Maybe Clarence Thomas is Just the Best Friend Ever!
You say corruption, I say "super friend!"
2023 has been quite a year for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. A series of ProPublica reports revealed that good friend Harlan Crow bestowed a number of generous gifts to Justice Thomas, including luxury vacations, private-school tuition for his grandnephew, and the mortgage for his mother’s house. The Washington Post reported that another good friend Leonard Leo asked Kellyanne Conway to pay Thomas’ wife Ginni a six-figure salary and that it be kept off the books.
More recently, the New York Times has been looking into Thomas’ close friendships. Last month they examined the associate justice’s membership in the Horatio Alger Society and how the good friends he met there also proved to be remarkably generous to him:
His friendships forged through Horatio Alger have brought him proximity to a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege. Over the years, his Horatio Alger friends have welcomed him at their vacation retreats, arranged V.I.P. access to sporting events and invited him to their lavish parties. In 2004, he joined celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Ed McMahon at a three-day 70th birthday bash in Montana for the industrialist Dennis Washington. Several Horatio Alger friends also helped finance the marketing of a hagiographic documentary about the justice in the wake of an HBO film that had resurfaced Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against him during his confirmation.
Prominent among his Horatio Alger friends has been David Sokol, the onetime heir apparent to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway. Mr. Sokol describes the justice and his wife as “close personal friends,” and in 2015, the Sokols hosted the Thomases for a visit to their sprawling Montana ranch. The Sokols have also hosted the Thomases at their waterfront mansion in Florida.
Finally, this past Sunday, the New York Times investigated Thomas’ oft-noted affection for driving his recreational vehicle around the country. Sounds very middle-America!! Except that the Times discovered two things not exactly middle class about Thomas’ RV. First, it’s a Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon, “the Rolls-Royce of motor coaches…. a condo on wheels” that cost more than a quarter of a million dollars. Second, Thomas did not exactly pay for his RV himself. Nope, yet another good friend — this time health care magnate Anthony Welters — bought it for Thomas:
[Welters] provided Justice Thomas with financing that experts said a bank would have been unlikely to extend — not only because Justice Thomas was already carrying a lot of debt, but because the Marathon brand’s high level of customization makes its used motor coaches difficult to value.
In an email to The Times, Mr. Welters wrote: “Here is what I can share. Twenty-five years ago, I loaned a friend money, as I have other friends and family. We’ve all been on one side or the other of that equation. He used it to buy a recreational vehicle, which is a passion of his.” Roughly nine years later, “the loan was satisfied,” Mr. Welters added. He subsequently sent The Times a photograph of the original title bearing his signature and a handwritten “lien release” date of Nov. 22, 2008….
“‘Satisfied’ doesn’t necessarily mean someone paid the loan back,” said Michael Hamersley, a tax lawyer and expert who has testified before Congress. “‘Satisfied’ could also mean the lender formally forgave the debt, or otherwise just stopped pursuing repayment.”
The story goes on to note that Thomas failed to report this gift in any disclosure statement. Furthermore, Mr. Welters is still listed as the lien holder, and “Mr. Welters said he could not explain why he was still listed as the holder of the lien.”
So what do we know? We know that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni have been on the receiving end of some extraordinary largesse from a network of close friends who happen to be super-rich. We know that Thomas has failed to report a lot of these gifts on his annual ethical disclosure funds. And we know that in multiple cases before the Supreme Court involving most of these men,1 Thomas has not recused himself.
What can a political scientist infer from these facts? There are two possibilities. One is that Thomas has safely ensconced himself in a network of really rich people, and those people are happy to extend their largesse in Thomas’ direction because he holds a position of power and influence in Washington, D.C. Even if Thomas does not explicitly see any quid pro quo, surely it can’t hurt to have an Associate Justice who on some level feels he owes a debt.
You cynics can believe that possibility. That’s your right. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, however, has been moved by what Thomas’ good friends have said about him. Leo told the Washington Post that the Thomases were “dear friends and are people of tremendous good will.” Similarly, Thomas friend Mark Paoletta issued a statement describing the Thomases as “kind, generous, and loving people.” And the NYT story about Thomas’ connection to the Horatio Alger Society notes that Thomas, “granted it unusual access to the Supreme Court, where every year he presides over the group’s signature event: a ceremony in the courtroom at which he places Horatio Alger medals around the necks of new lifetime members. One entrepreneur called it ‘the closest thing to being knighted in the United States.’”
So what if, in addition to his day job as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas is simply the best friend ever? What if Clarence Thomas is just the kind of guy who:
Always picks you up from the airport;
Helps you move your apartment;
Brings s’mores ingredients to any cookout;
Volunteers to be the designated driver at the start of the night;
Sends you a birthday card and year-end holiday letter every year;
Lets you borrow his Netflix password;
Will be the best wingman when you’re out at a bar;
Buys the meal of the driver behind him at the MacDonald’s drive-thru counter;2
Gives the best toast at weddings and the best oration at funerals;
Performs the bris;
Leaves the best, funniest, most heartfelt voice mail messages when you really need them;
Doesn’t blurt out movie spoilers when you go to see the latest blockbuster;
Refuses to publicly acknowledge how awesome a friend he is;
Gives the best, most thoughtful gifts that any friend can buy… provided that friend has other friends who can underwrite said gifts.
Wouldn’t give that kind of good friend six figures in gifts if you could afford it?!
Is that farfetched? Perhaps. But I choose to believe that ProPublica, the Washington Post, and New York Times are picking on Clarence Thomas because he’s the greatest mensch in American history. We may never know another man like Thomas who has been such a good friend to so many misunderstood rich people. And shame on all of you for thinking otherwise!
Thomas appears to have recused himself from any cases involving Welters.
Would Thomas then behave like Tim Robinson? Perish the thought!
Perhaps Justice Thomas could improve his standing by balancing his current social class affiliations with volunteer work in the Peace Corps, the National Action Network, Head Start, etc. He might meet a different sort of people in those organizations. That RV would certainly turn heads in those outfits!
After it became known to the public that Clarence Thomas had not spoken during a court session and that his written opinions bore a remarkable similarity to those of another justice, I surmised that one way to undermine affirmative action is to select the worst candidate for a position, not the best.