Instant karma’s gonna get you …

If you follow any of the news stories regarding Clarence Thomas and other conservative jurists on the Supreme Court, you’ve likely heard of Fix the Court and Gabe Roth. The group advocates for “reform” of the Supreme Court and has latched onto the recent media efforts to paint Thomas and others as corrupt, while ignoring actual conflicts of interest, such as Sonia Sotomayor’s votes on cases involving her publisher while receiving more than $3 million in income from her books. Media outlets frequently seek out comment from Roth on such matters.

Well, it turns out that Fix the Court has some transparency issues of its own. Or rather, had some transparency issues — until Roth “screwed up” and released donor lists to the Washington Examiner’s Gabriel Kaminsky. Kaminsky had discovered that Fix the Court had not disclosed its donors to the IRS as required, and that’s when the comedy begins. But first, Kaminsky takes us on a trip down memory lane (via Red State):

Fix the Court, which lists a Brooklyn, New York, address on federal tax forms obtained by the Washington Examiner, launched in 2014 with a six-figure advertising campaign slamming Supreme Court justices for their “disdain for openness and transparency,” USA Today reported. On the heels of conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed, reports surfaced on how Fix the Court owned both BrettKavanaugh.com and BrettKavanaugh.net and used them to link to sexual assault resources.

Most recently, Fix the Court has taken aim at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas following multiple reports on him not formally disclosing certain gifts, particularly from Texas billionaire and real estate mogul Harlan Crow. It obtained Supreme Court security records in connection to a 2016 flight Thomas took on Crow’s jet, according to ProPublica, which detailed other trips as well. Still, the Supreme Court only tightened gift disclosure requirements on March 14, 2023, long after the flights occurred — making it unclear whether the justice could have violated federal law.

Kaminsky noticed the lack of transparency in Fix the Court’s own required filings as a non-profit, and reached out to Roth for comment. Roth responded by sending him the complete updated tax filings, including the names of the donors to Fix the Court. Roth panicked immediately afterward, begging Kaminsky to keep them quiet:

Following this, Roth emailed over copies of his Schedule B’s for 2021 and 2022, replying one minute later, “S***, I’m not legally allowed to send you those. I really messed up. Can you call me now?”

Kaminsky called, and Roth continued on the record:

“As you can see if you’ve reviewed the forms, I’m not a good fundraiser,” Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court and a former vice president at the Democratic consulting firm SKDK, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “I’m not a good CPA. I’m a klutz. Schedule B is not something that is sent out, right? It’s not made public. Like, if you’re donating to a 501(c)(3), the IRS gets to see who donates to you, but the general public doesn’t.”

“I mean, basically, I’ve tried to donate money; I have failed,” Roth added. “I tried to raise money; I have failed. I have only two foundations that give me money, and if their names become public, they’re never going to talk to me again, and Fix the Court is over. My screwup this morning probably cost me my job.”

So who were these donors? The list seems rather pedestrian, nothing more than a smattering of investor groups and foundations. The New Venture Fund kicked in $111K and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation another $175K in 2021, the latter of which is a big Planned Parenthood supporter. Another pro-abortion group, the Lebowitz-Aberly Family Foundation, has also provided support to RothGee, do you think that the Dobbs case may have had anything to do with that — and with Fix the Court’s attempts to amplify the smear campaigns on Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh? This makes it look as though these groups wanted to fund an intimidation campaign before and after the Dobbs decision, as well as foment enough anger to force radical reform onto the court.

But is that what will cost Roth his job? Perhaps, although one has to doubt that these institutional donors care much about that kind of exposure. Assuming he does get fired, the exposure that matters might be about what a pathetic organization Fix the Court turns out to be. According to Kaminsky, the group’s tax records show that Roth earned a little over $162,000 in 2022 as executive director, while Fix the Court only had $195,512 in revenue. That doesn’t leave any other funds for employment, and it raises the question as to whether Roth has been soaking donors just to keep himself employed as a self-directed troll.

That might be the revelation Roth fears most — the fact that Fix the Court is nothing more than Roth and the benighted donors who float his lifestyle. This is the “expert” to whom media outlets turned for analysis and commentary? The man who couldn’t do taxes for his one-man band properly, while at the same time failed to organize and fundraise for his effort? The New York Times alone has cited Roth as an expert on the topic of ‘transparency’ and ethics five times in the last six weeks. Apparently no one at the Paper of Record bothered to check the bona fides of Roth or Fix the Court before painting him as an expert.

And Roth couldn’t even keep the tax records straight in one-man office with only a handful of donors, and couldn’t handle one legit media inquiry without blowing his cover. What a joke. At least Roth can rest assured that he’ll still meet the NYT’s exacting standards for expertise on taxes, disclosure, and ethics … because they have none.