For years, Clarence Thomas has been showered with gifts. Flights on a billionaire’s private jet, lavish vacations cruising on his superyacht, summer stays at his Adirondacks compound, tuition for a child Thomas was raising, a quarter-million-dollar motorhome a wealthy friend paid for.

Those gifts were income, and income belongs on a tax return. Thomas treated them as nothing, and no public record shows he ever reported a dollar of it. Under Virginia law, leaving income that size off a return, if it was done to cheat the state, is a felony. The evidence is already public, and he could be charged on Monday.

Virginia law makes it a felony to file a state income tax return with a false statement on it, made with intent to defraud the Commonwealth. The statute is Virginia Code section 58.1-348, it carries up to five years in prison per count, and the clock has not run out on the returns Thomas filed for tax years 2020 through 2024. That is the whole case, and unlike everything else, it is a case a county prosecutor in Virginia has the plain authority to bring.

  • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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    2 hours ago

    thats a pretty astute observation. still, narrowly missing a “state-level charlie kirk” because the fascists are just fucking bad at the job is not the type of comfort I hope for.