Honesty And Ethics In The Professions (1976 Thru 2025)

 

The chart above is from the Gallup Poll.

Poll Shows Belief In The Honesty/Ethics Of U.S. Professions

The chart above is from a Gallup Poll -- done between December 2nd and 18th of a nationwide sample of 1,003 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.
 

The Findings Of The House Ethics Committee On Gaetz

 The House ethics Committee has released its investigative report on the misdeeds of Matt Gaetz. If you want to read the entire report (it's about 37 pages), you can go here. 

Here are the five findings of the committee:

The Committee Found Representative Gaetz Violated State Laws Related to Sexual Misconduct

The Committee Found Representative Gaetz Used Illegal Drugs

The Committee Found that Representative Gaetz Violated the House Gift Rule

TheCommitteeFoundRepresentativeGaetzDispensedSpecialPrivilegesandFavors to Individuals with Whom He Had a Personal Relationship

The Committee Found Representative Gaetz Sought to Obstruct Its Investigation of His Conduct

Trump Is Poised To Benefit Financially From The Presidency

In his first term, Donald Trump did something other presidents have not done. He used the office to make himself much richer. Now, in his second term, he is poised to do that on even a grander scale. Here is how Nicole Narea describes it at Vox.com: 

“Victory” cologne and perfume. “Crypto President” watches. Limited-edition “American Eagle” guitars. T-branded golf shoes and “Fight Fight Fight” high-top sneakers. 

These are just a sample of the many products licensed to bear President-elect Donald Trump’s brand, including some that he has promoted on his social media site Truth Social just weeks before his inauguration. If he continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. 

Consumer goods may be the least of Trump’s issues, however. He has a number of business ventures — including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization’s partnerships in the Middle East — that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law. . . .

Trump made an ethics pledge for a second term, but it doesn’t make any commitments in terms of how he might resolve his persistent conflicts of interest stemming from his now even more sprawling businesses. This time, there are many more ways that he could use the presidency for his own personal gain — and potentially be vulnerable to the influence of foreign actors. 

“He’s essentially flouting ethics rules and conflicts of interest laws much more blatantly, much more obviously than last time,” Scherb said. “He’s not even trying to hide what he’s doing at all this time.”

Chief among these conflicts of interest is his stake in the publicly traded parent company of Truth Social, the president-elect’s social media platform. Just after he won the election, that stake was worth $3.5 billion. The value of the company’s stock has oscillated in the month since, but Trump’s stake still makes up a large portion of his estimated $6.8 billionnet worth.

Never before has a president had such a significant stake in a publicly traded company, and for good reason: Foreign actors could easily and entirely legally buy up its stock, inflating its value and Trump’s net worth. Not only that, they could also “threaten to just dump all their shares at once, which would crater his net worth,” giving them potentially a “huge amount of leverage over the president,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW.

The Trump Organization has also recently struck a series of deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to construct luxury hotels and properties in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as established a partnership with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf. That has drawn Trump into an even closer relationship with the Saudis, which dates back to 2017 when he made the country stop number one on his first overseas trip as president.

“That’s an easy way for the Saudis to pump money into the Trump org,” Libowitz said. 

In September, Trump also launched a crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, alongside his sons and his new Middle East envoy, billionaire real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff.

Libowitz raised concerns about a $30 million investment in the company from Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who is currently fighting fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump and his family are expected to net roughly $20 million thanks to that deal, according to the BBC. Notably, Trump has recently nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the SEC.

Scherb said he isn’t expecting robust oversight of these conflicts of interest from the incoming Republican-controlled Congress.

Most Support A Formal Ethics Code For The Supreme Court

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 16th and 18th of a nationwide sample of 1,600 adults (including 1,396 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults, and 3.1 points for registered voters.

 

Trump Could Make An Ethically-Challenged Court Even Worse

 

The following post is by Dan Rather:

No one has ever cast their ballot  for Samuel Alito. Ditto Clarence Thomas. Or any Supreme Court justice. They are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, then guaranteed a job for life. And they are accountable to no one.

It’s a sweet deal as long as you can stay on the straight and narrow. Today that unwritten but implied requirement seems almost quaint.

We have taken for granted that justices should be impartial, should have sound judgment and their conduct should be beyond reproach. Unfortunately, “shoulds” leave a lot of room for interpretation.

And it was always understood that in order for the American people to have faith in the high court, the justices must display unimpeachable integrity. For the past 233 years, this has seldom been an issue. Now it is a major one. 

As you may have seen, Justice Samuel Alito has a flag problem. Well, two flags, actually. Flags flown at his homes in Virginia and New Jersey are symbols used by the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6. 

 

Justice Clarence Thomas has a billionaire problem. ProPublica has reported how Harlan Crow, a heavily monied Texan, paid for luxury vacations for Thomas and his wife and funded their nephew’s private school tuition, among other gifts. In addition, Mrs. Thomas was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. 

 

Neither of these justices should be involved in cases dealing with the January 6 insurrection or Trump’s claim of absolute immunity. But they are, and there is no mechanism to stop them. Democrats’ demands that Alito and Thomas recuse themselves have been ignored.

The approval rating of the Supreme Court has never been lower. However, an approval rating for a group with lifetime tenure and no accountability is fairly meaningless. Historically, the Supreme Court has not had, nor needed, a code of ethics, going back to the first court in 1790. But after the revelations about Crow’s gifts to Thomas, Congress made it clear that something had to be done. 

 

That did not sit well with some Supreme Court justices, including a vociferous Justice Alito. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board last summer, he said, “Congress did not create the Supreme Court. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

Justice Elena Kagan vehemently disagreed with her colleague’s assertions, arguing that Congress can and does regulate the court. “Congress funds the Supreme Court. Congress historically has made changes to the court’s structure and composition. Congress has made changes to the court’s appellate jurisdiction. We’re not imperial.”

The high court, it seems, is not immune from the rancor and hostility overwhelming the rest of the country. 

Finally, late last year, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the court had agreed to a voluntary code of conduct. But because it is so full of loopholes and lacks an enforcement mechanism, critics say it’s toothless.

The court that Donald Trump packed with three far-right jurists is steering the country and setting the political agenda much more than Congress, despite the resounding unpopularity of many of those decisions, such as the one that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

And more are coming. In the weeks ahead, decisions on controversial cases from bump stock bans to medication abortion to Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution are expected. 

Three of the current justices are in their 70s. There’s a good chance whoever wins the presidency in November will fill more than one court vacancy. A strategy for Democrats would be to hammer home the long-term effects of this election on all three branches of government. 

This, among many other reasons, is why defeating Donald Trump matters well beyond the four years he would occupy the Oval Office. 

Respect For Ethics Of Professionals Is Falling

The charts above are from the Gallup Poll - done between December 1st and 20th of a nationwide sample of 1,013 adults, with a 4 point margin of error. 

New Supreme Court Code Of Ethics Is Not Good Enough

 Robert Reich explains why the Supreme Court's new ethics code falls far short of what is needed:

Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced an ethics code for the justices. But the code is utterly empty. It has no enforcement mechanism and no mechanism for the public to lodge complaints of misconduct.

 

It’s public relations pablum. 

The court effectively admitted this, saying that “the absence of a Code … has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”

Misunderstanding? I’m sorry, but the public understands quite well that the justices regard themselves as free to do whatever they wish, in terms of ethics.

In April, ProPublica documented years of undisclosed luxury travel enjoyed by Justice Clarence Thomas, including private jets and trips aboard a super-yacht courtesy of a Texas real estate magnate and conservative donor, Harlan Crow. Since then, other undisclosed gifts to Thomas have been revealed, all from powerful friends — including a motor coach, private school tuition for a grandnephew the justice was raising, and the justice’s mother’s home in an undisclosed real estate deal.

Thomas has also come under fire for failing to recuse himself from cases related to attacks on the 2020 election results — given that his wife, Virginia Thomas, worked to overturn the 2020 election results in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack. 

Other justices, including Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch, have also failed to disclose their connections to wealthy people with close ties to the court. Alito did not report a 2008 trip on the private jet of Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who later had cases before the court.

 

Alito defended his conduct in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, writing that he had “no obligation” to recuse himself from the cases involving Singer’s business, and did not have to report the travel and lodging because the jet constituted a “facility” exempt from reporting requirements. He claimed that the justices “commonly interpreted” hospitality to include accommodations and transportation for social events that did not have to be reported as gifts.

In addition to Thomas and Alito, Gorsuch did not disclose that the head of a major law firm had purchased a Colorado vacation property that he co-owned. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushed public entities hosting her to purchase her books; she failed to recuse herself from cases involving her book publisher.

The new code would have had no effect on any of these instances and will have no effect on future ethical lapses. 

The new rules don’t require any changes in how the justices conduct themselves. 

The new code has no system for the public to lodge complaints or for any outside review of alleged ethical violations.

In the absence of any enforcement process, the document states that Chief Justice John Roberts has directed court staff to do a review of “best practices” based on systems already in place in the lower courts. It didn’t provide a timeline for that review or what action the court might take in response.

What prompted the court to put out this piece of PR pablum now?

 

Probably the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote on Thursday for issuing subpoenas to Republican megadonor Harlan Crow and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo as part of its ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court. 

As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, chair of the Judiciary Committee subcommittee overseeing the federal courts, explained:

“We need to develop information about how systemic this was. This isn’t just a random gift here and a random gift there. It’s always the same individuals, the same front groups. It’s — there’s a network effect here that we need to understand. … What you have is billionaires with a demonstrated pattern of trying to influence the Supreme Court through a whole variety of groups by giving donations and participating, who are at the same time also giving enormous, massive, secret gifts to justices. Just on its face, that merits investigation. And if it happened in any other court in the United States, it would have been investigated. There would have been fact-finding, and there would have been a result and consequences. It’s only the Supreme Court that is living outside the bounds of the rules.”

The Supreme Court’s new “Code of Ethics” changes nothing. The court is still living outside the bounds of rules. 

Ultimately, I blame Chief Justice John Roberts. The court’s chief justice is supposed to maintain public trust and confidence in the court, but Roberts has done everything possible to avoid a Code of Ethics with teeth. This latest pathetic attempt at pacifying the public will do little to reverse the sharp decline in public confidence in the nation’s highest court. 

At his nomination hearing in September 2005, I testified against Roberts becoming the next chief justice. I had no confidence in his ability or willingness to put the public interest above the interests of individual justices. Sad to say, I’ve been proven correct.

Majority Wants Binding Code Of Ethics For Supreme Court

The chart above reflects the result of the Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done between September 23rd and 25th of a nationwide sample of 1,967 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Graham Makes It Official - GOP Doesn't Want An Ethical Court

 The following post is by Jordan Rubin at MSNBC.com:

In the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, ranking GOP member Lindsey Graham described Democratic-backed Supreme Court ethics legislation as “a bill to destroy a conservative court.”

If so, it’s a damning indictment of a court that the South Carolina Republican helped build.

The bill at issue at Thursday’s markup is the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023, or SCERT Act. Among other things, it would make the justices adopt a code of conduct and establish procedures to receive and investigate complaints of judicial misconduct. The bill was introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

To state the obvious, the proposed law would apply to all Supreme Court justices, no matter which party’s president appointed them. The committee’s chair, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., even noted recent reporting about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushing people to buy her books in the same breath as Justices Clarence Thomas’ and Samuel Alito’s undisclosed private jet adventures with conservative billionaires.

Of course, the Republican appointees’ conduct isn’t comparable to Sotomayor’s, but Democrats are still citing her relatively minor story in support of reform, the prospect of which has Republicans all worked up.

Indeed, the GOP’s hysterical reaction underscores the minimal ask here — that the justices, in some form, play by the same rules as their lower-court colleagues. 

That Republicans are effectively concerned about how their appointed justices would fare under binding ethical constraints speaks volumes.

Why Can't SC Justices Smell The Stink Of Corruption?

The following is an op-ed by U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor in The New York Times: 

What has gone wrong with the Supreme Court’s sense of smell?

I joined the federal bench in 1984, some years before any of the justices currently on the Supreme Court. Throughout my career, I have been bound and guided by a written code of conduct, backed by a committee of colleagues I can call on for advice. In fact, I checked with a member of that committee before writing this essay. . . .

The Supreme Court has avoided imposing a formal ethical apparatus on itself like the one that applies to all other federal judges. I understand the general concern, in part. A complaint mechanism could become a political tool to paralyze the court or a playground for gadflies. However, a skillfully drafted code could overcome this problem. Even a nonenforceable code that the justices formally pledged to respect would be an improvement on the current void.

Reasonable people may disagree on this. The more important, uncontroversial point is that if there will not be formal ethical constraints on our Supreme Court — or even if there will be — its justices must have functioning noses. They must keep themselves far from any conduct with a dubious aroma, even if it may not breach a formal rule.

The fact is, when you become a judge, stuff happens. Many years ago, as a fairly new federal magistrate judge, I was chatting about our kids with a local attorney I knew only slightly. As our conversation unfolded, he mentioned that he’d been planning to take his 10-year-old to a Red Sox game that weekend but their plan had fallen through. Would I like to use his tickets?

I was tempted. The tickets were beyond my usual price range, and the game would be a fun outing with my 7-year-old. It didn’t seem to me that the lawyer was trying to do anything improper. It seemed to be — and almost certainly was — just a spur-of-the-moment impulse arising out of a friendly conversation. Moreover, the seats at Fenway Park, like the much more expensive seat on the private jet used free by Justice Samuel Alito on his Alaska vacation, would probably go empty if I didn’t take them. Who would be harmed?

To my chagrin, as I pondered the situation, I became aware of an aroma of something off. Not an actual smell, of course, but something like that — something like a whiff of milk on the verge of going sour or a pan left on the stove too long. It wasn’t that the lawyer had evil intent; it was that I was approaching a boundary. Silently gnashing my teeth, I turned the tickets down. . . .

All my judicial colleagues, whoever has appointed them, run into situations like these regularly, and I expect they have responded in just the same way. You don’t just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.

The recent descriptions of the behavior of some of our justices and particularly their attempts to defend their conduct have not just raised my eyebrows; they’ve raised the whole top of my head. Lavish, no-cost vacations? Hypertechnical arguments about how a free private airplane flight is a kind of facility? A justice’s spouse prominently involved in advocating on issues before the court without the justice’s recusal? Repeated omissions in mandatory financial disclosure statements brushed under the rug as inadvertent? A justice’s taxpayer-financed staff reportedly helping to promote her books? Private school tuition for a justice’s family member covered by a wealthy benefactor? Wow.

Although the exact numbers fluctuate because of vacancies, the core of our federal judiciary comprises roughly 540 magistrate judges, 670 district judges, 180 appeals court judges and nine Supreme Court justices — fewer than 1,500 men and women in a country of more than 330 million people and 3.8 million square miles. Much depends on this small cohort’s acute sense of smell, its instinctive, uncompromising integrity and its appearance of integrity. If reports are true, some of our justices are, sadly, letting us down.

To me, this feels personal. For the country, it feels ominous. What in the world has happened to the Supreme Court’s nose?

Maybe Sponsor Names Should Be On SC Robes (Satire)

 Alexandria Petri highlights the Supreme Court's ethical problems with a delicious bit of satire in The Washington Post:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice. Nothing seems to bring billionaires so much simple joy ashaving a personal justice to accompany them on yacht and fishing trips, flights on their private planes and jaunts to rustic lodges where the wine was certainly not $1,000 a bottle (in Justice Samuel A. Alito’s opinion). Instead of getting upset (which is unproductive and irritates the people who decide whether we can vote and control our bodies), we need to acknowledge that people who want their own Supreme Court justices are going to get them — if they are wealthy enough. Instead of pretending that a code of ethics can prevent this, let’s find a better system so we can end all this sneaking around.

After all, we live in a capitalist country. There is clearly demand for access to the Supreme Court justices; let us figure out how to regulate the supply. Let us create a marketplace where all can compete. It’s time we allow the sponsorship of justices!

Look at the Supreme Court justices’ robes. All that wasted black space where the names of sponsors could be! Why are we pretending to have an impartial deliberative body when we could be getting rulings from an appropriately emblazoned Samuel Alito (“Brought to you by the Federalist Society”) or Brett “Michelob Ultra” Kavanaugh (“I LIKE BEER!”). And look at those SCOTUS decisions — all that wasted blank space around the margins. Let the sponsors fill it! Or better yet, have them contribute footnotes! Say $10,000 apiece; $15,000 for one with a wry joke in it.

Nobody would need to disclose anything; it would be right there in the ruling or on the robe. They would never need to recuse themselves; petitioners would just know that there would be no getting a ruling against Wilson Baseball EZ Gear (“We love a man who calls balls and strikes!”) out of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Also, Justice Alito could post on Facebook when he caught a big sturgeon with a billionaire friend — without worrying about whether it would be a bad look. Think of the money that Harlan Crow would save on photorealistic paintings if he could just post on social media about his favorite Justice Clarence Thomas memories. And Justice Elena Kagan could finally accept those lox that she refused years ago.

Some people want cameras in the courtroom. I want cameras in the room when billionaires bid to sponsor a justice of their choosing and take that justice on fun little jaunts for the next 10, 15, even 30 years! Open the process up to public scrutiny!

And we, the people, could actually take part in this instead of just watching from the sidelines. Why, millions of us could get together and each put in $5 to sponsor a small fraction of Justice Neil Gorsuch, and perhaps he would allow us to keep control of our uteruses! That would be just great! Or, if everyone with a uterus in the United States throws in three bucks, maybe we can buy a trip for Justice Barrett and Justice Kavanaugh to an emergency room where they can watch a woman suffering a doomed pregnancy go into life-threatening sepsis before receiving medical treatment. Would that help? I don’t know! The point is, we could all be throwing treats at the wall, not just an opaque little group of billionaires who happen to know Leonard Leo. That seems more just to me.

Also, under a system where Supreme Court justices openly and proudly wore the names of their sponsors on their robes and rulings, we could understand more clearly when things did or didn’t go our way, instead of having to pretend that it had something to do with closely interpreting signals sent to the justices by Thomas Jefferson’s ghost. (“This ruling sponsored in part by [Your Name Here]!”)

Given the disparity between the number of Supreme Court justices and the number of would-be sponsors, an alternative solution is to increase the number of justices until supply meets demand. I think this is also viable, although Mitch McConnell probably doesn’t. But as long as billionaires are willing to pay for justice access privileges (I, personally, would pay good money to not have to spend time listening to Justice Alito, but as an American I cannot opt out of that; he gets to decide what all the laws are), I say ... let them!

We know the court thinks money is speech. Well, let it speak where we can hear it! Legalize justice sponsorship now!