Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni have for many decades enjoyed an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle secretly funded by four billionaire benefactors, each with strong ideological and financial interests in cases before the court.
A portion of the bounty ProPublica uncovered:
At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
If there is precedent for anything approaching this level of corruption of the nation's highest court, which is currently dominated by Republican-appointed, activist judges intent on imposing their vision on the country and on the other branches of government, we haven't witnessed it in my lifetime (beginning almost smack dab in the middle of the 20th century).
At least one of the billionaires, Harlan Crow, provided funding for a fawning documentary about Justice Thomas, who shamelessly cloaks himself as just a regular guy with modest tastes:
You know, I don't have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer going across the rural areas. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.
There's something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that. I prefer being around that.
Of course, there is absolutely nothing normal about the opulent luxury Clarence and Ginni Thomas have become accustomed to since the justice's appointment to the high court in 1991 – at least not for regular folks who can only dream of a gaggle of billionaires shoveling money at them.
The documentary highlights something beyond the hobnobbing with the fabulously wealthy that the billionaires' largess permitted. Also funded: manufacturing a mythology regarding Thomas (which he fueled with his self-flattering comments about being a normal, regular guy). In their telling, Thomas has become a legendary historical figure. He is revered as an icon in the conservative movement. A "legal titan" in the words of court-packer extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell.
The private jet trip to meet with deans of Yale Law School and view the room where they intended to display Thomas's portrait is just another element of the campaign to glorify him, which has served to boost the man's personal ego, the conservative legal movement, and the public's view of the justice and the court. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are impressed by the scale, expense, and strategy underlying the enterprise over more than 30 years:
It turns out that this massive publicity blitz was built on decades of work—expensive work—to canonize Thomas. Harlan Crow, ProPublica reported on Thursday, flew the justice to New Haven on his private jet so he could inspect his new portrait at Yale Law School, which Crow subsidized with a $105,000 gift. Cringier still in Thursday’s report is the fact that Thomas ally-slash-attorney-slash-biographer-slash-luxury vacation partner Mark Paoletta, along with his wife, wrote and performed a song for the justice while on a group vacation to the Grand Tetons, memorialized as a “special tribute.” (Sokol, the billionaire, funded the extravagant trip, and flew Thomas out on his private jet.) Photos from the Thomases’ various excursions with their benefactors consistently show the justice surrounded by rapturous, awe-struck admirers. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress in the private golf lounge at the Floridian’s golf and yacht club before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.” Again, Thomas was an “honorary member” of the club and paid no dues.
These benefactors invest in the justice strategically. Crow helped to fund the Clarence Thomas wing of Savannah’s Carnegie Library, where he was honored for his service to the country. The library is right around the corner from the Clarence Thomas Center for Historical Preservation, another Crow-backed project. Down the road lies the Pin Point Heritage Museum (underwritten by Crow); from there, it’s not too far to Thomas’ mother’s house—which Crow owns. He says he purchased it because he has plans to turn it into a museum honoring Thomas. There will undoubtedly be a ceremony, a private jet, and an invitation-only event to celebrate that, too.
Suffice it to say, the Republican Party – which engineered the capture of the court – sees no problem with this state of affairs, so the current Congress will not act to change things, nor will the court itself. While this ugly story of corruption is so massive that it's hard to deny, Republicans will continue to avert their gazes to a fundamental problem of integrity and trust. We will have to wait for another day to set things right.
Final note: let's commemorate the four billionaires making the payoffs to Thomas: Harlan Crow (of course), H. Wayne Huizenga, Paul "Tony" Novelly, and David Sokol. And I'll add a fifth billionaire, one who has famously hosted Samuel Alito: Paul Singer.