Thomas scandal may get worse
Holy moly, those Clarence Thomas revelations keep coming.
Last week’s ProPublica story was a doozy, revealing that the Supreme Court justice has been living like a billionaire — courtesy of actual billionaires who have been treating him to lavish vacations, trips on luxury yachts and private planes, box seats at sporting events, and fancy golf outings, which Thomas did not disclose.
And why would he? Besides being utterly bereft of shame, Thomas has cultivated a fake image as an Everyman, more comfortable parking his RV among the little folk in the Walmart parking lots than rubbing shoulders with hoity-toity types.
Only, thanks to The New York Times, we know Thomas’s humble mobile home is actually a luxury motor coach worth $267,230 — its purchase underwritten by a health care magnate. Before that, the Times revealed that Thomas had been using the Supreme Court as a venue to raise money for the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, an exclusive society for the obscenely wealthy. And that came after ProPublica revealed Texas billionaire Harlan Crow had given Thomas and his wife, Ginni — herself implicated in attempts to to overturn the 2020 election — lavish vacations, extravagant gifts, and tuition payments, and that he had bought and renovated the house in which Thomas’s mother still lives.
Even to a hardened cynic, that is a shocking catalog of secrets. What we’ve seen here goes beyond the usual, already-appalling influence peddling that surrounds the nation’s highest bench into some pretty naked patronage by people whose political, financial, and social stances have continually prevailed in Thomas’s court. You don’t need a direct quid pro quo to smell the stench.
But there’s one person who is completely unsurprised by all of this, and who reckons there will be yet more revelations.
“I don’t think we’ve yet gotten to the bottom of the billionaire-funded mischief on the Supreme Court,” said Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, a US senator from Rhode Island.
Whitehouse has spent years exposing the efforts of conservative dark money groups to capture the Supreme Court. In the Senate and in a book called “The Scheme,” Whitehouse has laid out how billionaire-funded groups like The Federalist Society, led by operative Leonard Leo, pushed judges onto benches and involved themselves in cases to further conservative billionaires’ anti-government agenda. In some cases, Leo and his fellow ideologues connected those judges to the billionaires socially, so they could get even cozier off the clock.
“Billionaires providing gifts and travel to the justices who serve them so well is part of that larger story,” Whitehouse said in an interview.
So far, the nation’s highest court has declined to answer to Congress, and the American people. Chief Justice John Roberts and those accused of wrongdoing act more like divine monarchs than members of a co-equal branch of government.
“There has never been a moment as grim as this one,” Whitehouse said. “There has never been a court as unwilling to address its own problems.”
Whitehouse and others have proposed legislation to subject Supreme Court justices to the same rules every other judge must follow. It would require a code of conduct, a process for ethics complaints, strong recusal requirements, and strict disclosure rules for gifts like those heaped on Thomas and others (Samuel Alito has also vacationed like a billionaire, courtesy of a billionaire on whose interests the judge has ruled directly).
“People . . . in town halls in Rhode Island are subject to ethics rules that make these violations look horrifyingly grotesque,” Whitehouse said.
That legislation is going nowhere in this Congress, where Republicans have been captured by the same interests who now appear to own some of the justices. Whitehouse believes it’s more likely reform will come through the Judicial Conference, made up of top federal judges across the country.
“Regular federal judges are horrified by what they are seeing,” Whitehouse said.
As ugly as the latest revelations are, the scandal surrounding the Supreme Court will only get worse, the senator said, forcing the conference and its head, John Roberts, to finally reform the body.
That would be glorious. But how much damage will Thomas and the other black-robed royals do in the meantime?