If there’s anyone congressional Republicans should find credible in the ethics controversy surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, it’s Judge Mark L. Wolf. As The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus explained in her latest column, Wolf “has spent his career fighting against corruption and for the rule of law — as a public corruption prosecutor, as a federal judge, as a crusader against international kleptocracy.”
What’s more, he’s done so with a partisan pedigree that should bolster his credibility with GOP lawmakers: Wolf got his start in the Ford administration, before ultimately being nominated for the federal bench by Ronald Reagan.
But in 2011 and 2012, during his tenure on the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is responsible for reviewing jurists’ financial disclosure reports, Wolf examined complaints about Thomas, which he deemed credible, and which led to a series of questions about possible ethics lapses and how they were handled.
Wolf’s efforts were largely ignored. His term on the panel expired before he could get answers.
It was against this backdrop that the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week on ethics rules and judicial financial disclosures. Not surprisingly given his lengthy career and background, members invited Wolf to testify.
It was there that Wolf, now a senior judge, heard outrage from Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana — not because he Wolf failed to get answers, but because he dared to ask questions. From Marcus’ column:
Kennedy dismissed Wolf as “a lone federal judge … obsessed with complaining” about Thomas but himself guilty of ethical missteps. He cited discredited information placed in the file of an FBI informant that Wolf, as a federal prosecutor, had leaked evidence to organized crime. He asserted that Wolf had engaged in a “highly unethical move — that’s an understatement” when he declined to recuse himself from a death penalty case after moderating a…
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