The In-Your-Face Corruption and Arrogance of Justice Clarence Thomas
An astonishing event occurred last week at the University of Texas. Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech in which he accused progressives of betraying the core principles of the Declaration of Independence. He said that:
Progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever…. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.
Others have criticized Thomas's bizarre view of history, so I want to make a different point. The event was hosted and paid for by The University of Texas School of Civic Leadership, a part of the University funded at least in part “by billionaire Harlan Crow, who was integral to the founding of the Civitas Institute at the university.” In fact, Crow attended the event, and Thomas recognized and thanked him at the beginning of his speech. The event and Thomas's personal shout out to his friend and benefactor displayed an egregious indifference by Thomas to the many ethical lapses inherent in his relationship to Crow.
Crow subsidized the private school tuition of Clarence Thomas's adopted son, supplemented Ginny Thomas's income when she was working for far right wing organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, and financed the house that Thomas's mother lives in. Crow has also paid for too many to count luxury trips Thomas has taken both alone and with his wife. This financial enabling of a lifestyle that Thomas and his family cannot otherwise afford is not close to the same thing as providing an occasional gift. The largess creates reliance and economic interests that are inappropriate for any government official.
It is irrelevant whether or not Thomas would have voted differently without this extreme subsidization. The relevant standard for judges is the appearance of impropriety. Here we have actual, real life impropriety.
Moreover, Thomas once had to amend thirteen years’ worth of disclosure reports to include details of wife Virginia Thomas’s sources of income from Hillsdale College in Michigan, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. What makes all this so much worse is that, according to Pro Publica, Thomas complained in 2000 to various well-heeled folks about the justices’ low salaries:
After almost a decade on the court, Thomas grew frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV….
Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.
Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, ‘one or more justices will leave soon’ — maybe in the next year….
[Chief Justice] Rehnquist focused his annual year-end report [that year] on what he called ‘the most pressing issue facing the Judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.’
Crow’s subsidization of Justice Thomas’s lifestyle is an old story but two aspects of it must be emphasized.
First, despite all the reporting about Thomas’s acceptance of Crow’s generosity,
the justice did not think twice about attending an event at a Crow-funded
organization and recognizing his friend publicly and warmly. This in-your-face insensitivity
to the criticism Thomas has received for accepting Crow’s salary supplements
displays a stunning arrogance and indifference to public perception. It is as
if Thomas is broadcasting to the world that he will do what he wants no matter
how questionable his behavior. It must be remembered that Thomas has never
denied that he accepted, to say it again, money from Crow to help with his wife’s
salary, his mother’s house, and his son’s tuition, among many other gifts.
The second
point is even more important. Thomas is finishing his 35th year on
the Supreme Court. His former clerks now hold positions of power all over the federal
government, most prominently in the federal judiciary, as well as in legal academia. According to the New
York Times:
[S]ince Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government.
One simply
has to wonder how much of Thomas’s disregard for ethical behavior has rubbed off
on these former clerks who now wield enormous power. These clerks include, among
many others, the far-right Berkeley law professor and torture memo author John Yoo, disgraced
lawyer John Eastman who played a key role in Trump’s election denial strategy (about which more on this blog tomorrow), Fox News Anchor Laura Ingraham, whose Trump bias needs no citation, and Fifth Circuit partisan GOP judge James Ho.
At the end
of the day, this story is all about hubris. A Supreme Court justice simply
should not be accepting these kinds of gifts. A Supreme Court justice should not
violate disclosure laws for thirteen years. And a Supreme Court justice should
be able to recognize all this and apologize for it instead of proudly and
publicly showing off his primary benefactor.
By 2019, after years of salary supplements from Crow and others, Justice Thomas no longer complained about his low salary. According to Pro Publica:
By 2019, the justices’ pay hadn’t changed beyond keeping up with inflation. But Thomas’ views had apparently transformed from two decades before. That June, during a public appearance, Thomas was asked about salaries at the court. ‘Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,’ Thomas responded. ‘My wife and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.’
A few weeks later, Thomas boarded Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162-foot yacht.
And so it
goes….
Eric Segall