Ketanji Brown Jackson Slapped With Ethics Complaint Over Husband’s Income

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who was appointed to the nation’s court by President Biden last year — is facing an ethics complaint for “willfully” omitting mandatory income disclosures while serving on the federal bench.

The Center For Renewing America, a think tank led by former Trump official Russ Vought, sent a sent a letter to the Judicial Conference alleging that Jackson “willfully failed to disclose” information about her husband’s malpractice consulting income for more than a decade.

“There is reason to believe that Justice Jackson may have failed to report the private funding sources of her massive investiture celebration at the Library of Congress in her most recent financial disclosure,” states the letter.

“Given the need to ensure the equal application of the law and the tendency of these violations to create serious recusal issues and conflicts of interest, the Conference’s prompt attention is of paramount public importance,” the complaint goes on to say. The letter further calls on the Judicial Conference to refer Brown Jackson’s violations to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

During her nomination process to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Jackson disclosed the names of two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband more than $1,000. In subsequent followings, the letter notes, Jackson “repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees.”

“We know this by Justice Jackson’s own admission in her amended disclosure form for 2020, filed when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that ‘some of my previously filed reports inadvertently omitted’ her husband’s income from ‘consulting on medical malpractice cases,’” the letter goes on to say.

Vought highlights that “Jackson has not even attempted to list the years for which her previously filed disclosures omitted her husband’s consulting income. Instead, in her admission of omissions on her 2020 amended disclosure form (filed in 2022), Justice Jackson provided only the vague statement that ‘some’ of those past disclosures contained material omissions.”

The letter also makes a separate allegation, claiming that Jackson may have failed to disclose funding sources of her “massive investiture celebration at the Library of Congress” in her most recent financial disclosure.”

Following her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2022, the Library of Congress hosted a massive event in her honor that featured performances by several celebrities and musical groups, according to a report from Fox News. It is unclear who paid for the event.

EIGA requires that any gift “received over $415” be disclosed.