(RepublicanNews.org) – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has received more than three-and-a-half million dollars from Random House but failed to recuse herself from a case in which the publisher was a defendant.
In fact, Sotomayor has participated in more than one case involving the publisher of her lucrative memoir.
Documents obtained by Daily Wire show Sotomayor got her first paycheck from the publishing house in 2012, in the form of a $1.9 million advance. The next year, the Supreme Court denied a hearing to a plaintiff who sued Random House for what he claimed was unfairly rejecting his would-be book about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Then in 2019, Sotomayor voted to deny a hearing to plaintiff Jennie Nicassio. She was suing Random House for what she claimed was the company selling a book by a different author that was almost identical to Nicassio’s would-be book.
Between those two cases, Sotomayor participated in several others involving the publishing giant.
The ethics questions about Sotomayor’s choices come at the same time Democrats are attacking conservative Justice Clarence Thomas for what they call ethics violations. Liberals accuse Thomas of taking “gifts” from his personal friend, billionaire Harlan Crow.
Thomas rebutted these accusations by saying Crow extended “hospitality” to Thomas and his wife, as family friends do. The liberal publication ProPublica has published two “investigative” articles about Thomas and Crow, the most recent on May 4th. He also noted that Supreme Court ethics rules at the time of these alleged “gifts” did not bar any of these transactions.
Conservatives say Sotomayor’s behavior is an obvious ethics violation at the nation’s highest court. Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network said Sotomayor took millions of dollars from a company with business before the Supreme Court, and “liberals could care less.”
The nonpartisan organization Fix the Court, which advocates for transparency in the federal court system, said Sotomayor should have recused herself from Random House cases.
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