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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Clarence Thomas and the generosity of a far-right dark-money billionaire

Clarence Thomas has set some important precedents in his career as a Supreme Court justice — for example, the elevation of the unrepentant rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the bench could never have occurred but for the trail blazed by Thomas as a sexually harassing, pubic-hair distributing creep boss:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/30-years-after-her-testimony-anita-hill-still-wants-something-from-joe-biden-514884

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

Today, Thomas continues to steer the court into new territory — for example, he’s interested in banning same-sex marriage again:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256

And of course, he’s set precedent by hearing cases related to the attempted overthrow of the US government, despite the role his wife played in the affair:

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/30/1089595933/legal-ethics-experts-agree-justice-thomas-must-recuse-in-insurrection-cases

Thomas is not alone in furthering the right’s mission to destroy the morale of constitutional law scholars by systematically delegitimizing the court and showing it to be a vehicle for partisan politics and dark money policy laundering, but he is certainly at the vanguard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes

Today, Propublica published an expose on the vast fortune in secret gifts bestowed upon Thomas by the billionare GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, who is also one the most significant funders of political campaigns that put business before Thomas and the Supreme Court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow

The story, reported by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski is a masterwork of shoe-leather investigative journalism, drawing on aviation records, social media posts and other “open source” intelligence to expose the illegal, off-the-books “gifts” from a billionaire to an unaccountable Supreme Court justice with a lifetime appointment.

Here are a two of those gifts: a private jet/superyacht jaunt around Indonesia valued at $500,000; and a $500,000 gift to Ginni Thomas’s Tea Party group (which pays Ginni Thomas $120,000/year).

On top of that are gifts that are literally priceless: decades’ worth of summer vacations at Camp Topridge, Crow’s private estate, with its waterfall, great hall, private chefs, 25 fireplaces, thee boathouses, clay tennis court, batting range, 1950s-style soda fountain and full-scale reproduction of Hagrid’s hut.

Summer retreats to Topridge allow business leaders like Leonard Leo — the Federalist Society bankroller and mastermind who set Trump up to pack the Supreme Court — to coordinate in private with Thomas:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/29/betcha-cant-eat-just-one/#pwnage

They also allow top execs from PWC, Verizon and other corporations who may have business before the court to establish a warm, collegial relationship with a judge whose decisions can make billions for their employers. In its reporting, Propublica points out that Thomas got to hang out on Crow’s superyacht with Mark Paoletta, who was then general counsel for Trump’s OMB, and who has opposed any tightening of ethics rules for Supreme Court judges: “there is nothing wrong with ethics or recusals at the Supreme Court.”

Crow and Thomas also hobnob together at Crow’s Texas ranch, and at the Bohemian Grove, the Bay Area’s ultra-luxe retreat for rich creeps. Crow bought Thomas a private superyacht cruise through New Zealand, another through the Greek islands, and a river trip around Savannah, GA. He also traveled around the country on Crow’s private jet — even a short private jet trip is valued around $70,000.

Crow also makes many donations on Thomas’s behalf, from a $105,000 donation to Yale Law School for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund” to paying for a 7 foot tall, 1,800 lb bronze statue of the nun who taught Thomas in the eighth grade, which now stands in a New York Catholic cemetery.

This is without precedent. No Supreme Court justice in US history received comparable gifts during their tenure on the bench. Federal judges quoted in the story call it “incomprehensible,” noting that US judges bend over backwards not to owe anyone any favors, going so far as to book restaurant reservations without using their titles.

Virginia Canter, a former US government ethics lawyer of bipartisan experience said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations,” adding “it makes my heart sink.”

The Supreme Court’s own code of ethics prohibits justices from engaging in conduct that gives rise to the “appearance of impropriety,” but the code is “consultative,” and there are no penalties for violating it. But US judicial officers — including Thomas — are legally required to disclose things like private jet trips. Thomas did not. In general, justices must report any gift valued at more than $415, where a gift is “anything of value.” This includes instances in which a gift is given by a corporation whose owner is the true giver.

Crow is a Red Scare-haunted plutocrat who says his greatest fear is “Marxism.” He was a key donor to the anti-tax extremists at the Club For Growth, and has served on the board of the American Enterprise Institute — climate deniers who also claimed that smoking didn’t cause cancer — for 25 years.

Crow is a proud dark-money source, too, whose $10m in acknowledged donations to Republican causes and candidates are only the tip of the iceberg, next to the dark money he has provided to groups he declines to name, telling the New York Times, “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”

Crow claims that the vast sums he’s lavished on Thomas — who, again, presides over the test cases that Crow is helping to put before him — are just “hospitality.” Crow called the private retreats with business leaders and top government officials “gatherings of friends,” and added that he was “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas” while at his private estates or on his superyacht or private plane.

For his part, Thomas publicly maintains that he hates luxury. In a Crow-financed documentary about Thomas’s life, Thomas tells the camera, “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”

Judges often have to make determinations about conflicts of interest, and lawyers have an entire practice devoted to preventing conflicts from arising. I doubt whether Thomas himself would consent to have a dispute of his own tried in front of a judge who had received millions in gifts from his opponent.

The Supreme Court’s power comes from its legitimacy. The project of delegitimizing the court started with the right, and Democrats have been loathe to participate in any activity that would worsen the court’s reputation. As a result, the business lobby and authoritarian politicians have had free rein to turn the court into a weapon for attacking American workers, American women, and LGBTQ people.

It doesn’t have to be this way. When the Supreme Court blocked all of FDR’s New Deal policies — which were wildly popular — FDR responded by proposing age limits for Supreme Court judges. When the Supremes refused to contemplate this, FDR asked Congress for a law allowing him to appoint one new Supreme Court judge for every judge who should retire but wouldn’t.

As the vote on this bill grew nearer, the Supremes reversed themselves, voting to uphold the policies they’d struck down in their previous session. They knew that their legitimacy was all they had, and when a brave president stood up to their bullying, they caved.

https://theconversation.com/packing-the-court-amid-national-crises-lincoln-and-his-republicans-remade-the-supreme-court-to-fit-their-agenda-147139

The Supreme Court has moved America further away from the ideals of pluralistic democracy than we can even fathom, and they’re just getting started. They are taking a wrecking ball to the lives of anyone who isn’t a wealthy conservative, and they’re doing it while accepting a fortune in bribes from American oligarchs.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: Mr. Kjetil Ree (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Supreme_Court.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: An altered image of Clarence Thomas, standing in gilded judicial robes on the steps of the Supreme Court. Looming over the court is a line-drawing of a business-man with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

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readingsrantsrambles · 2 years ago

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The first thing you need to know about the image above is that it is a painting, not a photograph.

The second thing you need to know is that the painting, which depicts a real gathering that took place about five years ago, hangs in an invitation-only, rustic-for-the-rich resort that belongs to real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

And the third thing you need to know is that the person seated second from the right is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

This week, my colleagues Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski reported a hell of a story revealing that for more than two decades, the justice accepted a slew of luxurious trips from Harlan that included hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of flights on private jets, weekslong vacations to southeast Asia and a cruise on a superyacht in New Zealand.

For a man that has publicly painted himself as a relatable, everyday American who comes from “regular stock” — preferring “RV parks” and “Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that,” as he relayed in an interview for a documentary about his life — Thomas appears to enjoy the luxuries of international tourism.

But travel tastes aside, the issue at the heart of my colleagues’ story this week is that Thomas failed to disclose the expensive trips Harlan hosted. They don’t appear on Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required to list most gifts, Justin, Joshua and Alex report. “The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court,” they write.

Ethics experts and current or retired federal judges interviewed for the story said that by accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for a judge’s conduct; failing to report the jet and yacht travel may also be a violation of disclosure law.

“When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in presidential administrations of both political parties and now works at the watchdog group CREW. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”

There’s been an overwhelming public response since we published the story on Thursday morning. A number of Democratic lawmakers have already called for reform. Among them is Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is influential for its role in vetting and confirming Supreme Court nominees. Durbin said his panel is calling for an “enforceable code of conduct” for justices.

“The ProPublica report is a call to action, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act,” Durbin said.

In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions from our reporters. The Justice instead issued a public statement on Friday, referring to Harlan and Kathy Crow as “among our dearest friends” for more than 25 years.

“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have businesses before the Court, was not reportable.”

I urge you to read the story in full, if you haven’t yet. But there’s one more piece of information I want to share about that painting. One of the summer getaways Thomas has visited most often is Harlan’s exclusive resort, known as Camp Topridge, located in a remote corner of New York’s Adirondacks. The justice is known to have stayed at the resort nearly every summer for more than 20 years.

The painting depicts a scene that took place there a few summers ago. Next to Thomas, on the right side of the image, sits Crow, who commissioned the artist Sharif Tarabay to paint the image. On the left sit lawyers Peter Rutledge, Leonard Leo and Mark Paoletta.

ProPublica reported about Leo in August of last year — he’s the co-chair of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. At the time, our investigation revealed a Leo-led group had recently received a donation worth $1.6 billion, which is the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history. Leo himself is regarded as one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

Of course, we don’t know what the men discussed at the resort. But the reporters did learn that the guests of Camp Topridge can only visit if they’re invited, and they pay nothing during their stay.

As Justin, Joshua and Alex write, guests at Topridge enjoy its “more than 25 fireplaces, three boathouses, clay tennis court and batting cage, along with more eccentric features: a lifesize replica of the Harry Potter character Hagrid’s hut, bronze statues of gnomes and a 1950s-style soda fountain where Crow’s staff fixes milkshakes.”

In the painting, five men sit in a semicircle while Thomas and Crow hold cigars. Behind them is a statue that resembles the sculpture “Hail to the Sunrise,” which depicts an unnamed Native American man and was erected in Massachusetts in 1932 “In memory of the Mohawk Indian.” The Mohawk people are part of the Iroquois Confederacy; their homeland includes the area where Camp Topridge now sits.

Historians have argued that the framers of the U.S. Constitution were influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy’s federalist principles. The painting may prompt you to wonder what influences Clarence Thomas.

Logan Jaffe

Pro Publica

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