WHAT DO PENGUIN, RANDOM HOUSE, DOUBLEDAY, BALLANTINE, KNOPF, VIKING, PUTMAN, DEL REY, GOLDEN BOOKS HAVE IN COMMON? AND WHAT IS THE LINK TO (some) SUPREME COURT JUDGES?

According to a very interesting article I have been forwarded, Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Ballantine, Knopf, Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books, plus many more, are all owned by Bertelsmann: a German ex-Nazi publishing giant (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21733/bertelsmann-paying-supreme-court-justices).

There’s more.

Here are details of advances paid to some of the Supreme Court judges:

• Jackson [a Supreme Court judge] received a $893,750 advance for her memoir and is now reporting $2 million in profits last year. These would be record numbers for a Supreme Court Justice's biography from a book that hardly anyone had noticed when it came out. And while books can become unexpected successes once released, there was little sign of that happening.

• Penguin Random House will be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett's book for which she received a $2 million advance. That's money the publisher seems even less likely to recoup considering that Barrett is hated among leftists and has a mixed approval rating among conservatives. Past polls show that the majority of the country can't even name a single Supreme Court justice, yet they are receiving celebrity level advances for books no one cares about.

• Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been previously criticized for not recusing herself in cases involving Penguin which had paid her over $3 million.

• Penguin is actually Bertelsmann: a German ex-Nazi publishing giant that has waged war on American parents, promoted racism and is trying to monopolistically gobble up all of American publishing. Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist", Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility", Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Between the World and Me", and, during WWII, "The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth" all came out of Bertelsmann.

• While the ex-Nazi foreign corporation operates under familiar names like Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Ballantine, Knopf, Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books and many others, it's actually a foreign company pushing deeply destructive products. Even as parents tried to stop their children from being exposed to sexually inappropriate content, former CEO Markus Dohle went to war against them with a $500,000 legal fund.

• [A] foreign company that has tried to completely monopolize American publishing by seizing control of Simon and Schuster, and has intervened in American politics, is ... troubling.

• Bertelsmann millions have gone mostly unexamined even as ProPublica, a leftist advocacy group, launched a smear campaign against Justice Thomas. The Thomas smears were repeated by every media outlet in the country which pursued the 76-year-old justice's 96-year-old mother to find out where exactly she lives and who paid the tuition for his grandnephew, yet shrug when the Supreme Court can't even form a quorum over millions from a multinational giant that has business before the court being directed to justices

• Justice Jackson making millions for a ghostwritten memoir after spending less time on the bench than most dustcloths is an equally obvious exercise in cashing in, not literary inspiration.

Here’s more:

Last year, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, despite being in her early 50s and having an undistinguished career before her affirmative action appointment, published a memoir.

You might be forgiven for having missed it when "Lovely One" came out. As the media politely notes, it was "briefly" on the New York Times bestseller list and is now going for half price on Amazon. That is mostly to be expected of the ghostwritten memoir of an obscure judge.

Except that Jackson received a $893,750 advance for her memoir and is now reporting $2 million in profits last year. These would be record numbers for a Supreme Court Justice's biography from a book that hardly anyone had noticed when it came out. And while books can become unexpected successes once released, there was little sign of that happening.

The actual sales figures have not been made public and perhaps 'Lovely One' sold millions of copies even while hardly anyone noticed before ending up in the remainder bin a year later. Certainly no one in the same media that pursued every living member of the Thomas family to find if anyone had ever done them a favor actually bothered obtaining the sales figure.

Even when the money was coming from an avaricious foreign publisher which has deluged Supreme Court justices with millions of dollars in generous publishing deals.

After Jackson's memoir, Penguin Random House will be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett's book for which she received a $2 million advance. That's money the publisher seems even less likely to recoup considering that Barrett is hated among leftists and has a mixed approval rating among conservatives. Past polls show that the majority of the country can't even name a single Supreme Court justice, yet they are receiving celebrity level advances for books no one cares about.

Penguin's payouts previously made headlines when five Supreme Court justices, including Jackson and Barrett, had to recuse themselves from a case involving allegations of plagiarism by racist Hamas supporter Ta-Nehisi Coates whose works, including a book describing 9/11 firefighters as "not human to me", were widely backed and promoted by Penguin.

The 'Penguin' recusals successfully allowed Coates to triumph in that latest court case.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been previously criticized for not recusing herself in cases involving Penguin which had paid her over $3 million. And the current Supreme Court is so badly conflicted over its Penguin cash that it can no longer decide cases involving it.

And that's a problem because Penguin is actually Bertelsmann: a German ex-Nazi publishing giant that has waged war on American parents, promoted racism and is trying to monopolistically gobble up all of American publishing. Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist", Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility", Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Between the World and Me", and, during WWII, "The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth" all came out of Bertelsmann.

While the ex-Nazi foreign corporation operates under familiar names like Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Ballantine, Knopf, Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books and many others, it's actually a foreign company pushing deeply destructive products. Even as parents tried to stop their children from being exposed to sexually inappropriate content, former CEO Markus Dohle went to war against them with a $500,000 legal fund.

Any corporation moving millions of dollars to Supreme Court justices in a way that has already successfully advantaged it in the Ta-Nehisi Coates plagiarism case would be suspect, but a foreign company that has tried to completely monopolize American publishing by seizing control of Simon and Schuster, and has intervened in American politics, is even more deeply troubling.

Yet the Bertelsmann millions have gone mostly unexamined even as ProPublica, a leftist advocacy group, launched a smear campaign against Justice Thomas. The Thomas smears were repeated by every media outlet in the country which pursued the 76-year-old justice's 96-year-old mother to find out where exactly she lives and who paid the tuition for his grandnephew, yet shrug when the Supreme Court can't even form a quorum over millions from a multinational giant that has business before the court being directed to justices.

No one in the media seems to have even bothered examining the sales figures for 'Lovely One' to determine how many copies were sold and which venues actually sold them. Sotomayor had become notorious for high-pressure sales tactics aimed at compelling venues to buy her books.

Supreme Court justices used to write on mainly legal matters (with notable exceptions such as Taft and Douglas) and reserved their memoirs toward the end of their lives. Newly minted justices like Jackson signing memoir deals is an obvious cash-in and Justice Sotomayor, after publishing a memoir no one was asking for 'My Beloved World', began writing children's books.

Would Penguin really be publishing Sotomayor's feeble efforts at writing children's books, 'Just Help!: How to Build a Better World', 'Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You' and (coming soon) 'Just Shine!: How to Be a Better You' if she weren't a Supreme Court justice?

And Justice Jackson making millions for a ghostwritten memoir after spending less time on the bench than most dustcloths is an equally obvious exercise in cashing in, not literary inspiration.

Judges putting their names on things to make money is not illegal, and maybe after this, Justice Jackson will have her own line of dish towels, sneakers or crypto coins, but Bertelsmann has not only monopolized the American publishing market, but has monopolized the market for justices. And considering its radical politics and vast ambitions, that is a major problem.

What happens when Bertelsmann triggers a court case with major legal implications and once again a quorum of justices can't be found to sit on it?

Then the woke mega-publisher will have officially bought America's legal system.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Reprinted by kind permission of the Center's Front Page Magazine.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21733/bertelsmann-paying-supreme-court-justices

What do I take from this?

One. I have learned of another instance of massive non-visible control by one company - the control of major ostensibly American publishing companies, by a foreign company, in this case a formerly Nazi publishing giant. This fits so much with all I am learning of the powers that control much of the mainstream world.

Two. I have learned the names of judges who have been offered and have taken huge advances for books unlikely to sell many copies. I also have at least indirect indication of one judge who has not taken an advance, Clarence Thomas. It’a. very blatant. Legal - and blatant.

Knowledge is power.

I am left with questions about the books that get published and pushed to the foreground - as I have learned to question what / who is behind the musicians and music that is pushed into the world.

I don’t believe that any of the Supreme Court judges has been offered a lucrative recording contract!!

Posted July 11, 2025