By Sandy Fitzgerald | Wednesday, 20 December 2023 08:49 AM EST Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is being accused in an ethics complaint of failing to disclose full information about her husband’s income and not revealing private contributions that were made for the Library of Congress event celebrating her investiture into the high court.The complaint, made through the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank, was addressed in a letter to Roslynn Mauskopf, head of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and claims that the financial disclosure matters are violations of federal law and could cause Jackson, a nominee last year of President Joe Biden, recusal issues in the future.The letter, written by think tank President Russell Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under former President Donald Trump, alleges that Jackson “has demonstrated a disturbing trend of not reporting material sources of income and gifts.” It called on the conference to refer the justice to Attorney General Merrick Garland “for her failure to disclose her husband’s consulting income and open an investigation into the potential private funding of her investiture celebration.” In the first part of his letter, Vought said Jackson, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Biden last year, failed to disclose income from medical malpractice consulting fees collected by her surgeon husband, Dr.Patrick Jackson.”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,'” Vought said.He added that Jackson had given “the vague statement that ‘some’ of those past disclosures contained material omissions.” The letter pointed out that under federal law, judicial officers must disclose the source of items of earned income by a spouse that exceeds $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.” As part of her nomination to the U.S.District Court for the District of Columbia, Jackson disclosed the names of two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband more than $1,000 in 2011.
However, Vought wrote that Jackson “repeatedly” did not disclose the fees on subsequent filings.
“It is also troubling that Justice Jackson disclosed two sources of her husband’s medical malpractice consulting work in 2011 and then never disclosed another source despite his having received such income in subsequent years,” Vought said.”Justice Jackson now apparently seeks to describe her husband’s consulting work under the ‘self-employment’ exception in order to avoid disclosing the sources of her husband’s consulting income,” he added.”[Her] willful refusal to disclose her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income on several reports undermine the text and fundamental purpose of the ethics laws and calls into doubt her ability to discharge her duties impartially.” The complaint also noted that on the day Jackson was sworn in, “at her request, the Library of Congress hosted a massive invitation-only celebration” featuring several musical performances with the library insisting that the event was privately funded.The donations, however, went “unreported” on the justice’s most recent financial disclosure, Vought wrote.But federal law requires judicial officers to disclose the value of all gifts received of over $415.11, but the Jackson event “easily cost tens of thousands of dollars, likely even more,” the letter said, which requires that she provide the identity of sources who contributed to the celebration.”Jackson demonstrated awareness of this same disclosure requirement when she reported other post-investiture gifts such as a $1,200 floral display,” he wrote.
“She demonstrated knowledge of this requirement when she disclosed the receipt of $6,580 in designer clothes from Vogue Magazine for a photo shoot.” Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.© 2023 Newsmax.
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