News Clips

The Supreme Court cannot be its own referee. Justices have tried and failed repeatedly at that. We should expect all public officials to abide by high ethical standards when conducting the people’s business -- with no exceptions.

"I think it's the worst decision the North Carolina Supreme Court perhaps has ever made," Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, told reporters.

Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, an organization that has opposed raising the threshold for passing constitutional amendments, said, “citizen-led ballot measures aren’t overused. We haven’t had one on the ballot since 2018. It’s unnecessary to make the process more complicated and it’s disrespectful of voters.”

Back in 2011, he updated years of his financial disclosure reports to include employment details for his wife, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. The updates came after the watchdog group Common Cause raised red flags. Thomas said the employment information was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” Despite Thomas having acknowledged the error and amended his filings, Common Cause wasn’t impressed and suggested it didn’t add up. “Justice Thomas sits on the highest court of the land, is called upon daily to understand and interpret the most complicated legal issues of our day and makes decisions that affect millions,” Common Cause President Bob Edgar said at the time. “It is hard to see how he could have misunderstood the simple directions of a federal disclosure form.”

Common Cause sent a letter Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking them have Thomas testify and “put it on the record for the American people,” as well as have Roberts testify. “The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly proven itself incapable of policing itself without a code of ethics,” Common Cause co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro said in a news release. “It is time for Congress to hold hearings and pass legislation to establish a code of ethics for Supreme Court Justices to hold them to the same standards as every other federal judge in the nation.”

“Attorney General Morrisey should know better,” Aaron Scherb, senior legislative affairs director at Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group, said in a phone interview. Common Cause filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission against Trump in 2018 alleging a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels, was an unreported in-kind contribution to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign committee in violation of federal law. “[T]he former president deserves the same treatment as any American,” Scherb said. Scherb argued that some Republican elected officials attacking Trump’s indictment are pandering for his support with their eyes on higher office.