The Judicial Conference’s Committee on Financial Disclosures has initiated an ethics probe into Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The investigation is in response to an allegation that she failed to disclose her husband’s financial information in her disclosures.
Fox News reported that the conservative group, Center for Renewing America, filed a complaint with the Judicial Conference claiming that Jackson deliberately omitted details about her husband’s income from malpractice consulting over ten years.
The organization was informed on December 21st that their complaint had been formally referred to the Financial Disclosures Committee.
“We are hopeful that the Judicial Conference takes a long, hard look at the ethics concerns surrounding Justice Jackson and ensures there is not a double standard for justices,” Russ Vought, a former senior Trump administration official and president of CRA, said in a statement to Fox News.
“While the Left has made it a sport to attack the character of conservative Supreme Court justices, they’ve turned a blind eye to actual indiscretions and appearances of corruption actively happening,” he added.
Fox News continued:
CRA’s letter suggests that the Judicial Conference should ultimately refer Jackson’s possible ethics violations to Attorney General Merrick Garland for investigation and possible civil enforcement.
The letter noted that federal judges are legally required to disclose the “source of items of earned income earned by a spouse from any person which exceed $1,000… except… if the spouse is self-employed in business or a profession, only the nature of such business or profession needs be reported.”
During the nomination process for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Jackson disclosed that two of her husband’s medical malpractice consulting clients had paid him more than $1,000 in 2011.
The details can be found in the letter provided.
However, in subsequent filings, Jackson “repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees,” the letter said.
“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 went on.
Vought noted 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, in her admission of omissions on her 2020 amended disclosure form (filed in 2022), Justice Jackson provided only the vague statement that ‘some’ of those past disclosures contained material omissions.”
Vought, who previously served as the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during President Trump’s administration, argued that Dr. Jackson’s income did not meet the criteria for the “self-employment” exception.
He pointed out that according to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (EIGA), Justice Jackson is required to disclose any earned income exceeding $1,000 and identify its source.
Vought further claimed that Jackson’s initial disclosure filing in 2012, which included a detailed listing of income sources but subsequent filings did not, along with her admission of omitting some of her husband’s income, demonstrates a deliberate violation of the law.
This viewpoint aligns with criticisms from left-wing advocacy groups and Democratic members of Congress towards Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for allegedly failing to disclose vacations funded by Republican donor friends.
Both Thomas and Alito have consistently maintained their adherence to ethics requirements.
In response to heightened scrutiny, particularly from Senate Judiciary Democrats advocating for new ethics regulations for the Supreme Court, the court issued a revised “Code of Conduct” in November.
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