disclose necessary income disclosures while on the federal bench for years.
The Center for Renewing America, led by former senior Trump White House official Russ Vought, alleged in a letter to the Judicial Conference that Jackson “willfully failed to disclose” required information about her husband’s malpractice consulting income for more than a decade.
The letter asks that the Judicial Conference report Jackson’s suspected ethics infractions to Attorney General Merrick Garland for inquiry and possible civil enforcement.
According to the letter, federal courts are obligated by law to divulge the “source of items of earned income earned by a spouse from any person that exceed $1,000…except…if the spouse is self-employed in business or a profession, only the nature of such business or profession needs to be reported.”
Jackson submitted the names of two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, more than $1,000 in 2011 as part of her candidacy to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, according to the letter.
However, in future forms, Jackson “repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees,” according to the letter.
“We know this by Justice Jackson’s own admission in her amended disclosure form for 2020, filed when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that ‘some of my previously filed reports inadvertently omitted’ her husband’s income from ‘consulting on medical malpractice cases,’” the letter says.
Vought says in the letter that “Jackson has not even attempted to list the years for which her previously filed disclosures omitted her husband’s consulting income.
Instead, on her 2020 revised disclosure form (filed in 2022), Justice Jackson admitted omissions with the ambiguous comment that “‘some’ of those previous disclosures contained material omissions.”
Vought, who led President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), contends that Dr. Jackson’s income does not qualify for the “self-employment” exception. According to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (EIGA), Justice Jackson is required to identify the “source of items of earned income earned by a spouse from any person that exceed $1,000.”
Apart from admitting that she left off some of her husband’s income, the former OMB chief claims that Jackson’s actions amount to “willful” violation of the law because she was aware of the requirements in 2012 enough to list the specific sources of income for her first disclosure filing but not in subsequent filings.
There is also reason to think that Justice Jackson may not have disclosed the private sources of funding for her “massive investiture celebration at the Library of Congress” in her most recent financial disclosure, the letter says.
Following her confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2022, the Library of Congress organized a large gala in her honor, with performances by various musicians and groups, including the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Quartet and civil rights movement Freedom Singer Rutha Mae Harris.
The event’s funding source is unknown. Any gift “received over $415” must be disclosed under EIGA. EIGA defines a “gift” in the following way: “a payment, advance, forbearance, rendering, or deposit of money, or [anything] of value.”
Jackson’s disclosure for that year included $1,200 flowers from Oprah Winfrey and a $6,580 designer blazer from her Vogue photo session.
“Justice Jackson thus cannot claim ignorance of EIGA’s gift disclosure requirements, and there is no serious argument that this ‘massive event featuring performances by several musicians and groups’ celebrating her investiture is not a ‘thing of value,’” Vought said.
Vought goes on to claim that Jackson’s “disturbing trend of not reporting material sources of income and gifts” appears to have “shielded potential conflicts of interest from public scrutiny and undermined the ability of the public, outside watchdog groups, and parties to scrutinize her recusal decisions.”
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
