If you’ve read any stories about the Supreme Court over the last several years, one of them has probably involved Justice Clarence Thomas’s habit of accepting lavish gifts from wealthy, conservative donors.
In particular, we’ve learned, largely from reporting by ProPublica, that Thomas has gone on more than three dozen luxury vacations paid for by various conservative sugar daddies, including Dallas real estate developer Harlan Crow, who has hosted Thomas on his superyacht and private jet. Crow also paid the private school tuition, of over $6,000 a month, for a grandnephew of Thomas whom the justice had legal custody over and was raising “as a son.” In addition, one of Crow’s companies purchased real estate owned by Thomas and his mother, and paid for renovations to Thomas’s mother’s house. Oh, and Crow once reportedly made a $500,000 donation to a right-wing lobbying firm run by Ginni Thomas, a.k.a. Clarence Thomas’s wife. (Justice Thomas has defended accepting the gifts from Crow. Crow has said, of entertaining the justice, that Thomas “never asked for any of this hospitality” and that his treatment of Thomas was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”)
While there have long been calls for ethics reform at the Supreme Court, where justices are effectively held to no ethical standards but their own, they have grown deafening in the wake of the reporting concerning the Thomases and their very generous friends. One person who thinks these calls for reform are bullshit? Ginni Thomas, of course.
Per ProPublica:
Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court—efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses. Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”
Shackelford read Thomas’s email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors. Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.” Shackelford said he saw Thomas’s support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.
During the same call, Shackelford accused Justice Elena Kagan—who had the audacity to endorse the creation of a committee to look into possible violations of the Court’s new ethics code—of being “treasonous” and “disloyal.” He also said that the various reform proposals were part of “a dangerous attempt to really destroy” the Supreme Court by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases.”
First Liberty sent a recording of the call to some supporters; it was was obtained by ProPublica. The group did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Shackelford’s comments. Instead, in a statement, the group’s executive general counsel said: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”
Sending the email to Shackelford was far from the first time Ginni Thomas has weighed in on political issues. She also sent numerous messages following the 2020 election that made baseless claims of fraud, writing in one—to then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows—that “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” She urged Trump not to stand down. Despite this, Clarence Thomas refused to recuse himself from cases concerning Trump and the 2020 election.
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