Clarence Thomas- Amoral, corrupt, venal...and built to stay that way

He's on the take, he knows that we know, and he doesn't care

All we’ve heard for the past 30 years is how much Clarence Thomas hates his job. Well, now we’re finding out what’s keeping him there, eh? It’s not the job or respect that comes with being one of nine Supreme Court justices with lifetime sinecures. It’s not the fact that Thomas could sit through cases naked underneath his robe and suffer no consequences.

No, what’s keeping him on the Court is all of the free shit he gets from Harlan Crow. Every day is Christmas, and Harlan Crow is Thomas’ personal Santa Claus. While his corruption has been common knowledge for some time, what wasn’t known is the stunning depth and breadth of Thomas’ venality.

For a member of the Supreme Court, who’s supposed to be above the fray, this is just another brick in the wall and yet another blow to the Court’s fast-fading credibility. Thomas’ annual financial disclosure report, released on Friday, isn’t the sort of thing that inspires faith in Thomas’ judicial impartiality.

Yeah, like that was ever in doubt, right? The man’s just slightly to the left of Torquemada and would happily see America litigated back to the 18th century if he could do it.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ latest financial report belatedly acknowledges that he took multiple lavish vacations paid for by Republican billionaire Harlan Crow.

Thomas’ annual financial disclosure report, which confirms at least two of the trips first described in a 2023 ProPublica report, was released Friday.

The trips are detailed on the second-to-last page of the document, where, under a section allotted for “additional information or explanations,” Thomas describes two 2019 trips that were “inadvertently omitted” from his previous disclosures.

One, a July 12, 2019, trip to Bali, acknowledges he was a guest of Harlan and Kathy Crow, who covered the cost of food and lodging.

According to the document, Thomas then took a second vacation on Crow’s dime a week later at a “private club” in Monte Rio, California. The city is home to Bohemian Grove, an all-male, invitation-only retreat.

So, yeah, Justice Thomas may think his job sucks, but the perks most definitely don’t, which probably explains why he’s stuck around for 30 years. He can’t be fired, people give him multiple metric fuck-tons of free stuff (yes, that IS the technical term), and even the new Supreme Court “ethics code” is optional.

Not a bad gig for an egregiously corrupt Conservative whose wife was pretty active in the January 6 coup attempt, yeah?

And don’t get me started on Justice Samuel Alito. That’s another story best left for another time. I can only handle so much Right-wing corruption at one time.

The document says Thomas included the disclosures after he “sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel.”

Critics assailed Thomas over the undisclosed trips following ProPublica’s report, accusing the conservative justice of being in the pocket of the Republican megadonor.

Crow has spent more than $16 million supporting conservative political causes, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that tracks political conflicts of interest.

Thomas’ wife, Ginni, was a cheerleader for and attended Trump’s infamous Jan. 6, 2021, rally, yet Thomas has declined to recuse himself from ruling on whether Donald Trump is immune from being prosecuted for the resulting violence.

For years, it was all fun and games until ProPublica started sniffing around and discovering Justice Thomas is a corrupt sleazeball. And it’s not like the Court’s senior jurist can deny it; ProPublica has a paper trail to back everything up.

Thomas had no problem letting wealthy Conservatives give him trips and other expensive gifts for years. After all, it’s long been an open secret that he’s been dissatisfied dissatisfied with his salary and probably saw the gifts as his due, given his “low” federal compensation.

The problem with the gifts was that he was required to report outside compensation, things

that he then does not report on his financial disclosure forms, thus violating all sorts of ethics rules and common sense, for well over a year. But it was tough quantifying all the graft. Math was always our worst subject, and that was when we were young and had not yet pickled our brain in cheap beer and Makers Mark.

Luckily the folks at Fix the Court have put together numbers and estimated value of all the gifts given to all Supreme Court justices over the last 20 years, both reported and unreported to the Federal Trade Commission. Unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas tops the list by, to put it delicately, a metric fuck-ton:

Of the $6,592,657 of gifts and “likely” gifts identified by FTC, a WHOPPING $5,879,796 of them went to Clarence Thomas.

Yes, those metric fuck-tons of gifts and “likely” gifts received by Justice Thomas amount to 89.2% of the total. That’s right—Clarence Thomas, one of NINE Supreme Court justices, accounted for 89.2% of the estimated value of all the gifts given to all justices over the past 20 years.

Roll that around in your brainpan for a moment, and then consider the stunning level of corruption necessary to account for a metric fuck-ton of gifts, far more than the eight other justices COMBINED over the past two decades.

If Justice Thomas had been sitting on any other federal bench, he almost certainly would’ve been impeached if he hadn’t been forced to resign by now.

Armed with this information, I fear there are only two conclusions I can choose between:

1. Justice Clarence Thomas hates America and doesn’t give a flying fuck what happens to it. Having helped do as much damage as possible in addition to his stunning corruption, he’s been like a double agent who doesn’t care who knows about his crooked dealings.

2. Thomas is a corrupt, amoral sociopath with no moral center who will rule for whoever the highest bidder happens to be.

Of course, there is the possibility that both things could be true, which is even more frightening.

If this isn’t an excuse for expanding the Court, I don’t know what would be. How else would President Biden be able to thwart the corrupt power of the current 6-3 Conservative majority?

There are no rules, customs, laws, or even traditions mandating that the Supreme Court be limited to nine justices. If the President decided it was a great idea, he could set the number at 37. In this case, 13 would be the necessary number to override the Conservative majority.

Sure, Republicans would raise Hell, but they’d have no recourse to stop it from happening. As long as Democrats have the votes on Capitol Hill, it could happen. Of course, nothing would prevent a Republican President and Congress from doing the same thing to reset a Conservative majority, and therein lies the rub. Control of the Supreme Court could quickly become a game of “King of the Hill,” which, given the state of politics in Washington, should surprise no one.

We could eventually see a Supreme Court with 37 seats as Presidents from each party try to “one-up” their predecessors and nab a majority on the Court.

Then again, that’s another problem for another time. What we have on our hands now is real-time corruption happening before us. What will Congress do about it…or will Clarence Thomas continue laughing all the way to Bali or Bohemian Grove?

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