The latest left-wing attack on the justice is that those who know him dare to rebut vicious attacks on him.
The latest left-wing attack on the justice is that those who know him dare to rebut vicious attacks on him.
S ince 2020, when the Supreme Court finally had a working majority of justices faithful to the Constitution and no longer interested in acting as a super-legislature imposing progressive policies such as abortion and affirmative action, the Left and its media allies have engaged in a coordinated attack on the court’s credibility and the integrity. Because they can’t actually prove any corruption, they lob vague accusations of “ethics concerns” or “inappropriate access” at justices in an attempt to muddy the water and convince the American public there’s something nefarious happening behind the scenes when there is not.
In April, ProPublica (which is funded by left-wing donors and activist groups) launched the latest in this series of partisan assaults on the court with insinuations that somehow Supreme Court justices can be bought by friends with travel and nice accommodations. Of course, the concern is only with Republican-appointed justices, despite Democrat-appointed justices participating in similar or even more grand adventures, such as Justice Breyer being flown around the world on at least eight trips all paid for by the well-known Democrat Pritzker family organizations.
The constant theme of this genre of reporting is that something just doesn’t smell right about all this behavior from these conservative justices, that a shadowy group of billionaires and dark-money Svengalis are likely pulling the strings and buying influence and outcomes. This is simply not true. In fact, it is an insidious and toxic lie poisoning public trust in our most sacred and important institutions. There’s a reason the reports in question never actually allege any undue influence, and they certainly never put forward any evidence of corruption, such as justices handing out favorable rulings or altering their jurisprudence because of these friendships or travel.
Unfortunately, ProPublica isn’t alone in its crusade against the court. Other left-leaning media outlets have jumped on the bandwagon, not wanting to miss a piece of the action. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a story on Justice Thomas’s involvement with the Horatio Alger Association, a group that provides college scholarships to students who are trying to overcome the most difficult of circumstances. The Times framed Justice Thomas’s admirable involvement with this charity organization as some sort of desperate effort by him to be around wealthy business leaders. In turn, these wealthy people supposedly get access to Justice Thomas and potentially undue influence over his rulings. Naturally, they never prove any of these allegations — they only raise “concerns” about the potential of impropriety. It’s a disturbing view of relationships and a sad attempt to turn something positive — a charity that helps disadvantaged kids — into something negative. It’s also a lie.
Justice Thomas joined Horatio Alger so that he could mentor students who grew up in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, just as he did in the segregated Deep South. After every annual gathering in Washington, D.C. (and I have attended several of these events), the students always note that their interactions with Justice Thomas are the most impactful. But the New York Times perverts his involvement and implies that he is motivated by venality. (It also gets its facts wrong. For example, contra the report, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones did not give Justice Thomas an actual Super Bowl ring. A member of the Cowboys staff sent him a giant paperweight replica of a Cowboys ring, which sells for about $25 on eBay.) Justice Thomas has become friends with a few of these members because he is a nice guy who is liked by everyone, as Justice Sotomayor has stated many times.
The Washington Post followed this deceptive playbook last week by running a story that sought to smear the efforts of friends and admirers of Justice Thomas, including mine, in defending him in 2016, the 25th anniversary of his confirmation to the court, against an onslaught of historically revisionist and dishonest attacks. The Washington Post portrays these efforts to correct the record and defend the justice from lies as just another opportunity by dark-money funders and paid lackeys to gain access and influence with Justice Thomas.
In reality, this was nothing more than a number of friends and supporters trying to defend him from vicious attacks, which are unprecedented in the history of the court. In fact, the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously adopted an amendment last week condemning these racist attacks on Justice Thomas. But by and large, neither Justice Thomas nor any of the justices have the ability or infrastructure to defend themselves. I have been defending Justice Thomas since 1991, when I worked on his Supreme Court confirmation and became very close friends with him. Shortly after his confirmation, I was diagnosed with cancer, and Justice Thomas was there for me, calling or visiting me every day during my chemotherapy treatments and surgeries. I would go to the gates of hell and past them to defend him from these smears.
In 2015, I learned that there would be another attack on Justice Thomas in the form of a new HBO movie titled Confirmation, starring Kerry Washington as Anita Hill. I was able to read the script to Confirmation before it was released and knew it was filled with lies and distortions, a rewriting of history. In response, I wanted to push back on the lies of this HBO movie and to develop a movie that told the true story of Justice Thomas’s inspiring life. Fortunately, I was able to push back on these lies with op-eds and media appearances, and the documentary became a reality in 2020 with the release of director Michael Pack’s very successful Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, which aired nationally on PBS in 2020. (A book of the same name, which I co-edited, was published in 2022.)
I mentioned my projects to my friend Leonard Leo, who has been involved in the judicial-confirmation wars for years, and he offered to help. In 2016, I devoted a significant amount of time to these projects and ultimately left my law-firm partnership, at the largest firm in the world at the time, to focus on this project, at a financial loss to myself and my family.
The Judicial Education Project (JEP), to which Leonard Leo is an adviser, provided funding for one year to help me defend Justice Thomas and work on telling his inspiring life story, and I will always be grateful to JEP and Leonard for that. Several friends and admirers of the justice financially supported the making and marketing of Michael Pack’s film, including JEP. Of course, as the Post acknowledges, I disclosed these JEP payments to me in my financial-disclosure form in 2017, and the funding for the film, including by JEP, was disclosed in 2020 in Created Equal’s credits in the film. Why is this news today?
The Post shamelessly tries to imply that Leo’s funding of these efforts was used to leverage the filing of an amicus brief by JEP before the Supreme Court and references other conservative causes for which he advocates. This is all nonsense. We were defending someone we admired. No one was seeking to leverage these projects to influence Justice Thomas’s vote. And we certainly weren’t doing it for the money.
In telling this warped tale, and despite its reporter’s initial email to me claiming otherwise, the Post did not want to focus on the fact that I have been vigorously and effectively defending Justice Thomas and the Court since 2021, without compensation. My many opinion columns, media appearances, congressional testimony, and social-media activity called out these lies to demonstrate that there is no “ethics” crisis at the Supreme Court. But that would not fit the Post’s agenda-driven narrative. No wonder 66 percent of the American people have little to no trust in the media, with a record 38 percent having no trust at all in media.
These left-wing media outlets can’t seem to accept that people, even wealthy business-owners or lawyers in Washington, D.C., can be friends with Justice Thomas and want to support and defend him without seeking anything in return. And likewise, that Justice Thomas can be friends with such people and not be willing to sell his vote for a nice plane ride or a vacation at a summer home. It’s an ugly smear, all designed to undermine the public’s trust in the court’s integrity.
No matter. I hope the many friends and admirers of Justice Thomas and this Court continue to stand up to defend him. The media will undoubtedly smear these defenders with innuendos, but I can tell you from personal experience that it’s rewarding to stand up and defend those in whom you believe.