Clarence Thomas's corruption is a Trumpian family affair

Thomas gave his "nearly adopted daughter" a cushy government job. Sound familiar?

The New York Times has a lengthy accounting of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s relationship with Crystal Clanton, the disgraced right-wing activist whose reported history of sending racists texts¹ to colleagues was too toxic even for Charlie Kirk. Kirk fired Clanton from Turning Point USA, his right-wing bile factory, when Clanton’s texts were reported, but even the most overt racism is only temporarily disqualifying² in the modern conservative movement, and Clanton quickly landed on her feet — largely due to the generosity of Clarence Thomas, who considers her to be his “nearly adopted daughter.”

In the aftermath of Clanton’s firing from Turning Point USA:

• Clarence and his wife Ginni Thomas invited Clanton to live in their home

• Clanton worked for Ginni Thomas’s political consulting firm

• Clanton was given a full scholarship to Antonin Scalia Law School, the Leonard-Leo-and-Koch-funded training grounds for the lawyers leading the Right’s assault on basic American freedoms (and where Clarence Thomas has enjoyed a side gig as a professor, which I am sure is entirely coincidental to Clanton’s scholarship.)

• Clarence Thomas orchestrated a clerkship with a federal judge for Clanton

All that led inevitably to Clarence Thomas’s decision last month to just go ahead and hire his “nearly adopted daughter” himself, for a Supreme Court clerkship. It’s a pretty sweet gig: In addition to fast-tracking Clanton to the top echelon of the right-wing legal and political apparatus, the clerkship is going to make Clanton a ton of money. Big Law firms eager to gain access to and influence with Supreme Court justices offer former Court clerks $500,000 signing bonuses — and that’s in addition to annual starting salaries of more than $200,000 a year.

If you’re thinking that a public servant³ like Clarence Thomas giving his “nearly adopted daughter” such a prestigious, exclusive, and lucrative government job working directly for him is the kind of flamboyant corruption we surely have ethics rules in place to prevent, you’re partially right: The federal judicial code of conduct instructs judges to “exercise the power of appointment fairly and only on the basis of merit, avoiding unnecessary appointments, nepotism, and favoritism.” But, of course, the Supreme Court has decided it doesn’t have to follow that code of conduct, and the high Court’s own ethics code — created just last year amid mass public outrage over a series of ever-more-egregious scandals — isn’t really a “code” at all but merely a list of suggestions and aspirations for ethical conduct that the justices are free to ignore as they wish. And Clarence Thomas wishes to ignore it quite a bit.

So while Clarence Thomas giving his “nearly adopted daughter” what might be the single best (taxpayer-funded!) job an ambitious young lawyer could possibly dream of is flamboyantly corrupt, it is also exhaustingly ordinary. See, Crystal Clanton is far from the only family member of Clarence Thomas’s who has financially benefited from his service⁴ on the Supreme Court. Consider:

Clarence Thomas’s mother lives rent-free in a house right-wing megadonor, gardener of evil, and Clarence Thomas superfan Harlan Crow bought from Justice Thomas, then spent tens of thousand of dollars improving.

Clarence Thomas’s nephew, who Thomas raised like a son, attended expensive private school, with $100,000 in tuition paid by Harlan Crow.

Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in (often-undisclosed) payments from right-wing advocacy organizations and powerbrokers with interests before the Supreme Court — like Leonard Leo, who funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Ginni Thomas in a scheme that was so shady he insisted the paperwork should make “No mention of Ginni, of course.” And Ginni has benefited in non-monetary ways, too — like Clarence Thomas’s efforts to help Ginni’s various Trump World co-conspirators avoid accountability for their crimes.⁵

Clarence Thomas himself has taken undisclosed gifts of everything from luxury vacations to a fully-loaded RV to a set of tires⁶ from wealthy benefactors eager to have a Supreme Court justice on speed dial.

Given Thomas’s extensive history of using government service to enrich himself and his family, it’s no wonder Donald Trump considers Thomas a model Supreme Court justice.⁷

1. One such text read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.” in case you’re wondering if there’s more to the story.

2. At most.

3. hahahhahahaha

4. hahhaaaaaaaaahaa

5. Okay, “alleged” crimes, but we all know what’s up.

6. Yes, tires.

7. It’s either that or Thomas’s relentless zeal for banning abortion, gutting voting rights, and entrenching America’s right-wing minority in permanent control of our government.