Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated to the high court by Joe Biden, has been accused of deliberately omitting mandatory income disclosures for years while she served on the federal bench.
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The Center for Renewing America has filed an ethics complaint against Justice Jackson, alleging that she “willfully failed to disclose” information regarding her husband’s malpractice consulting income spanning over a decade. In a letter to the Judicial Conference, the think tank suggests that the Conference should refer the potential ethics violations to Attorney General Merrick Garland so they can be investigated.
According to Fox News Digital, “The letter notes that federal judges are legally required to disclose the ‘source of items of earned income earned by a spouse from any person which exceeds $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.’”
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, Dr. Patrick Jackson, more than $1,000 for the year 2011, the letter notes.
In subsequent filings, however, Jackson “repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees,” the letter reads.
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“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 reads.
According to Russ Vought, a former Trump White House official who runs the Center for Renewing America, “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 headed up the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Trump, argues that Dr. Jackson’s income does not qualify for the “self-employment” exception. The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (EIGA) requires Justice Jackson to identify the “source of items of earned income earned by a spouse from any person which exceeds $1,000.”
The former OMB chief argues that since Jackson was aware of the requirements in 2012 enough to list the specific sources of income for her first disclosure filing but not in subsequent filings, apart from admitting that she left off some of her husband’s income, her actions amount to “willful” violation of the law.
The letter also says there is reason to believe Justice Jackson may have failed to report the private funding sources of her “massive investiture celebration at the Library of Congress” in her most recent financial disclosure.
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According to Vought, Jackson’s “disturbing trend of not reporting material sources of income and gifts” has “shielded potential conflicts of interest from public scrutiny and undermined the ability of the public, outside watchdog groups, and parties to scrutinize her recusal decisions.”