A parallel exists between Wayne La Pierre, former leader of the National Rifle Association, and Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court justice. Both men have damaged public trust in their respective institutions.
As a gun owner and hunter, I have watched over the last few decades as the NRA increasingly polarized its membership via publications, diatribes and pronouncements that had little to do with responsible gun ownership, ethical sport hunting and gun safety. La Pierre’s fever pitch of paranoia and personal fear stretched and contorted the Second Amendment beyond what the founding fathers and founding mothers intended. The average American does not need an automatic weapon capable of shredding human bodies to pieces in seconds.
But regardless of your belief on what belongs or does not belong in a family gun safe, La Pierre abused his role as director of a nonprofit and has recently received severe financial penalties from a New York court. According to The New York Times, a Manhattan jury recently ruled that NRA’s “leaders had engaged in a years long pattern of financial misconduct and corruption.” La Pierre used NRA funds “to pay for personal expenses, including vacations, (and) luxury flights for his relatives and yacht rides.”
La Pierre spent $200,000 of donated dollars on high-priced suits. Jurors agreed that under his leadership, La Pierre squandered $5.4 million of NRA assets. Though he has repaid some money, he still owes $4.35 million. Even that dollar amount does not cover the millions the NRA has spent on lawsuits, as the organization loses members and is in acute financial disarray.
Kris Brown, president of an anti-gun lobby, argues that La Pierre’s monetary damages are “only a drop in the bucket for what he owes the American people for the carnage he fueled.”
La Pierre also owes the American people because he abused the public trust that balances the legal framework for establishing and maintaining nonprofit organizations. Instead, he ran the nonprofit as a “personal piggy bank” in a phrase from a similar story in The Wall Street Journal. What does this have to do with Clarence Thomas? There are apt comparisons.
Justice Thomas has not been on trial. He has not been accused of financial mismanagement, but he has certainly spent time on luxury private jets, on billionaires’ yachts and in exclusive resorts without paying a dime. He has accepted gifts, private school tuition for relatives, and he has occasionally paid nothing for international vacations. In some cases, he did not disclose trips on financial gift reporting forms required by justices, judges, members of Congress and federal employees. The judiciary has a standard code of conduct. Members of Congress can not accept gifts worth $50 or more.
At last year’s spring Fort Lewis College commencement, I tried to give our commencement speaker Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack my book on sheep and sheepherding, “The Woolly West.” I was told I could not do so because the FLC president’s office had already given Vilsack a t-shirt and an FLC sweatshirt.
Those rules make sense. We do not want and cannot have government officials – and especially not judges – being swayed by gifts.
Whatever happened to avoiding impropriety? If the judiciary and federal judges must follow a strict code of ethical conduct, why has Chief Justice John Roberts refused requiring Supreme Court justices to adhere to a similar code? To have faith in our judges, we must have the impartiality that comes from wearing dignified black robes. If the founding fathers believed in the Second Amendment, they also believed in lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court so that justices could take the broad view, not be influenced by the rich and famous, and instead make thorough, thoughtful decisions to benefit all Americans. The spirit of the law is inclusion.
“The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going,” said Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Other famous justices have advocated for civil rights, for the rights of nature, for gender equity, for equal justice under the law.
Wayne LaPierre betrayed the public trust as leader of a nonprofit organization. A jury has decided he needs to write a few checks to the NRA. Justice Clarence Thomas owes us much more. His debt cannot be repaid with a checkbook. He needs to adhere to judicial ethical standards and restore American trust in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Andrew Gulliford, an award-winning author and editor, is a professor of history at Fort Lewis College. Reach him at andy@agullifd.com.
