The Crass Menagerie: The Trump Republican Crime Wave and Corporate Media Double Standards

Media Double Standards

We often hear that “both sides” of the political spectrum engage in objectionable behavior. There are countless radio hosts, streamers, podcasters, and talking heads who spew hate, disinformation, and crackpot conspiracy theories for fame and fortune. That understood, I’m not talking about any of them, as important as some may be. 

I am focusing on an appalling assortment of extreme right wing crooks and kooks who aren’t just pontificating about politics from the sidelines. I’m talking about people currently in elected office, in the White House and the Cabinet, and running the Republican Party. People who are or were in top Trump administration positions, shaping public policy, directing agencies, spending $billions of tax dollars to mislead voters, rigging elections, and turning cruelty into policy. I call these highly important and influential people “The Crass Menagerie.”

For context, it’s essential to examine the mainstream media’s double standards. They routinely engage in astonishing When a left leaning streamer campaigns with a progressive candidate, the press obsess over a stupid thing he said decades ago. When a musician calls for Free Palestine because he hopes everyone can live in peace, mainstream media unleash a firestorm of “coverage.”

The Hassan Piker kerfuffle is just a recent example of this proclivity to gin up outrage over some statement some left leaning c-list celebrity made several years ago. This obsessive preoccupation is well established, but not so well understood. I have some clarifying questions about all of this: 

• Why must we endure a blizzard of media attacks targeting private citizens like Hassan Piker who have no influence over policy?
• Why do these same outlets vilify minor center-left figures for minor misdemeanors (at worst), but treat right wing high crimes as comparatively less important? 
• Most importantly, why do media outlets routinely whitewash, or even amplify white supremacy, harmful extremism, hate mongering, and other atrocities? 

The MSM is forcing us to endure endless hyperventilating reportage, panel discussions, and a demands that Democratic candidates atone for Hassan Piker’s comments about 9/11 made in August 2019. This although he admitted his comment was “inappropriate” and explicitly stated he abhors violence.

A relatively unknown online streamer apologized for saying something he admitted was wrong. Case closed? Not when the corporate media can relentlessly rehash this non-controversy in ways that hamstring a progressive Senate candidate, sabotaging Democratic Party hopes to retake Congress. 

Meanwhile, the same outlets keep dropping coverage of right wing outrages after a few news cycles. We know this is rank hypocrisy just from the numbers. My quick research revealed at least 250 distinct mainstream, nationally distributed, print and broadcast reports treating Hasan Piker as an unspeakable scandal. 

Most of this coverage featured demands that Democratic candidates denounce Piker. His name is appropriate, considering a “piker” is slang for a small timer. He’s simply not important at all. Not when contrasted with far more damaging even fatal misfeasance by Trump and his top officials. So where is the equivalent media coverage of the far more numerous and far more outrageous statements and actions by far more influential right wing figures?

The Trump Republican Hall of Shame

There’s a huge Hall of Shame on the political right. Republican candidates, elected and Party officials, Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries, White House advisors, and Trump himself have committed crimes and coverups, incited hate and violence. I’ll discuss just some of the current and former top level Republican politicians, Republican Party officials, and other important right wing figures who’ve confessed to, been found guilty of, or been credibly accused of heinous crimes. 

Trump’s felonies are just the fish rotting from the head down, but so many others in Trump’s intimate orbit have also committed a crimes, abuses, and outrages. The media routinely downplay Trump and his movement’s repeated misconduct that would end any ordinary political career.

Several people who’ve currently or just recently exercised close and direct access to Trump have demonstrated an alarming pattern of criminal, hateful, and/or unbalanced behavior. Some have admitted to or been convicted of serious crimes. Others (including Trump) were found liable in civil cases, settled out of court, or face serious but unresolved allegations.

This includes an entire cartel’s worth of convicted felons, admitted sex abusers, election saboteurs, conspiracy trolls, authoritarian propagandists, grifters, and the troublingly mentally unbalanced. To be fair, the evidentiary record is not the same for each of these right wing public officials and top level figures. 

So where are the media’s intractable demands that all Republican candidates repudiate these despicable, dangerous, and criminal actions? Cue the crickets. Media outlets relentlessly protect right wing wrongdoers, even crediting their preposterous claims that any scrutiny or investigations that reveal their crimes and misconduct amount to a witch hunt, unjust persecution.

DARVO and Gaslighting

I call DARVO, an acronym for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.” Wikipedia describes this as: “a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.” I use this definition because of its complete and total accuracy.

Reasonable people can question anyone’s use of their free speech rights, calling out a statement as factually wrong, inflammatory, or otherwise inappropriate. That said, Hasan Piker and Macklemore are not presidents, cabinet secretaries, agency heads, members of congress, candidates, or presidential confidants. There’s a hideous false equivalence at work here, and I feel compelled to call it out.

To be clear, criticizing anyone is understandable, but relentless media excoriating a streamer or musician must never be equivalent to the too frequently scant and transitory scrutiny of people in power who order deportations, direct or spike federal prosecutions, conduct military operations, and even try to block the peaceful transfer of power. This is the stunningly common mainstream media double standard: rash or controversial statements by a semi-celebrity covered more or less the same as abuse of governing power that directly causes innocents’ deaths.

Donald Trump: the Criminal in Chief

Trump is not just the main member of the Crass Menagerie. He sits on its throne, as its obscenely disgusting, grifting, gaslighting, serial sex abuse violator. Here are just a very few of the lowdown highlights: 

A New York jury convicted Trump of 34 felonies for falsifying business records. That deserves a second attention. A jury of his peers found Trump guilty of committing dozens of felonies involving deception regarding his illegal cover up and misuse of campaign donations. Specifically, he engineered payments of $130,000 to silence Stormy Daniels, a porn film star with whom he engaged in an illicit affair.

This lone incident combines the worst elements of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Bill Clinton’s sexcapades, and other scandals that dominated media coverage for weeks if not months. Hassan Piker said something dumb. These are not the same. So why the similar mass media coverage? 

A federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and then doubling down on her abuse by defaming her. Her multi-million dollar civil judgment sustained appellate decisions even up to and including Trump’s lapdogs on the Supreme Court. 

This isn’t new. On the infamous Access Hollywood recording, he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals without their consent. These are not anonymous rumors. They include a criminal conviction, a jury finding of civil culpability, disgusting behavior, and a recorded obscene statement. 

Trump keeps orchestrating wholesale attacks on our Constitution, our allies, and our democratic republic. He incited riots seeking to overturn the 2020 election. He pressured public officials to “find him votes,” knowingly promoted or recklessly spreads inflammatory false claims, and fostered the political unrest that culminated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump’s Epstein Connection

Infamous pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein called Trump his “best friend.” Beyond his personal criminal and abusive conduct, Trump’s close association with and coddling of Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell sets off alarm bells. Despite his lies to the contrary, Trump kept close ties with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was federally charged with sex trafficking minors in 2019. 

Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in federal court of helping recruit and groom underage girls for Epstein and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Their criminal culpability is established. Trump’s social relationship with Epstein is also well documented. They appeared together in public, and Trump was a frequent flier on Epstein’s plane, nicknamed “the Lolita Express.” 

Although Trump participated in Epstein’s social affairs, he has not been criminally charged or convicted in connection with Epstein’s sex trafficking. Still, why haven’t the mainstream media fully scrutinized Trump’s close relationship with Epstein, his public goodwill toward Maxwell, his coverup of the Epstein files, or his blanket pardons of January 6th insurrectionists and other thugs?

The president’s documented social proximity to a convicted sex offender, his ongoing stubborn minimization and denial of this explosive scandal, and the culture of criminal impunity Trump cultivates encourages powerful people to hold our laws and common decency in contempt. 

His wholesale pardoning of violent criminals underscore his fundamental contempt for the rule of law, law enforcement, and public safety. Trump and his movement demonstrate they believe laws and rules are for “little people,” not them. None of this is in any way disputed by anyone who isn’t in the tank as a Trump cultist or apologist. 

Why won’t the corporate media obsessively remind us of any of this or any of Trump’s more recent abuses? Why don’t they raise questions about his credibility or competence? You know, as if Trump were a singer or a streamer?

Trump is Just the Tip of the Vice Iceberg

If this were all and only about Trump, that would make this blog much more limited in scope and importance. However, the modern Republican Party is rife with sex abusers, crooks, creeps, and coverups. A cursory overview of relative recent right wing scandals exposes a legion of larceny, licentiousness, and liability.

The Trump movement’s surrounding cast also matters because their abuses and ascendency shows what kinds of people Trump recruits and rewards. He devalues competence and restraint. He demands and promotes aggressiveness, shamelessness, and blind obedience to himself, along with a willingness to trample innocent people and our Constitutional Rights. 

To be fair, significant sexual assaults, corruption, and other misconduct within top Republican Party leadership proceeds Trump’s rise to power. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert plead guilty to structuring bank withdrawals to evade reporting requirements. Prosecutors charged the former Republican leader with using the funds as hush money to keep a former student he’d sexually abused quiet. This from when Hastert was a high-school wrestling coach. 

These aren’t just allegations, however. Hastert admitted in court that he abused boys he coached. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison. This sentence was appallingly lenient because it only included the financial offenses. The statute of limitations for the serial sexual abuse of minor children had expired. Hastert’s admitted molestation of young boys and his shameful betrayal of their parents’ trust reminds us. The qualifier “not convicted” of crimes like raping children sometimes just means the predator got away with it, not “nothing happened.” 

The Republican Party and by extension the mainstream media routinely protect and serve powerful right wing men, despite their unspeakable crimes. Women are not exempt from the Republican crime wave, often also exhibiting open contempt for common decency and the rule of law as well. 

Next to Trump on Air Force One

Laura Loomer and Natalie Harp are just two of the women who’ve enjoyed access to Trump and influenced him. Laura Loomer’s chaotic documented record includes spewing extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu hatred, trafficking in crackpot conspiracy theories, and inciting astonishingly racist and anti-immigrant hatred. 

Various commentators contend that Loomer was involuntarily institutionalized for erratic behavior constituting a threat to herself or others. While those claims shouldn’t be considered established facts without more reliable reporting, the documented record is already disturbing enough. Loomer has promoted conspiracy theories, described herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” amplified false claims about immigrants, and repeatedly used confrontational publicity stunts to gain attention. 

She not only spread the debunked conspiracy theory that Former Hillary Clinton murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, she also accosted Clinton about it at a book signing. In 2018, after Twitter suspended her account, Loomer handcuffed herself to the company’s headquarters. She had to be freed by police with bolt cutters. These and other erratic incidents demonstrate her lack of judgment, reckless rhetoric, and personal misconduct. While Loomer’s role decreased recently, her past intensely intimately close contact with Trump is highly alarming, because she helped determine what the felon in chief saw, heard, believed, and ultimately did.

As Loomer’s influence faded, Natalie Harp’s intensified. She’s identified as a Trump campaign and White House aide who helps manage the liar in chief’s “Truth Social” and other social media accounts. Like Loomer before her, Harp currently acts as a conduit for information reaching Trump. Despite widespread reports of Harp’s erratic behavior, we don’t have any concrete evidence that she is mentally ill, a criminal, or in an improper sexual relationship with serial philanderer and sexual assaulter Trump. 

As with Loomer, documented evidence of Harp’s powerful and influential role in the White House is enough to raise real concerns. These, including questions about who is filtering information for the president, what standards govern that filter, and why does Trump reward conspiracy and hate mongering, racial provocation, and personal loyalty over basic competence? 

Trump Embraces Neo-Nazis

Trump’s racism is well documented. He agitated for the executions of the Central Park Five, innocent young Black men falsely accused of crimes. Government agencies fined Trump for racial discrimination as a landlord. He also welcomed infamous neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and the erratic antisemite rapper Kanye West to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. 

Fuentes is a confirmed, full throated Holocaust denier, and a prominent antisemite who routinely praises Hitler espouses extreme racist and misogynistic hate. Ye, aka Kanye West, repeatedly spews antisemitic statements, also including praising Hitler. So much so that he lost major commercial partnerships. Trump nonetheless hosted Ye and Fuentes to Mar-a-Lago in 2022. 

Trump claims that he didn’t know who Fuentes was and didn’t expect Ye to bring him along. That all too convenient explanation doesn’t excuse the basic fact that the trio had an amicable meeting. It’s also all too in character for Trump who launched his first presidential bid by accusing immigrants of criminality and rape. 

Considering Trump’s own rap sheet, that brings to mind the saying, “Every right wing accusation is a confession.” In any case, Trump welcoming extremists and bigots into his orbit is a meaningful barometer of his own political leanings. This, especially considering how even the most repugnant views echo Trump’s own racism, sexism, and extremism.

Soliciting Minors and Unwanted Sexual Advances

Another Trump cult insider, Ali Alexander, helped organize the January 6th riots. He promoted the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, organized busses to bring rioters to the Capitol, communicated with instigators before the event, and later told investigators about his role. During the Capitol attack, he said, “I do not denounce this.” That alone raises red flags. But there’s much more that should concern anyone about Alexander.

Credible reporting asserts that Alexander sent sexual content to minor boys and also solicited nude material from them. Published accounts described screenshots and other evidence. Allegations that Alexander engaged in criminal sexual misconduct by soliciting sex and nude photos from underaged boys complete his profile as an all too typical Trump cult predator as well as an advocate or apologist for political violence.

Like Trump, Alexander, and other top level Trumpers, high powered conservative Republican Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union and CPAC, allegedly engaged in improper sexual behavior. Former Herschel Walker campaign staffer Carlton Huffman alleged that Schlapp groped him during a car ride. 

The case ended in a reported $480,000 settlement. A sheriff’s report and witness accounts substantiate another separate sexual assault allegation against Schlapp, although the allegedly molested individual declined to seek a warrant. A hefty settlement is not an admission of liability, but it is not an exoneration either.

The point is not to pretend civil settlements or unfiled charges amount to criminal verdict. The point is that the mainstream media repeatedly refuse to apply the same seriousness to allegations against powerful conservative abusers and institutions that they routinely apply to a provocative comments from a marginal celebrities on the center left. 

The American Conservative Union and CPAC are not some powerless online social media accounts or semi-obscure streamers. They’re among the most important and influential conservative institutions. Schlapp and other powerful right wingers decide which politicians and ideas receive legitimacy.

The Crass Menagerie Keeps Growing

The Crass Menagerie is much larger than these examples. Sitting Vice President J.D. Vance went from calling Trump “America’s Hitler” to becoming his running mate and one of his most aggressive defenders. White House Deputy Stephen Miller and Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan helped turn anti-immigrant cruelty into Trump administration policy. Their wikipedia articles are alarming to say the least. Here are two short excerpts:

In September 2024, Homan was reportedly recorded accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. The FBI was investigating allegations that Homan was accepting bribes from border security companies in exchange for the promise of government contracts.

Miller has been a central figure in the Trump administration's immigration policy, including the family separation policy and Executive Order 13769, which restricted travel from several Muslim-majority countries. As director of speechwriting, he supervised the writing of Trump's inaugural and State of the Union addresses. Miller is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of extremists.

Trump’s Crass Cabinet and Related Crassness

Trump elevated Pete Hegseth from a weekend television personality to Secretary of Defense War’s despite his record of bankrupting charities. Trump appointed “Mister Measles” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to governing health policy. The famous worm brained crank spread vaccine misinformation like a disease, costing adults’ and children’s lives, casualties to easily preventable diseases. 

The Republican Senate is complicit for confirming these grossly incompetent people to the Cabinet, along with similar Cabinet level failures Kristy Noem as Homeland Security Secretary and Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Also, sub-cabinet officials including podcasting conspiracy spreaders Kash Patel and Dan Bongino at the FBI.

Other top Trump advisors faced legal consequences. Rudy Giuliani was found liable for defaming Georgia election workers. Peter Navarro was convicted of contempt of Congress after defying a subpoena. Steve Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress and received a presidential pardon. Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI before Trump’s intervention ended the prosecution. Trump donor and failed Republican candidate Mike Lindell built a business around election lies. 

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene made conspiracy, violent imagery, and dehumanizing rhetoric central to her public career. Congressman Paul Gosar was censured and removed from Congressional committees after circulating an animation depicting violence against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Biden. 

Sacked former FOX rumormonger Tucker Carlson campaigned beside Trump and pedaled election theft lies that ultimately cost him his job and cost his employers at $millions. Discovery during the lawsuit filed by Dominion exposed the huge gulf between what Fox personalities said privately and what they broadcast publicly. 

Supreme Crass and the Culture of Crassness

Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted and failed to disclose luxury travel and other benefits from Harlan Crow. His confirmation barely survived detailed allegations of sexual misconduct. Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh survived detailed accusations of ongoing alcohol abuse and past sexual assault. Again, Republican Senators confirmed both of them.

Leaked chat messages implicated dozens of “Young” Republican officials (some in their forties) included racial slurs, praise for Hitler, “jokes” about gas chambers, and fantasies contemplating political violence. These examples barely scratch the surface of the vile and disgusting prevailing culture that pervades today’s Republican Party.

The conservative movement, from the felonious DJT, his Cabinet, and on down to rank and file Republican operatives demonstrate extremism, criminality, and rank abusiveness. Each case is different. The pattern is not. The pattern is a movement in which lawless and loathsome behavior is a loyalty test. 

We’ve seen almost endless examples of top level Trumpers, right wing officials, and elected or party Republican officials committing, defending, enabling, and covering up profiteering grifting, racism, antisemitism, sexism, xenophobia, and other hate and ignorance, as well as sexual misconduct including pedophilia, and incitement of political violence. Please comment below to mention any notorious right wing officials I missed.

Media Complicity

The corporate media enable and perpetuate this horrendous situation. A person who apologizes, resigns, or loses a sponsorship is permanently cancelled, but only if they’re on political center or left. Conversely, powerful people who control entire federal agencies with $billion budgets, or direct prosecutions, military policy, and presidential access, commit the unspeakable but escape accountability.

We the People deserve more than one-sided outrage theater. We deserve serious and responsible media coverage that differentiates trivialities from actual impact, free speech from state action, and access to power from innocuousness. We deserve journalism that follows the money all the way up the chain of power to expose those who commit serious crimes or violate the public trust in ways that create a body count. 

In any sane world, the press would measure someone’s importance against the amount of coverage they devote to their statements or actions. In each case, journalist ethics require media to ask five simple questions: What power or influence does this person wield? What has the person actually done? What evidence supports the claim? What are the consequences for other people? Did a major political party or institution reward, excuse, or punish the conduct? 

If asked and answered, those questions would produce a more serious hierarchy of attention. Hasan Piker’s or Macklemore’s rhetoric may deserve criticism, but coverage of private individuals expressing their opinions must never eclipse media scrutiny of public officials busily attacking our rights, deploying federal force to kill us, working to undermine elections, or sabotaging our access to public information. Celebrity controversy is not always trivial; it is simply not comparable to a governing scandal.

Accountability Anyone?

I’m not saying that entertainers should be immune from accountability. I am questioning the total lack of proportionality. A public figure with no formal role in government may influence culture. A senior presidential adviser, Cabinet Secretary, Republican Party official, or wealthy platform owner wields influence over life and death of millions of American and other people around the world.

The press should not spend more energy litigating whether a musician’s rhetoric meets a some purity test than examining whether a President and his allies are committing crimes, attacking constitutional rights, intimidating election workers, politicizing the civil service, or normalizing political violence.

The situation becomes especially grotesque when we keep seeing the major media treating a past statement by a minor progressive-adjacent online streamer as a national emergency. This, while they routinely dismiss presidential misconduct and wholesale Republican Party wide extremism running rampant as a minor story. The crassness of the Republican menagerie isn’t the point. Their horrifyingly relentless abuse of power, with mainstream media enabling them, is.

Trump’s coalition including almost the entirety of the Republican Party is rife with corruption, perversion, and abuse. Their reign of terror goes so far beyond a few insensitive quotes or some embarrassing dinner guests. Trumpism is defined by the misconduct of all the President’s men and women. Trump and his administration repeatedly elevate dozens of people whose hideous self-dealing and recklessness once would have and still should end anyone’s career. 

Criminal convictions, admissions of guilt, civil jury verdict, settlements, police records, documented and recorded examples of obscene extremist speech, taken together, reveal a corrupt and perverse political culture that embraces abuse, bigotry, conspiracy, intimidation, and contempt for democracy and freedom.

Who Serves We The People?

We the People need protections from growing economic insecurity. We need a government that respects and expands our civil and voting rights. We rely on public institutions that tell the truth, and leaders who understand that power comes with responsibility, it’s not a license to abuse us.

Unlike the Trump / Republican horror show or their eager media enablers, progressives keep our focus on ending the abuse of power and curing the harsh consequences suffered by innocent people at home and abroad. We offer voters sound and proven policies to make their lives better. Green New Deal. Medicare for All. Comprehensive housing, nutrition, education for everyone. This, as opposed to the alternative: a carnival of cruelty, corruption, abuse, and lies from a hateful, extremist cabal that seeks to undermine our democracy. 

References:

[1]: https://manhattanda.org/donald-j-trump-found-guilty-on-all-34-counts/ "Manhattan District Attorney: Donald J. Trump Found Guilty on All 34 Counts" 

[2]: https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d… "Associated Press: Jury Finds Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse and Defamation" 

[3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-hot-mic-when-you-r…- do-n662116 "NBC News: Trump Hot-Mic Recording" 

[4]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jeffrey-epstein-charged-sex-trafficking-… "U.S. Department of Justice: Jeffrey Epstein Charged With Sex Trafficking of Minors" 

[5]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-found-guilty-con…- abuse-minors "U.S. Department of Justice: Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty" 

[6]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/prosecutors-detail-sex-abuse-allega…- dennis-hastert "PBS NewsHour: Prosecutors Detail Sex-Abuse Allegations Against Dennis Hastert" 

[7]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/13/laura-loomer-trump-harris-raci… "Politico: Laura Loomer Remarks and Trump Proximity" 

[8]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/laura-loomer-trump-campai…- controversy-rcna170407 "NBC News: Laura Loomer’s Access to Trump" 

[9]: https://apnews.com/article/trump-kanye-west-nick-fuentes-mar-a-lago- antisemitism-0d2d2b7cb7774f93c743d7e84dca87fd "Associated Press: Trump, Ye, and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago" 

[10]: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/ye-kanye-west-antisemitic-comments "Anti- Defamation League: Ye’s Antisemitic Comments" 

[11]: https://abcnews.com/Politics/stop-steal-organizer-ali-alexander-told-ja…? id=81837303 "ABC News: Ali Alexander and the January 6 Committee" 

[12]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/26/sexual-assault-lawsuit-matt-sc… "Politico: Sexual-Assault Lawsuit Against Matt Schlapp" 

[13]: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4561712-cpac-matt-schlapp-…- assault/ "The Hill: CPAC’s Matt Schlapp Settlement" 

[14]: https://www.congress.gov/117/crec/2021/11/17/167/201/CREC-2021-11-17-pt…- 2.pdf "Congressional Record: House Censure of Paul Gosar"

[15]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filings/2023/03/16/23-719_0.pdf "U.S. Supreme Court Filing: Clarence Thomas Ethics Disclosures Context"