As his ethics controversies mounted over the course of the year, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies struggled to justify his apparent lapses. Over the summer, for example, my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones reported that more than a 100 of the far-right justice’s former clerks released an open letter vouching for the jurist’s integrity.
The odd thing about the defense, however, was that it didn’t include an actual defense. The public should discount the allegations, the former clerks effectively argued, not because they’re false, but because people who’ve worked with Thomas believed he deserved the benefit of the doubt, the evidence notwithstanding.
What was not obvious at the time, however, was the ease with which the former clerks’ statement came together. The New York Times reported over the holiday weekend:
In the 32 years since Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government.
The Times’ report has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.
In the nation’s capital, it’s not too unusual for alumni of prominent officials to keep in touch long after they’ve moved on to other positions. Aides to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, for example, famously created an alumni group of sorts, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with such efforts. These organizing efforts can be great for networking, learning about job opportunities, maintaining relationships, etc.
But Thomas’ “army of influential acolytes,” based on the Times’ reporting, is qualitatively different. From the article:
Supreme Court clerks are, by definition, the sort of ambitious lawyers likely to wield significant influence in their post-clerk lives. What makes Justice Thomas’s clerks so remarkable, in large part, is their success as loyal standard-bearers of his singular ideology. Indeed, an examination of what the justice and his wife call Thomas Clerk World, based on interviews with people in and around it and a review of private emails and the Thomases’ public statements, shows how meticulously the couple have cultivated the clerk network over the decades.
The reference to the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, was of particular interest. The idea that there’s some kind of firewall between the jurist’s office and his family does not appear to apply here: She’s contributed to the Thomas Clerk World private email listserv and has been credited with helping create the network.
Also notable are the kind of events Thomas Clerk World members have participated in, including group screenings of — wait for it — a film based on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
But perhaps most striking of all was the apparent fact that after the State Bar of California announced an ethics investigation into John Eastman — himself a former Thomas clerk — Wendy Stone Long, another member of the network, reportedly reached out to the rest of the team.
“Dear Clerk Family, John Eastman is being put through a sham disbarment proceeding by the bar of the state of California,” she wrote. Members of the “family” weren’t just encouraged to support Eastman publicly: The email, the Times added, included a link to donate to his defense fund. In case anyone needs a refresher, Eastman helped concoct a legally dubious scheme to keep Donald Trump in power, despite the election results, and the then-president embraced the plot as a way to keep power he hadn’t legitimately earned. Eastman was not, however, merely a behind-the-scenes author of a ridiculous memo. The Republican lawyer also effectively played the role of a lobbyist, advocating on behalf of a scheme, pleading with officials to go along with the plot, and even appearing at a pre-riot Jan. 6 rally to espouse his outlandish ideas to Trump’s radicalized followers. The State Bar of California has accused the Republican lawyer of, among other things, pushing false statements about election fraud and “contributing” to provoking radicalized Trump supporters ahead of their Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. At least some members of Thomas Clerk World apparently rallied behind Eastman anyway — not because he was right, but because has was considered a member of the “Clerk Family” in good standing.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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