Last April, Propublica’s Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski dropped a bombshell: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had been showered in high-ticket “gifts” by billionaire ideologue Harlan Crow, who subsequently benefited from Thomas’s rulings in the court:
This was just the beginning: in the coming days and weeks, more and more of Thomas’s corruption came to light, everything from the fact that his mother’s home had been bought by Crow, to the fact that Thomas’s adoptive son went to a fancy private school on Crow’s dime:
The news was explosive and not merely because of the corruption it revealed in the country’s highest court. The credibility of the court itself was at its lowest ebb in living memory, thanks to the two judges who occupied stolen seats – Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. One of those judges – Kavanaugh – is a credibly accused rapist. Thomas is also a credibly accused sexual abuser:
Then, this illegitimate court went on to deliver a string of upsets to long-settled law, culminating in the Dobbs decision, which triggered state laws that force small children to bear their rapists’ babies:
That was the context for the Thomas bribery scandal, which was swiftly joined by another bribery scandal, involving Samuel Alito’s improper acceptance of valuable gifts from Paul Singer, another billionaire who brought business before the court:
This string of scandals and outrages naturally prompted public curiosity about the Supreme Court’s ethical standards, and that triggered fresh waves of incredulous outrage when we all found out that the Supreme Court doesn’t have any:
ALT
