By now, you’ve probably at least heard rumblings about the latest supposed scandal involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wealthy close friend Harlan Crow.
The same Texas billionaire who treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lavish vacations paid private boarding school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, a boy the justice has said he raised as a son, according to a new report which said Thomas did not disclose the… pic.twitter.com/Jqy4ELqjjS
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 4, 2023
As we and many others have pointed out, based on the information that ProPublica has reported and that the media have run with, there’s no evidence whatsoever that Justice Thomas violated Supreme Court ethics rules. Unfortunately that hasn’t deterred the MSM from redoubling their shameful efforts to smear Justice Thomas and call his entire record as both a SCOTUS Justice and a person into question.
Take MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, for example. On today’s edition of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski couldn’t believe the depth of Justice Thomas’ corruption. Scarborough proposed that things would be very different if, say, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had done what Justice Thomas had done, and he was emphatic that every single person sitting around that table would be shocked and appalled and disgusted if a liberal justice were in the hot seat instead of Clarence Thomas.
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Except that’s a bald-faced lie. And we know it’s a bald-faced lie — because Justice Sotomayor has her own history of potential ethical baggage, and in her case, the evidence against her is far more compelling than what Dems and media think they have on Clarence Thomas.
Watch this:
Joe Scarborough responds to the latest Clarence Thomas non-scandal by saying "imagine what would happen if it were Justice Sotomayor" and "everybody at this table would be shocked and outrage and had be critical if this were a liberal justice" Who wants to tell him? pic.twitter.com/EsBrzPF8uL
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) May 4, 2023
Here’s the thing about Justice Sotomayor:
WOW – Justice Sotomayor took $3M from Random House and voted on a key decision where the publisher stood to lose money, even as similarly-positioned colleague recused.
Wait until Politico hears about this. https://t.co/IX7OJQOzix
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) May 4, 2023
Sotomayor voted on cert applications involving a publisher that has paid her millions of dollars. That's an *actual* conflict of interest.
While we're talking SCOTUS ethics … what about Sotomayor's?https://t.co/pyk72OrEWu
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) May 4, 2023
More from The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak:
In 2010, she got a $1.2 million book advance from Knopf Doubleday Group, a part of the [Penguin Random House] conglomerate. In 2012, she reported receiving two advance payments from the publisher totaling $1.9 million.
In 2013, Sotomayor voted in a decision for whether the court should hear a case against the publisher called Aaron Greenspan v. Random House, despite then-fellow Justice Stephen Breyer recusing after also receiving money from the publisher. Greenspan was a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg’s who wrote a book about the founding of Facebook and contended that Random House rejected his book proposal and then awarded a deal to another author who copied his book and eventually turned it into the movie The Social Network.
In 2017, Sotomayor began receiving payments each year from Penguin Random House itself, which continued annually through at least 2021, the most recent disclosure available, and totaled more than $500,000. In all, she received $3.6 million from Penguin Random House or its subsidiaries, according to a Daily Wire tally of financial disclosures.
Well how about that? Rosiak’s piece went up yesterday, but between its publication and “Morning Joe” airing this morning, Scarborough, Brzezinski, et al. apparently didn’t have a chance to read it. None of the media so breathlessly reporting on ProPublica’s purported bombshell about Justice Thomas did.
Weird. They all somehow missed that one. https://t.co/aSZNHBnax5
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 4, 2023
Strange how they always seem to be deaf, dumb, and blind in only one direction.
Harlan Crow did not have any business before the court so his relationship w Thomas has nothing to do with Thomas’ role as a Justice. Meanwhile, Random House paid Sonia Sotomayor millions and had a case before the court that she participated in after they did so. Rather telling…
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 4, 2023
It’s ok to admit that both of these things look pretty bad
— J-Breezy (@TheMaine_Event2) May 4, 2023
But one looks worse, doesn’t it?
But they don’t and aren’t nearly equivalent for someone that knows the legal rules. The Sotomayor non-refusal is grey. The Crow stuff is just dependent on the ignorance of the audience.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 4, 2023
We don’t necessarily have conclusive evidence that Justice Sotomayor’s book deal with Penguin Random House influenced her at all on the Supreme Court bench. But the circumstances of her “ethical dilemma,” if you want to call it that, are definitely shadier than those of Justice Thomas’. Yet none of the people calling for Clarence Thomas’ head on a pike are doing something similar for Sonia Sotomayor.
Because maybe this isn’t actually about ethics at all.
But, this is (D)ifferent some how https://t.co/hMs6N2qOqu
— Fusilli Spock (@awstar11) May 4, 2023
They don’t care because ultimately they don’t actually care about Supreme Court ethics, they just think they’ve got another weapon to use in their decades long persecution of a black man who went off script. https://t.co/BEwzfpCDlw
— Jacob Patterson (@JPatKY) May 4, 2023
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