The Patriot Post® · Justice Sotomayor Uses Staff for Personal Gain

The definition of corruption, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers).”

Corruption has been the charge that Democrats have been trying to hang around the necks of Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Both conservative justices are accused of having rich friends who agree with them politically. Thanks to the leftist activists at ProPublica, Thomas’s friendships were dragged before a Senate ethics committee, and Alito went on the offensive in The Wall Street Journal to defend his association with his friend.

This patently transparent attempt by the radical Left to destabilize the Supreme Court is relentless and also pretty hypocritical. As Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) described the Democrats’ actions: “This is all just a thuggish shakedown. Nice Supreme Court you’ve got there America, sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

The ultimate goal of the radical leftists is to pack the Supreme Court. To do that, they need to sway public opinion against the integrity of the Court by attacking the reliably conservative justices.

Ironically, there is a justice who is lacking in integrity. It’s just not Alito or Thomas.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is pushing her books on libraries and colleges whenever she has a speaking engagement. She is also using her staff to help. Just to be clear, this sort of activity would be an ethics violation in any other branch of government.

Thomas’s and Alito’s trips with their friends happened years ago and didn’t run afoul of the rules. Sotomayor’s book-selling racket is recent and frequent in occurrence. The Associated Press has several examples, including a 2019 email to Multnomah County Library from Sotomayor’s staffer Anh Le:

For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough. Families purchase multiples and people will be upset if they are unable to get in line because the book required is sold out.

Through this practice of using her influence and name to sell her books at speaking events (on top of getting paid to speak, we might add), she has earned $3.7 million. When you consider that her yearly salary is $285,400, that’s quite a pay raise. Another interesting aspect is that there are several forms of additional income that are restricted to $30,000 a year for the justices. Book selling just happens to be a loophole in the restrictions.

Sotomayor’s actions are destabilizing to the Court because she is promoting herself over the institution that she is currently serving. As former federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig said: “I have never believed that Supreme Court justices should write books to supplement their judicial incomes. The potential for promotion of the individual justices over the Court at the reputational expense of the Court as an institution, as well as the appearance of such, is unavoidable.”

Like Alito and Thomas, Sotomayor’s capitalist venture is not a rules violation. However, unlike Alito and Thomas, Sotomayor is actually misusing taxpayer dollars. Her staff is being paid by taxpayers to organize these events for her and convince libraries and colleges to buy her books.

We return to the definition of corruption. Who fits that definition more closely: the conservative justices with wealthy friends, or the left-wing justice using her staff to hawk her books?