Records expunged for St. Louis couple who waved guns at protesters. They want their guns back

https://www.yahoo.com/news/records-expunged-st-louis-couple-180544814.html

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A judge has expunged the misdemeanor convictions of a St. Louis couple who waved guns at racial injustice protesters outside their mansion in 2020. Now they want their guns back.

Attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey filed a request in January to have the convictions wiped away. Judge Joseph P. Whyte wrote in an order Wednesday that the purpose of an expungement is to give people who have rehabilitated themselves a second chance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. City prosecutors and police opposed the expungements.

Immediately after the judge's ruling, Mark McCloskey demanded that the city return the two guns seized as part of his 2021 guilty plea to misdemeanor assault. Republican Gov. Mike Parson pardoned the couple weeks after the plea.

“It’s time for the city to cough up my guns,” he told the Post-Dispatch.

If it doesn’t, he said, he’ll file a lawsuit.

The McCloskeys said they felt threatened by the protesters, who were passing their home in June 2020 on their way to demonstrate in front of the mayor’s house nearby. It was one of hundreds of demonstrations around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple also said the group was trespassing on a private street.

Mark McCloskey emerged from his home with an AR-15-style rifle, and Patricia McCloskey waved a semi-automatic pistol.

Justice Clarence Thomas formally reports trip to Bali paid for by conservative donor

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/07/politics/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-bali/index.html

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday formally disclosed a 2019 trip to Indonesia paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, a vacation that was at the center of the controversy over his travel.

The trip to Bali was the focus of the original report in ProPublica last year that triggered months of headlines about posh travel accepted by justices. Though the news organization’s reporting raised awareness of the trip, Thomas did not formally disclose it on his previous reports.

Thomas’ annual financial disclosure, which would typically disclose travel, gifts and outside income for the prior year, included a note at the end listing Harlan and Kathy Crow as the source of a trip to Bali in July 2019. The couple paid for “food and lodging,” according to the report. Thomas did not place a value on the travel.

Thomas also reported a trip paid for by the Crows to a private club in Monte Rio, California, that same month.

The annual disclosures, which are required by law, provide only a rough sketch of the finances of the justices and lower court judges. But the reports have drawn considerable attention in recent years amid a series of ethics scandals involving private jet travel and luxury vacations accepted by some of the justices as well as lucrative book deals.

Much of that attention has focused on two members of the conservative wing, Thomas and Samuel Alito. Thomas has come under fire for a series of trips he accepted from Crow. Alito drew fire for attending a luxury fishing trip on the private jet of a conservative hedge fund manager. Most of that travel was not initially disclosed.

As in past years, Alito received a 90-day extension on his report.

The governing body of the judicial branch announced last year that it had tightened the rules. Previously, justices could withhold disclosing certain trips – including private jet travel – by claiming they were extended as “personal hospitality.” Thomas, specifically, explained the travel as “personal hospitality” from “close personal friends.”

Justices and judges must make a “good faith estimate of the fair market value” of that travel if the exact value can’t easily be obtained.

The reports, which cover the 2023 calendar year, are also the first to land since the Supreme Court adopted a code of conduct for the first time in its history last fall. That code, which also came as a response to the travel scandals, was embraced by all nine justices. But the document has prompted skepticism from ethics experts and some Democratic lawmakers because it includes no enforcement mechanism.

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Beyoncé gave concert tickets to Ketanji Brown Jackson, according to docs also showing large payments for justices’ book deals

Beyoncé gave Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson four tickets to her concert last year, the justice disclosed in financial disclosure forms published Friday that also revealed that Jackson and other justices received six-figure payments in 2023 for book deals.

Jackson, who reported an eye-popping $893,750 payment from a book publisher, was joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor in reporting income from books that they have published or have coming out in the future.

The book deals have at times been controversial. Supreme Court justices and other government officials are capped on receiving more than about $30,000 in outside income, but book income doesn’t count toward that cap.

Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, was paid by Penguin Random House, the book publisher that is publishing her upcoming memoir.

Kavanaugh, a conservative who recently disclosed he is writing a memoir, listed a $340,000 payment from the Javelin Group agency.

Gorsuch, who is also publishing a book this year, reported royalty income of $250,000.

Book deals are typically paid in installments, so the full financial windfall justices receive from their books will not be known for several more years.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2022 reported receiving a $425,000 advance on her book, a figure that drew some criticism. In this most recent report, however, she didn’t list any additional income from that deal.

Sotomayor, who has written a series of children’s books, reported receiving two installments of royalty payments from Random House — a $47,704.63 payment in May 2023, and a $39,079.59 payment in December. Jackson reported the Beyoncé concert tickets — worth a total $3,711.84 — as part of a disclosure mandate for gifts worth $480 or more.

The artist Lonnie Holley, meanwhile, gifted Jackson artwork for her chambers valued at $10,000. The justice also received artwork worth $2,5000 from Dr. Kathi Earles-Ross and others.

Justice Clarence Thomas said he received two photo albums worth a total $2,000 from Terrence and Barbara Giroux. Terrence Giroux is the executive director emeritus of the Horatio Alger Association, an elite philanthropic organization of which Thomas is a member.

The annual disclosures, which are required by law, provide only a rough sketch of the finances of the justices and lower court judges. But the reports have drawn considerable attention in recent years amid a series of ethics scandals involving private jet travel and luxury vacations accepted by some of the justices.

Several justices reported foreign and domestic travel paid for by law schools and outside legal groups. Gorsuch, for instance, reported traveling to Lisbon, Portugal, last summer with George Mason University for an “education program” and to London months earlier for a Federalist Society program. Kavanaugh and Barrett also both traveled to London last year, both with the University of Notre Dame.

Others listed domestic trips, including Justice Elena Kagan, who was reimbursed for travel to Notre Dame in Indiana for a speech in September. Sotomayor was reimbursed for a trip to Los Angeles last summer for an award ceremony and to Harvard University in November to sit on a moot court.

The new disclosures also revealed income justices received from various side gigs. Multiple justices received income for teaching and for rental properties, while Sotomayor was paid for a voice-acting role on an animated show.

Gorsuch received $29,798.20 last year for teaching at George Mason University, while Kavanaugh’s gig teaching at Notre Dame Law school brought him $25,000.

Barrett was paid $14,947.50 last year by Notre Dame, where she is an adjunct professor. That is significantly less than the nearly $30,000 in 2022 teaching income from Notre Dame that she reported on her annual disclosures last year.

For a voice performance on the animated television show “Alma’s Way,” Sotomayor received $1,879.16.

Sotomayor also reported rental income from a property in New York and a property in Florida, while Chief Justice John Roberts disclosed rental income from a cottage in Maine and from a cottage he partially owns in Ireland. Thomas listed rental income received through an LLC called “Ginger Holdings” for a property in Nebraska, his wife’s home state.

Kagan, meanwhile, said she made somewhere between $15,001 to $50,000 last year renting out a parking space in Washington, DC.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/07/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-beyonce-concert-tickets/index.html