Just When You Thought The Clarence Thomas Scandal Couldn't Get Worse, It Did

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been taking gifts from rich conservatives going back to when he worked in the Reagan administration.

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a walking advertisement for why Supreme Court reform is needed. Previous reporting on Thomas’s gift-taking and potential conflicts of interest was enough for some Democrats in Congress to begin talking about impeachment, but it turns out there is much more to the story.

The New York Times reported:

But a look at his tenure at the Horatio Alger Association, based on more than two dozen interviews and a review of public filings and internal documents, shows that Justice Thomas has received benefits — many of them previously unreported — from a broader cohort of wealthy and powerful friends. They have included major donors to conservative causes with broad policy and political interests and much at stake in Supreme Court decisions, even if they were not directly involved in the cases.

….

Justice Thomas’s acceptance of such hospitality apparently predates his time on the court. A former girlfriend said in an interview that “a buddy” of Justice Thomas had paid for their vacation in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A longtime friend said he had paid for the justice’s 1987 wedding reception.

It turns out Clarence Thomas has a lot more friends who are very generous to him and also have business before the Supreme Court than was first reported.