Law enforcement is fond of saying "no one is above the law."
But the questions surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' unreported luxury gifts from a conservative billionaire over two decades are shedding light – once again – on the imbalance that ethics watchdogs say exists when it comes to who is held accountable and who is not.
"There's definitely a double standard at play here," said Walter Shaub, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. "An executive branch employee or, for that matter, even a member of Congress who so flagrantly violated the financial disclosure law as Clarence Thomas had, would certainly face some sort of consequences for their actions."
Shaub is also a former head of the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees how executive branch employees comport themselves – that's everyone from Census and National Parks workers to military generals and even the president of the United States.
He argues that there's one standard for the high-profile and politically connected and another for the almost two million lower-level federal workers.
"The Department of Justice has shown a real unwillingness to hold the top officials in government to the same standard it holds lower-level officials to," Shaub said. "And if you think about it, that's government ethics standing on its head, because the higher up you go and the more power you have to do harm, the more you should be held accountable, because the stakes are so much...
Lee Won-taek, governor of North Jeolla Province, has been referred to prosecutors on charges of publishing false information by claiming he had personally paid for meals for himself and his aides ...