The manufactured “scandal” of Justice Clarence Thomas’ relationship with philanthropist Harlan Crow unites two of the left’s chief bigotries today — a hatred of black conservatives and a hatred of billionaires.
Given the left’s relentless attacks on Thomas ever since bogus sexual-harassment charges failed to derail his confirmation back in 1991, the only surprise is that it took so long to come up with this angle.
Last week, ProPublica, a self-described “independent, non-profit investigative journalism” organization funded by left-wing philanthropists aligned with the Democratic Party, broke the story that Thomas has accepted numerous flights and trips on Crow’s private jet and luxury yacht, as well as annual vacations with Crow at Crow’s summer retreat in New York’s Adirondacks.
Most of these trips were not disclosed as the Supreme Court’s disclosure rules exempt personal hospitality — and, as anyone who knows Harlan Crow recognizes, his extensive hospitality to a great many people is central to his life.
Nonetheless, various government “ethics” experts have denounced Thomas for exploiting a “loophole.”
ProPublica went to enormous lengths to learn the details of Thomas’ relationship with Crow, scouring flight records and interviewing yacht crews and resort staff that have worked for or near Crow’s holdings.
That’s a standard modus operandi for ProPublica. Its last big “scoop” was revealing very specific details of the income-tax returns for the 15 highest-income Americans, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg — details that came from a “leak” from inside the IRS that ProPublica failed to mention constituted a felony.
(The IRS leaker has still not been found.)
ProPublica also dinged Thomas for not reporting the sale of a property to a company linked to Crow, who says he bought it in order to preserve it for posterity.
The entire payment was for a whopping $133,363, of which Thomas had a one-third interest. Meanwhile, Joe Biden gets a pass for dubious real-estate deals involving many multiples of that sum.
There is a clear pattern to ProPublica’s “independent” journalism.
As is well-known today, neither ProPublica nor any other media outlet (aside from the New York Post) has shown any interest in the swirling evidence of corruption by the Biden family, which includes banking interests purchasing residential property from then-Sen. Joe Biden during the years that Delaware’s banking industry was heavily lobbying Biden to “reform” bankruptcy laws in a manner more favorable to banking interests (which finally passed in 2007).
And let’s not get started on the media’s incuriosity about circumstantial evidence of widespread insider trading by members of Congress.
Nor does ProPublica find it germane to mention any other Supreme Court justices who’ve accepted private hospitality travel from wealthy individuals over the years.
Despite the insinuation of corruption, there’s a missing element in the breathless ProPublica smear job on Thomas and Crow: Even ProPublica admits “Crow and his firm have not had a case before the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it.”
The best ProPublica can do is remark that “it is unclear if Crow has had any influence on the justice’s views.”
This would be a laughable speculation if it wasn’t so stupid.
Anyone can read Thomas’ opinions, as well as his other public declarations in speeches and occasional articles, to see that he has a deep foundation for his jurisprudence.
The idea that a well-known philanthropist was changing Thomas’ jurisprudence through his hospitality is so ludicrous that only a leftist could believe it.
One of the left’s frequent attacks on Thomas for a long time was that he almost never asked a question during a Supreme Court hearing.
The racist subtext of this criticism was obvious, but branding him “Silent Thomas,” like the branding of “Silent Calvin Coolidge,” was an indirect way of saying he could be ignored, that his opinions and dissents needn’t be taken seriously.
Since the court changed its protocol for oral arguments during COVID and ended the rather rude free-for-all atmosphere that marked its hearings for decades, Thomas is suddenly speaking up much more often.
And as the senior-most justice by length of tenure on the court and flexing growing intellectual influence with the newer justices, he can no longer be ignored.
Hence the need for the left to try once again to destroy him by any means necessary.
Steven F. Hayward is a resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
