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The Clarence Thomas Political Smear: All the Facts You Need To Know to Understand The Left's Dishonest Attacks · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome. It is a verdict of Senator Ted Cruz Ben
0:04
Speaker 1: Ferguson with you, and we are publishing on a Tuesday
0:07
Speaker 1: for a reason. The Democrats have decided that they want
0:12
Speaker 1: to have a conversation in Washington in Congress over what
0:16
Speaker 1: they're describing as judicial ethics. The problem is it's nothing
0:21
Speaker 1: more than an assault on the Supreme Court, and specifically,
0:25
Speaker 1: there is one justice they're really wanting to go after,
0:28
Speaker 1: and that is Justice Clarence Thomas, Senator, you're there in
0:32
Speaker 1: the middle of this talk about the Democrats and their
0:36
Speaker 1: game plan for this quote judicial ethics conversation.
0:41
Speaker 2: Well, we are witnessing an historic assault on the court.
0:44
Speaker 2: And what the Democrats are doing is launching a frontal
0:48
Speaker 2: attack on the Supreme Court itself, on the legitimacy of
0:52
Speaker 2: the Court. They are trying to tear down the institution altogether.
0:56
Speaker 2: The reason they are doing that is that the the
1:00
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is the one institution that the hard left
1:03
Speaker 2: does not control, and there is right now a majority
1:07
Speaker 2: of justices on the Court who are committed to the Constitution,
1:11
Speaker 2: who are constitutionalists, and that drives the left crazy. It
1:16
Speaker 2: is one of the very few checks that remain on
1:20
Speaker 2: out of control left wing assaults on our basic rights,
1:23
Speaker 2: on free speech, on religious liberty, on the Second Amendment.
1:26
Speaker 2: That you have justices on the Supreme Court willing to
1:30
Speaker 2: be faithful to the Constitution and not to leftist political ideology.
1:35
Speaker 2: But the assault is not just directed at the Court itself.
1:40
Speaker 2: The assault is very deliberately directed at one justice, in particular,
1:44
Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas. You may have noticed in the last several weeks,
1:50
Speaker 2: article after article after article attacking Justice Thomas, accusing him
1:56
Speaker 2: of being unethical, accusing him of being corrupt, accusing him
1:59
Speaker 2: of being being bought and paid for. All of this
2:03
Speaker 2: is designed to try to wear Justice Thomas down. And
2:08
Speaker 2: the objective of the left, I believe is they hope
2:12
Speaker 2: to drive him away from the court. Now, let me
2:15
Speaker 2: be clear, they will not succeed. But if you take
2:21
Speaker 2: a moment to enter the fevered minds of the radical left,
2:28
Speaker 2: they have a hatred for Justice Thomas that is unique.
2:33
Speaker 2: There are other conservative justices, there have been other conservative
2:36
Speaker 2: justices over the years, but the left has a special
2:41
Speaker 2: loathing for Justice Thomas because he is African American. It
2:47
Speaker 2: is a loathing that is qualitatively different their view, the
2:51
Speaker 2: view of the hard left is that a black man
2:55
Speaker 2: cannot dare to be a conservative, that if you are black,
2:59
Speaker 2: or for that matter, if you are Hispanic, you must
3:03
Speaker 2: be a left wing ideologue, and if you're not, they
3:08
Speaker 2: have a unique level of rage. And when it comes
3:11
Speaker 2: to Justice Thomas, you look at the dripping contempt that
3:16
Speaker 2: the left is heaped upon him for decades. Justice Antonin
3:20
Speaker 2: Scalia served decades on the Court. He was, by almost
3:24
Speaker 2: any measure, every bit as conservative as Clarence Thomas. And
3:30
Speaker 2: yet the left didn't despise Justice Scalia the way they
3:33
Speaker 2: despise Justice Thomas. My former boss on the Supreme Court,
3:37
Speaker 2: William Hub's Renquist, was an extraordinary conservative who ushered in
3:43
Speaker 2: fundamental realignments of Supreme Court jurisprudence, bringing them back to
3:48
Speaker 2: the text and the original understanding of the Constitution. Chief
3:52
Speaker 2: Justice renquist impact on the Supreme Court is monumental and historic,
3:57
Speaker 2: and yet the left does not despise him even a
4:00
Speaker 2: fraction of what they despise Justice Thomas. And the important
4:06
Speaker 2: thing to understand about this assault on Justice Thomas, this
4:10
Speaker 2: is not a fair minded inquiry into judicial ethics. The
4:16
Speaker 2: reason we're releasing this pod on Tuesday morning instead of
4:19
Speaker 2: Wednesday morning, we're releasing it one day early, is later Today,
4:24
Speaker 2: the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing convened by
4:28
Speaker 2: Democrat Chairman Dick Durbin. It is a hearing that is
4:31
Speaker 2: designed to be a kangaroo court, that is designed to
4:35
Speaker 2: be a circus that has one central objective attacking, smearing,
4:41
Speaker 2: maligning Justice Thomas. The left wants to vilify him. And
4:47
Speaker 2: here's something important to understand. Supreme Court justices are not
4:53
Speaker 2: able to defend themselves from political attacks. It's important for
4:58
Speaker 2: everyone listening to this podcast understand what is happening. This
5:02
Speaker 2: is a political attack. It is organized, it is concerted,
5:08
Speaker 2: it is funded. It has left wing advocacy groups who,
5:11
Speaker 2: one day after another after another, release breathless exposs of
5:17
Speaker 2: alleged improprieties. Those exposees are then amplified in a deliberate,
5:22
Speaker 2: concerted way through all of their friends in the corrupt
5:25
Speaker 2: corporate media, and then Democrat senators and Democrat House members
5:30
Speaker 2: jump up and down and demand Justice Thomas's resignation. This
5:36
Speaker 2: is not organic, this is not happening just naturally. This
5:40
Speaker 2: is a political campaign. Every bit is organized as a
5:44
Speaker 2: campaign for governor, for senator, or for president, and a
5:49
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice, like Justice Thomas, is not in a
5:52
Speaker 2: position to defend himself. Justices have none of the equipment
5:56
Speaker 2: to defend themselves from a political smear campaign. They don't
5:59
Speaker 2: typically have the skill set or experience to defend themselves
6:04
Speaker 2: in a political smear campaign. And when the media are
6:07
Speaker 2: active participants in the smear campaign, it is altogether one
6:12
Speaker 2: sided and imbalanced. Therefore, I think it is incumbent on
6:19
Speaker 2: those of us who are in the political arena to
6:23
Speaker 2: present the other side of the argument, to present the
6:27
Speaker 2: defense to defend Justice Thomas. Let me say I know
6:30
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas. He is, in my judgment, hands down, one
6:34
Speaker 2: of the greatest justices ever to serve on the Supreme
6:36
Speaker 2: Court of the United States. He is a brilliant man.
6:39
Speaker 2: He is a deeply principled man. He is ferociously devoted
6:43
Speaker 2: to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He is
6:46
Speaker 2: a careful scholar, and he is a man of courage.
6:50
Speaker 2: All of those attributes would lead most people ordinarily to respect,
6:55
Speaker 2: to admire, to revere the man. I will readily admit
6:58
Speaker 2: I revere Justice Clarence.
6:59
Speaker 3: Time.
7:01
Speaker 2: For the modern left, those attributes are why they despise him,
7:08
Speaker 2: and even more so, take all of that fury and
7:12
Speaker 2: amplify it tenfold because he's an African American, not just
7:16
Speaker 2: an African American, an African American who grew up in
7:19
Speaker 2: abject poverty in Pinpoint Georgia, who came from nothing, who
7:23
Speaker 2: worked hard, who studied, who achieved, and yet who does
7:26
Speaker 2: not buy into the leftist narrative that they demand of
7:31
Speaker 2: the African American community. You accept their rules or they
7:36
Speaker 2: will go after you and demonize you. So this podcast
7:39
Speaker 2: is designed to explain, Okay, what are the issues surrounding
7:44
Speaker 2: the attacks, what's really going on? And I'm going to
7:47
Speaker 2: tell you in one sentence the key thing to understand.
7:50
Speaker 2: The attacks are utterly hypocritical. They are applying a double
7:55
Speaker 2: standard to Justice Thomas that is applied to no other justice.
8:00
Speaker 2: If we want to have a abstract reason discussion about
8:05
Speaker 2: judicial ethics, about what the rules should be and what
8:08
Speaker 2: the rules are that should apply to every judge or
8:11
Speaker 2: every justice that's reasonable, that's perfectly appropriate for the Senate
8:15
Speaker 2: Judiciary Committee to do. That will not be what the
8:18
Speaker 2: Democrats do today. Instead, this will be a political attack.
8:25
Speaker 2: Ad from the moment it gabbles in till the end
8:27
Speaker 2: of the hearing, all designed to malign and attack Justice
8:31
Speaker 2: Thomas and what he is accused of. Numerous other justices,
8:38
Speaker 2: including liberal icons that the left reveres, people like Ruth
8:43
Speaker 2: Bader Ginsburg, people like Stephen Bryer, people like Sonya Soto
8:46
Speaker 2: Mayor have done the very same thing. And what the
8:50
Speaker 2: Democrats in the media are doing is they're trying to
8:53
Speaker 2: apply a double standard, to apply rules that were not
8:57
Speaker 2: rules only to Justice Thomas, not because his conduct is
9:03
Speaker 2: materially different from the other judges or justices, but rather
9:06
Speaker 2: because they hate and despise him. And so I hope
9:09
Speaker 2: that this podcast gives you some more information to understand
9:14
Speaker 2: just how unfair, just how biased this political smear attack is.
9:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not just a smear attack. It's also
9:21
Speaker 1: them trying to undermine the stability and how important the
9:26
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is. And I do want to ask you
9:29
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11:03
Speaker 1: to get back to one other thing before we bring
11:05
Speaker 1: in a special guest, and that is it is clear
11:08
Speaker 1: that the Democratic Party has been trying to undermine the
11:12
Speaker 1: Supreme Court once they saw that it was going to
11:15
Speaker 1: be moving to a conservative court. This happened during Trump administration. Yes,
11:19
Speaker 1: it was very clear they decided, then, all right, let's
11:22
Speaker 1: undermine the court any way we can. We saw them
11:25
Speaker 1: give out home addresses of Supreme Court justice harassed, Supreme
11:29
Speaker 1: Court justices talk about packing a court, expanding the court,
11:33
Speaker 1: and now doing what they're doing today in Washington is
11:36
Speaker 1: another step in just undermining the rule of law.
11:41
Speaker 2: That is exactly right. We also saw the absolute circus
11:45
Speaker 2: of the confirmation hearing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, where the
11:48
Speaker 2: Democrats were perfectly willing to smear Justice Cavanaugh. It followed
11:52
Speaker 2: a pattern they had done previously with Clarence Thomas during
11:56
Speaker 2: his confirmation hearing again where they went into the gutter
11:59
Speaker 2: with nasty personal smears. And that followed a pattern that
12:03
Speaker 2: was originated in nineteen eighty seven with the nomination of
12:06
Speaker 2: Robert Bork and their treatment of Robert Bork was so
12:09
Speaker 2: detestable that it actually formed coined a new verb. To
12:14
Speaker 2: bork a judge or bork a nominee is to go
12:18
Speaker 2: into the gutter with nasty, personal, scurless attacks. The Democrats
12:23
Speaker 2: with Justice Kavanaugh basically bellowed and accused him of being
12:26
Speaker 2: a rapist. And you'll recall how frustrated Justice Kavanaugh became
12:30
Speaker 2: because proving a negative, proving you have not committed whatever
12:38
Speaker 2: ridiculous slurs are lobbed upon you by politicians who are
12:41
Speaker 2: not mired to the facts, who are not looking to evidence,
12:44
Speaker 2: is an incredibly difficult challenge. But all of that got
12:48
Speaker 2: worse after the Supreme Court issues the Dobs opinion, and
12:52
Speaker 2: in fact, after the Dobbs opinion was leaked. When the
12:55
Speaker 2: Dobb's opinion was leaked, which I believe and we've talked
12:57
Speaker 2: about at length, was done by a left wing law
12:59
Speaker 2: clerk in order to threaten and intimidate the justices. The
13:04
Speaker 2: result was exactly what the Democrats predicted. It was angry
13:07
Speaker 2: mobs of protesters descending upon their homes, threatening their families.
13:12
Speaker 2: And it was also not condemned by President Biden, not
13:17
Speaker 2: condemned by the White House when they were asked to
13:19
Speaker 2: condemn it, they refused to do so. It was not
13:21
Speaker 2: prosecuted by Merrick Garland, even though it's an explicit federal
13:25
Speaker 2: crime to protest at the home of a judge in
13:27
Speaker 2: order to influence the decision in a case. And the
13:30
Speaker 2: reason that Merrick Garland and Joe Biden and Kamala Harrison,
13:33
Speaker 2: senate Democrats, that none of them stood up in defense
13:37
Speaker 2: of the court is sadly they are willing to countenance intimidation, bullying,
13:43
Speaker 2: and ultimately threats of violence. As you know, one deranged
13:47
Speaker 2: lunatic traveled all the way from California to Bethesda, Maryland
13:52
Speaker 2: with a knife, a gun, rope, and equipment in an
13:57
Speaker 2: attempt to murder Justice Kavanaugh and inspired by the angry
14:02
Speaker 2: rhetoric of the left. That's how extreme they've been willing
14:04
Speaker 2: to go. And so their attack on Justice Thomas is
14:09
Speaker 2: meant in their fevered dreams to drive Justice Thomas off
14:13
Speaker 2: the court. But even if they fail with their major objective,
14:16
Speaker 2: their second objective is to tear down the legitimacy of
14:20
Speaker 2: the Court so that the American people do not respect
14:24
Speaker 2: its decisions. Now, for anyone that cares about our country,
14:27
Speaker 2: about our constitution. That's not good for the country. And
14:31
Speaker 2: I think part of this concerted attack on the legitimacy
14:36
Speaker 2: of the Court is also to try to build political
14:39
Speaker 2: support for their radical plan to pack the Supreme Court
14:43
Speaker 2: to add instantaneously four new left wing justices who will
14:48
Speaker 2: vote the way Democrats want. Mind you, they don't care
14:51
Speaker 2: about the law. Ironically, because they don't care about the law,
14:55
Speaker 2: they also don't care about democracy. Many of the pol
15:00
Speaker 2: sees the left pushes are wildly unpopular. The left embraces
15:05
Speaker 2: unlimited abortion on demand up until the moment of birth,
15:09
Speaker 2: with no limitations. Roughly nine percent of Americans agree with that.
15:13
Speaker 2: Ninety one percent don't, so when the people vote, they
15:16
Speaker 2: don't vote for radical left wing positions. The American people
15:20
Speaker 2: believe in the Second Amendment right to keep in bare arms.
15:22
Speaker 2: They want to be able to protect their families. When
15:25
Speaker 2: the people vote on that, they typically vote to protect
15:28
Speaker 2: those rights. Today's modern democrats don't want the people to
15:34
Speaker 2: be able to vote on contested political issues. Instead, they
15:39
Speaker 2: want unelected judges to decree the extreme left wing position
15:44
Speaker 2: and to disenfranchise the voters. And so this attempt to
15:48
Speaker 2: delegitimize the cord is ultimately an attempt to attack democracy itself.
15:54
Speaker 2: And there's an irony because that's one of the favorite
15:57
Speaker 2: talking points of today's democrats is their defend democracy. And unfortunately,
16:02
Speaker 2: in the political battle we're in, frequently we see democrats
16:07
Speaker 2: purporting to defend that which they are in fact attacking,
16:11
Speaker 2: and purporting to oppose that in fact in which they
16:14
Speaker 2: are in fact promoting. And in this instance, the attack
16:18
Speaker 2: on the court is front and center, an attack on
16:21
Speaker 2: democracy and an attack on the Constitution.
16:24
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. Before we bring in a guest,
16:27
Speaker 1: as someone who knows Clarence Thomas very well, and I
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Speaker 1: obviously a show that we had to do early because
18:09
Speaker 1: of what the Democrats are doing it also gave us
18:12
Speaker 1: an opportunity to bring on a good friend of yours
18:14
Speaker 1: and a very good friend of Clarence Thomas.
18:16
Speaker 2: And I want you to introduce Mark Well sure. Our
18:19
Speaker 2: guest today is Mark Paletta.
18:21
Speaker 3: Now.
18:22
Speaker 2: Mark is a very experienced lawyer in Washington. He is
18:25
Speaker 2: someone who has been close friends with Justice Thomas for
18:28
Speaker 2: thirty years. Mark worked with Justice Thomas when he was
18:34
Speaker 2: a young lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office under
18:37
Speaker 2: George Herbert Walker Bush Bush forty one, when Bush forty
18:41
Speaker 2: one nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and so
18:45
Speaker 2: Mark worked on Justice Thomas's confirmation in nineteen ninety one. Recently,
18:51
Speaker 2: he has co edited a book on Justice Thomas entitled
18:55
Speaker 2: Created Equal Clarence Thomas in his own words. Mark is
18:59
Speaker 2: a partner at the law firm in d C. Of
19:01
Speaker 2: Share Jaffey, which is actually Gene Cher and Eric Jaffe
19:04
Speaker 2: are both friends of mine as well. Actually, Eric Jaffe
19:08
Speaker 2: clerked at the Supreme Court the same year I did.
19:10
Speaker 2: Eric clerk for Justice Thomas while I was clerking for
19:13
Speaker 2: the Chief Justice. Mark is also a senior fellow at
19:17
Speaker 2: the Center for Renewing America. He's served in both the
19:21
Speaker 2: George Herbert Walker Bush administrations and the Trump administration, and
19:24
Speaker 2: he worked on the confirmations of Justice Thomas, Justice Gorsic,
19:28
Speaker 2: and Justice Kavanaugh. Mark also represented Ginny Thomas in connection
19:34
Speaker 2: with the House January sixth Committee and other kangaroo court.
19:39
Speaker 2: And let me actually read for you what Justice Thomas
19:44
Speaker 2: said and his memoirs about Mark Paletta and his work
19:47
Speaker 2: on the Thomas confirmation fight. So this is a quote
19:49
Speaker 2: from Justice Thomas and his memoirs. Virginia and I looked
19:52
Speaker 2: at each other in astonishment, then thanked God for the
19:56
Speaker 2: good people of this country. We first went to Saint
19:59
Speaker 2: Albans Episcopal Church, where the Reverend Jack Danforth presided over
20:03
Speaker 2: a service of Thanksgiving, delivering a moving, heartfelt homily on
20:07
Speaker 2: justice to a roomful of peuse packed with the familiar
20:11
Speaker 2: faces of family and friends. Then we went to the
20:13
Speaker 2: White House, where I threw protocol to the wind and
20:17
Speaker 2: went directly to Mark Paoletta's office to thank him for
20:21
Speaker 2: his friendship and for everything he'd done to defend me.
20:25
Speaker 2: We sat among tall stacks of paper, eating hamburgers and
20:29
Speaker 2: talking over the strange events of the summer and fall.
20:32
Speaker 2: I knew how inadequate my words of gratitude sounded. It
20:36
Speaker 2: would have taken a poet to tell him how I felt.
20:41
Speaker 2: But I also knew that out of this nightmare had
20:44
Speaker 2: come a friend to whom I would remain close for
20:48
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. It's with great pleasure that
20:51
Speaker 2: I welcome Mark Paoletta to verdict. Mark. Great to be
20:55
Speaker 2: with you.
20:56
Speaker 3: Shenner, Thank you yet.
21:00
Speaker 2: So, Mark, you have witnessed firsthand this recent assault on
21:06
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas, and you have been intimately involved in fighting
21:11
Speaker 2: back against each of the charges for listeners of the podcast.
21:16
Speaker 2: Assume that listeners of the podcast are aware of the
21:20
Speaker 2: assault but are not necessarily following the details closely. How
21:25
Speaker 2: would you summarize the principal charges that have been leveled
21:29
Speaker 2: against Justice Thomas in the last six weeks or so.
21:34
Speaker 3: So the charges are all utterly baseless, in a word,
21:41
Speaker 3: meant to attack us as Thomas and smear him. I
21:45
Speaker 3: thought you did a wonderful job setting up what is
21:49
Speaker 3: going on here, Senator, which is to you know, attack
21:52
Speaker 3: the court and undermine it. With respect to Justice Thomas,
21:56
Speaker 3: the charges that he has a friends who happens to
21:58
Speaker 3: be wealthy, and he always on vacations with him, like
22:02
Speaker 3: all Americans do, go on vacations with your friends. And
22:05
Speaker 3: this friend happens to be, as I said, be wealthy,
22:08
Speaker 3: and he's not required under the rules of that the
22:14
Speaker 3: Judicial Conference laid out in implementing the epics and to
22:19
Speaker 3: disclose these trips. Harland Crowe is his friend, and Harlan's
22:23
Speaker 3: a friend of mine, you know, has no business before
22:26
Speaker 3: the court. There are longtime friends. They share interests and
22:30
Speaker 3: values together, and they go on trips. They've gone, you know,
22:33
Speaker 3: he's got he's got a home up in the Adirondacks.
22:36
Speaker 3: That Justice Thomas's has been to and and and the
22:39
Speaker 3: Left has turned this into some sort of crime to
22:42
Speaker 3: have a friend and not have to disclose every time
22:45
Speaker 3: you have a Hamburger with a friend, or go on
22:47
Speaker 3: a trip, or go on a flight somewhere. And so
22:51
Speaker 3: many justices have done this over the years. It's perfectly permissible.
22:56
Speaker 3: And in fact, the Judicial Conference at the plotting and
23:00
Speaker 3: i'd say bullying of Senator Whitehouse recently changed this rule
23:05
Speaker 3: to say that flights that you take and certain I'll
23:10
Speaker 3: call them homes that you stay at have to be disclosed.
23:14
Speaker 3: But it's very clear from the way they change the
23:17
Speaker 3: language and the way it was covered in sto Friends
23:21
Speaker 3: of Justices, the New York Times, even you know, left
23:24
Speaker 3: wing judicial ethics expert Stephen Dillers All admitted that Justice
23:30
Speaker 3: Thomas wasn't required to disclose these trips and these vacations
23:35
Speaker 3: before this rule change. The rule was changed on March
23:38
Speaker 3: fourteenth of twenty twenty three, just a couple of weeks ago.
23:41
Speaker 3: That is this entire, this long pro public a story.
23:45
Speaker 3: And I'm telling you, Senator, the number of reporters and
23:50
Speaker 3: the time they spent hunting down Justice Thomas's you know,
23:55
Speaker 3: trip and where he was, the amount of time they
23:58
Speaker 3: put on that when they could be looked looking at
24:00
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and all the things of
24:04
Speaker 3: this administration. But what they want to focus on is
24:07
Speaker 3: making Justice Thomas's life a living hell. And as you said,
24:10
Speaker 3: this idea of trying to actually drives him off the court.
24:14
Speaker 3: They at first right, as they do with many justices,
24:17
Speaker 3: they want to see if they could bend you to
24:18
Speaker 3: their will and make you sort of change your jurisprudence,
24:22
Speaker 3: maybe trim it here and there. They know that's been
24:25
Speaker 3: a failure and utter failure for thirty years for Justice Thomas,
24:28
Speaker 3: who used to write solo descent and concurrences and you
24:31
Speaker 3: were up there at the time, you know, is now
24:35
Speaker 3: commanding majorities on all these opinion engine areas that you
24:38
Speaker 3: have laid out, from Dobbs to the Second Amendment, training
24:41
Speaker 3: in the administrative state, to religious liberties. These are all
24:45
Speaker 3: issues that Justice Thomas has been a leader on and
24:47
Speaker 3: has laid down as church prude. But that is the
24:50
Speaker 3: first sort of the first attack on him. The most
24:54
Speaker 3: latest attack was the one on the trips and the
24:58
Speaker 3: fact that he didn't disclose.
25:00
Speaker 2: So and let's take a moment to focus on this,
25:03
Speaker 2: because Mark, you're right, this has been the most prominent attack.
25:06
Speaker 2: And the attack is that he traveled with a very
25:10
Speaker 2: good friend of his, Harlan Crowe. Harlan is a friend
25:13
Speaker 2: of mine as well. I know Harlan well. He lives
25:15
Speaker 2: in Dallas. He's a very successful businessman. He's a very
25:19
Speaker 2: generous philanthropist. He is a Republican, although he's not not
25:25
Speaker 2: a terribly conservative Republican. He frankly is a self described
25:31
Speaker 2: very moderate. In fact, he's described himself as a pro
25:34
Speaker 2: choice Republican. He is not Harlan Crowe is not a
25:38
Speaker 2: fan of Donald Trump, but he has been a supporter.
25:43
Speaker 2: He was a big, big supporter of Mitt Romney's. He's
25:46
Speaker 2: been a supporter of mine, He's been a supporter of
25:49
Speaker 2: other Republicans. And he and Justice Thomas have been friends
25:52
Speaker 2: for decades, close friends. And the attack is that Justice
25:56
Speaker 2: Thomas has vacationed with Harlan Crowe and has been to
26:00
Speaker 2: his home on vacation, and that has flown on his
26:06
Speaker 2: plane and has been on his yacht as well. And
26:08
Speaker 2: that's the attack. And look, I can imagine a world
26:12
Speaker 2: in which rules were put in place that says said,
26:17
Speaker 2: no Justice can stay at anyone else's home. I could
26:20
Speaker 2: imagine a world in which a rule was put in
26:23
Speaker 2: place that say no Justice can fly on a private plane.
26:26
Speaker 2: I could imagine a world in which a rule was
26:28
Speaker 2: put in place that say no Justice can be on
26:31
Speaker 2: anyone's yacht. That might make sense, it might not. We
26:34
Speaker 2: could debate that in the abstract, but let's start with
26:39
Speaker 2: this proposition. The rules don't say that, now do they mark.
26:44
Speaker 3: They're being changed. If you can be on them, you
26:47
Speaker 3: need to disclose it. But until March fourteenth of twenty
26:52
Speaker 3: twenty three, it was if you were a friend, and
26:55
Speaker 3: the personal hospitality exemption, you didn't have to disclose sorts
27:00
Speaker 3: of trips from the flight to being on a boat,
27:04
Speaker 3: to being on at somebody's vacation home and food and entertainment,
27:08
Speaker 3: all those things were exempt under the personal hospitality exemption.
27:12
Speaker 3: The Judicial Conference changed that on March fourteenth of twenty
27:16
Speaker 3: twenty three. New York Times covered it, and even Senator
27:20
Speaker 3: Whitehouse last year had a hearing on this with the
27:23
Speaker 3: old rule and came up with a scenario to described
27:27
Speaker 3: the justice going on a yeah, a justice going to
27:30
Speaker 3: somebody's a place in Aspen or something like that, and
27:36
Speaker 3: said to the witness, now he wouldn't have to disclose
27:39
Speaker 3: those things right under this rule, and his witness it's
27:42
Speaker 3: left wing, you know. After this, Kedric paints, Yeah, the
27:46
Speaker 3: rule has been interpreted by the courts to not have
27:51
Speaker 3: to disclose that so up until this point, and you're right,
27:54
Speaker 3: you know, if they want to write a rule that
27:55
Speaker 3: says X y Z, fine, But what's being what is
27:58
Speaker 3: being sort of double standard, as you said, to apply
28:01
Speaker 3: to double centers with Justice Tomments, is the fact that
28:04
Speaker 3: he should have disclosed these things when he had no
28:08
Speaker 3: reason to so.
28:09
Speaker 2: And let me underscore a couple of points, because it's
28:11
Speaker 2: important to understand the specifics. Number One, the Judicial Ethics
28:17
Speaker 2: rules have never and even to this day, do not
28:22
Speaker 2: prohibit a justice from staying at someone else's home, from
28:26
Speaker 2: flying on a plane a private plane, from getting on
28:29
Speaker 2: a yacht. The rules do not prohibit that. And up
28:34
Speaker 2: until March of twenty twenty three, in other words, up
28:37
Speaker 2: until just over a month ago, the rules did not
28:41
Speaker 2: require disclosure of staying at a personal friend's home, or
28:45
Speaker 2: flying on the friend's plane, or being on the yacht.
28:49
Speaker 2: Am I stating that accurately both of those propositions?
28:54
Speaker 3: Yes? Okay.
28:55
Speaker 2: Now you might say, well okay, but clearly from the
29:00
Speaker 2: press coverage, what Justice Thomas has done is really really different,
29:04
Speaker 2: and no other justice does that. And if that were true,
29:07
Speaker 2: then I guess you could have an argument about why
29:09
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas was doing something out of the norm. It
29:13
Speaker 2: just happens not just to be false, but wildly, blatantly,
29:18
Speaker 2: undeniably false. So, according to the public data that are
29:22
Speaker 2: available at all the Justices, Justice Thomas has reported to
29:26
Speaker 2: date one hundred and nine reported trips. That is, since
29:31
Speaker 2: he was appointed and confirmed to the Court in nineteen
29:33
Speaker 2: ninety one. One hundred and nine of those one hundred
29:36
Speaker 2: and nine five were international trips. Now you might say
29:39
Speaker 2: one hundred and nine Okay, that's egregious, that's just too much.
29:43
Speaker 2: All right, Let's look to Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg. So
29:49
Speaker 2: Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg. Justice Thomas was confirmed to the
29:54
Speaker 2: Court in nineteen ninety one. Justice Ginsburg was the next
29:56
Speaker 2: justice to arrive. She was confirmed in nineteen ninety three.
30:00
Speaker 2: How many reported trips did Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have?
30:03
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty seven of them? How many were international?
30:08
Speaker 2: That would be twenty eight. So Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed
30:12
Speaker 2: after Clarence Thomas, had nearly fifty percent more trips than
30:16
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas has had, and had nearly six times as
30:21
Speaker 2: many international trips. Okay, well, maybe Justice Ginsburg is an outlier.
30:28
Speaker 2: What about Justice Brier? Okay, Justice Brier. So Steve Bryer
30:34
Speaker 2: was confirmed in nineteen ninety four, So he was the
30:36
Speaker 2: next justice confirmed to the Court after Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
30:40
Speaker 2: During his time on the Court, Remember, Clarence Thomas had
30:42
Speaker 2: one hundred nine trips? How many did Steve Bryer have?
30:45
Speaker 2: That would be two hundred and thirty three, so more
30:49
Speaker 2: than two times as many trips as Justice Thomas. Three
30:54
Speaker 2: of them were international. All right, that's Justice Bryer. How
30:59
Speaker 2: about Justice Kagan. Now, Lena Kagan was confirmed in August
31:04
Speaker 2: of twenty ten, so she's been on the Court just
31:07
Speaker 2: over twelve years. Twelve and a half years. In that
31:11
Speaker 2: twelve and a half years, so about a third of
31:13
Speaker 2: the time Justice Thomas has been on the court. Elena Kagan,
31:17
Speaker 2: who's a Democrat appointee appointed by Obama, reported sixty eight
31:22
Speaker 2: trips sixty eight, so she's got two thirds of the
31:26
Speaker 2: trips Justice Thomas has in only one third of the time,
31:30
Speaker 2: and six of those were international. Well, but surely those
31:35
Speaker 2: are outliers. All right, Let's try one more. Sonya so
31:37
Speaker 2: to my or, Sonya so to my or appointed by Obama,
31:41
Speaker 2: Obama's first appointee, confirmed in August of two thousand and nine,
31:47
Speaker 2: Sonya so to my or Again, she's been on the
31:49
Speaker 2: court just about a third of the time Justice Thomas has.
31:53
Speaker 2: How many does she have? One hundred and fifty one
31:56
Speaker 2: reported trips? That is fifty percent more than Justice Thomas
32:01
Speaker 2: in a third of the time, and ten international trips
32:06
Speaker 2: now at the Judiciary Committee hearing, if they want to
32:10
Speaker 2: go through and drag Ruth Bader Ginsburg through the mud,
32:13
Speaker 2: and drag Steve Bryer through the mud, and drag Elena
32:16
Speaker 2: Kagan through the mud, and drag Sonya Soto Mayor through
32:19
Speaker 2: the mud, the Democrats are welcome to do that. I'm
32:22
Speaker 2: going to predict they're not going to because they're being
32:25
Speaker 2: utterly hypocritical and they're attacking Clarence Thomas for something that
32:31
Speaker 2: other justices, including icons of the left, have done, and
32:36
Speaker 2: most of them have done far more frequently than Clarence Thomas.
32:42
Speaker 2: Is what I said. Accurate there, Mark.
32:46
Speaker 3: Absolutely accurate, Senator, And I think I'll kind of go
32:49
Speaker 3: back to what you were saying about how the left
32:52
Speaker 3: heaps Justice Thomas and exposes their racism. When you read
32:56
Speaker 3: about Clarence Thomas and these trips and his friendship with
33:00
Speaker 3: with Harlan Crowe, it's always in this sense that like
33:05
Speaker 3: Harlan Crowe has bought Justice Thomas, he he has him,
33:10
Speaker 3: he's under his spell. And you never read that about
33:14
Speaker 3: any other justice with respect to you know, going on
33:17
Speaker 3: trips and going flying somewhere, being on somebody's boat, it's
33:21
Speaker 3: this racism, uh that's directed at Justice Thomas that somehow,
33:25
Speaker 3: you know, Harlan Crowe is controlling Clarence Thomas. And it's
33:31
Speaker 3: it started when he went on the d C circuit
33:33
Speaker 3: and they said he was dependent on Larry Silverman. Then
33:37
Speaker 3: it goes to when he goes on to the Supreme
33:39
Speaker 3: Court and he's dependent on Justice Scalia, always dependent on
33:44
Speaker 3: his wife or his law clerks at the Supreme that
33:48
Speaker 3: the White House allegedly, you know, picked for him. So
33:52
Speaker 3: it's got this it's really this disgusting attack on Justice
33:56
Speaker 3: Thomas that is connected to this his French with halland Crubb.
34:01
Speaker 2: Well, you're exactly right. And there's a contempt that the
34:05
Speaker 2: left has, particularly to an African American who dares to
34:09
Speaker 2: be conservative. And part of the consmpt contempt is an
34:13
Speaker 2: intellectual arrogance that the left has for decades tried to
34:19
Speaker 2: caricature Justice Thomas as not very bright. He must be
34:23
Speaker 2: led by white conservatives, because lord knows, he couldn't figure
34:27
Speaker 2: out those views on his own. And it was grotesquely
34:31
Speaker 2: offensive when liberals advanced that argument in nineteen ninety one,
34:36
Speaker 2: and it has been grotesquely offensive ever since. And I
34:39
Speaker 2: got to tell you. Look, I was in law school.
34:41
Speaker 2: I graduated law school in nineteen ninety five, So Justice
34:44
Speaker 2: Thomas was a new Supreme Court justice when I was
34:47
Speaker 2: in law school, and the professors at Harvard Law School,
34:51
Speaker 2: most of the left wing students at Harvard Law School,
34:54
Speaker 2: they really did view Clarence Thomas as just a rube,
34:58
Speaker 2: just not bright enough really to even tie his own shoes,
35:01
Speaker 2: And the racist condescension was palpable. Now, I will say
35:07
Speaker 2: what's interesting is in the thirty plus years Justice Thomas
35:13
Speaker 2: has been on the Court, Justice Thomas' term after term
35:18
Speaker 2: has written extraordinary opinions. And for anyone that follows Supreme
35:24
Speaker 2: Court jurisprudence, there are real differences between Justice Thomas's jurisprudence
35:29
Speaker 2: and Justice Scalia's jurisprudence and Chief Justice Ranquist jurisprudence. But
35:34
Speaker 2: of all of the justices, the Justice most likely to
35:40
Speaker 2: revisit long standing precedent and to go back to first principles,
35:44
Speaker 2: to go back to what does the Constitution say, what
35:48
Speaker 2: was the original public meaning of the words used in
35:51
Speaker 2: the Constitution, and to go back and examine it carefully.
35:55
Speaker 2: There's no justice more willing to do so than Clarence Thomas.
35:59
Speaker 2: And he started very early on when he was brand
36:00
Speaker 2: new in the court. Every term there would be one
36:04
Speaker 2: or two opinions that term where he would write a
36:08
Speaker 2: very very serious, scholarly exposition of an area of law,
36:12
Speaker 2: sometimes big sexy areas of law that command a lot
36:15
Speaker 2: of attention, other times relatively obscure areas of law, but
36:20
Speaker 2: nonetheless that were consequential. And there was a palpable shift
36:26
Speaker 2: over the years, which is leftist for the first five
36:30
Speaker 2: ten years just decried him as an idiot. But you
36:34
Speaker 2: couldn't read the opinions that he wrote and maintained that.
36:38
Speaker 2: They would say, by the way, well he's not writing it.
36:41
Speaker 2: It's his law clerks. His law clerks are doing his
36:43
Speaker 2: work for him. Well, look I clerked at the court.
36:46
Speaker 2: Every justice has law clerks. And yet somehow, when Ruth
36:51
Speaker 2: Bader Ginsburg wrote an opinion, it wasn't her law clerks.
36:53
Speaker 2: When Bill Brennan wrote an opinion, it wasn't his law clerks.
36:57
Speaker 2: It's only Justice Thomas's law clerks. They think that are
37:00
Speaker 2: writing the opinions. Maybe you could argue that for a
37:03
Speaker 2: term or two, but at this point, over three decades,
37:06
Speaker 2: there is a consistent thread of a unified view and understanding,
37:11
Speaker 2: a depth and scholarly gravitas that Justice Thomas has brought.
37:17
Speaker 2: And I gotta say, Mark, oddly enough, the left, particularly
37:20
Speaker 2: the legal academy, have been forced to pay him a
37:24
Speaker 2: backhanded compliment because you don't see them attacking him anymore
37:29
Speaker 2: as not up to the job, not bright enough that
37:31
Speaker 2: they did for years say well, he just follows Scalia.
37:34
Speaker 2: Scalia is no longer with us, and Justice Thomas is
37:38
Speaker 2: the leader of the more conservative justices. He is one
37:43
Speaker 2: of the most consequential justices to have ever lived. And
37:45
Speaker 2: now the left just says he's dangerous. That in a
37:49
Speaker 2: way is a concession because it is acknowledging the power
37:54
Speaker 2: of his ideas. But they nonetheless visit a special agree
38:00
Speaker 2: of hate on him that I think is directly related
38:04
Speaker 2: to his race and the view Democrats have that you
38:09
Speaker 2: must agree with them if you happen to be African American,
38:14
Speaker 2: or if you happen to be a spati.
38:15
Speaker 1: Mark, I want to ask you a question too, that
38:17
Speaker 1: that you just mentioned, Senator, and that's this. The Supreme
38:21
Speaker 1: Court is a tight knit group. A lot of times
38:24
Speaker 1: you will see justices you know that won't necessarily criticize
38:28
Speaker 1: us or other justice you know, publicly. Why is it
38:32
Speaker 1: on an issue like this that, by the way, would
38:34
Speaker 1: effect I would assume all of their lifestyles based on
38:37
Speaker 1: the number of trips that you heard this senator run
38:39
Speaker 1: through a few minutes ago. Are we not going to
38:43
Speaker 1: see some justices come out and kind of say, hey,
38:45
Speaker 1: this is out of bounds to you know, in the
38:47
Speaker 1: way that they're treating Justice Thomas. Are they just going
38:49
Speaker 1: to say, hey, we'll stay out of this. If you
38:51
Speaker 1: guys want to do this, it's on you.
38:56
Speaker 3: Well, I think the attack on a court has actually
38:59
Speaker 3: galvanized them. We've never seen you know, there'll be differences
39:03
Speaker 3: on their opinions, but you just saw the Chief Justice.
39:05
Speaker 3: You know, am I do you give a stiff arm?
39:07
Speaker 3: Rightly so to the Judiciary Committee in terms of testifying.
39:11
Speaker 3: And then I think unprecedented. I don't think there's ever
39:16
Speaker 3: been a nine justices signing the ethics opinion, the statement
39:20
Speaker 3: on ethics and refusals that they also issued. So I
39:24
Speaker 3: think there's a coming together that they realize they're under assault,
39:28
Speaker 3: that this is so on the institution of the Supreme Court,
39:32
Speaker 3: and that's good for no one. And so you know,
39:36
Speaker 3: I think it's going to backfire on the left. This
39:39
Speaker 3: attack the left always, you know, they do this whole lot,
39:43
Speaker 3: but they are going after every justice. They're particularly hate
39:47
Speaker 3: Justice Thomas. As you said, Senator, I think it's in
39:50
Speaker 3: part right, he's been so successful. They tried to destroy
39:53
Speaker 3: him in ninety one. I lived through. I went through
39:56
Speaker 3: that with him. But he's now ascendant. Right, he is
39:59
Speaker 3: the leader of the cour were after thirty years right
40:02
Speaker 3: set more than seven hundred opinions. As you said, he
40:04
Speaker 3: writes more opinions per year than any justice on the
40:07
Speaker 3: court and has for many years. And the other thing, right,
40:12
Speaker 3: and as you said, one of the one legal commentator
40:14
Speaker 3: a left wing commentator. So Justice Thomas is the most
40:17
Speaker 3: important legal thinker of the generation and the most significant
40:21
Speaker 3: visual appointment of the last forty years. It's Ian Millheiser
40:25
Speaker 3: from box right who's no fan of the Justice but
40:28
Speaker 3: realizes his influence and more importantly, or as importantly, his clerks,
40:33
Speaker 3: his army of clerks, and Senator, you know this, right,
40:36
Speaker 3: they have gone out into the world. There are fifteen judges,
40:39
Speaker 3: I think fifteen judges on courts of Appeals and other
40:41
Speaker 3: courts that are are are is the next generation. He
40:45
Speaker 3: has solicitors general right out there, Scott Stewart, who who's
40:49
Speaker 3: in Mississippi. He argued the Bobs case. He has law
40:53
Speaker 3: clerks who are representing the Harvard the Planets against Harvard
40:59
Speaker 3: and the University North Carolina in the affirmative action cases. Right.
41:02
Speaker 3: His clerks are changing the faith of American jurisprudence from
41:05
Speaker 3: his ideas and from his example of courage to go
41:09
Speaker 3: out there and change the world and changing, you know,
41:14
Speaker 3: the legal status quo. And that's what really enrages the
41:17
Speaker 3: left is that he's successful and they've taken all these
41:20
Speaker 3: shots at him, and he is not bowed ever to
41:23
Speaker 3: these attacks. And he's only seventy four years old, right,
41:28
Speaker 3: which is as a mazing, you know, another decade on the court,
41:33
Speaker 3: maybe more. And so that's why they're attacking. I think
41:37
Speaker 3: that's why there's this fury and these other justices, the
41:40
Speaker 3: youngman justices who look up to Justice Thomas. You know,
41:43
Speaker 3: I helped out on the Borsch confirmation. And you saw,
41:46
Speaker 3: you know, an email that was revealed at the Department
41:48
Speaker 3: of Justice where Neil Borsich was emailing with Greg Cassis
41:51
Speaker 3: who's on the d C circuits talking about Justice Thomas's
41:55
Speaker 3: descent in Quila, what a magnificent opinion had opinion it was.
42:00
Speaker 3: So it's just effect on these younger justices. I think
42:03
Speaker 3: that that's shaping this court. That's providing the strength and
42:08
Speaker 3: courage for these guys both to do so bulgerus prudence
42:12
Speaker 3: and also personal courage in this attack. And I think
42:14
Speaker 3: it was significant. I think it's of the year university
42:17
Speaker 3: of this leak, that none of the justices backed off
42:20
Speaker 3: that opinion, and I think that was significant that you know,
42:23
Speaker 3: unprecedented leaks, but nobody moved and I think they showed
42:29
Speaker 3: courage under fire, and I think that significant going forward.
42:32
Speaker 1: I want to ask another question of both you and
42:34
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42:36
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42:39
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42:42
Speaker 1: Thomas and others that are coming under attack from the
42:45
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Speaker 1: I want to get you, guys, take on this and Mark.
43:57
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44:00
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44:02
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44:06
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44:12
Speaker 1: Thomas when it comes to what's happening to Dan DC.
44:16
Speaker 2: Well, let me say several things. First of all, they
44:19
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44:23
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44:26
Speaker 2: They don't want to discuss these facts. They are active
44:28
Speaker 2: participants in the political campaign trying to drive Justice Thomas
44:34
Speaker 2: off the court. And by the way, there is a precedent.
44:36
Speaker 2: You look at abe Fortis, who was a sitting justice
44:39
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court, and there was a scandal that
44:42
Speaker 2: came out, a financial scandal that came out, and abe
44:45
Speaker 2: Fortis resigned from the court. And the left is looking
44:49
Speaker 2: to that example and they want to replicate it with
44:52
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas. They hate him and they want him off
44:55
Speaker 2: the court because he is such an effective justice. And
45:00
Speaker 2: so the media is they're demonizing Justice Thomas. They're demonizing
45:06
Speaker 2: Harlan crow And Harlan Crowe is a good and decent man.
45:08
Speaker 2: He's a very generous philanthropist. They're trying to attack him
45:12
Speaker 2: as some nefarious right wing billionaire. By the way, one
45:16
Speaker 2: of the slanders they direct at Harlan Crowe as they say, oh,
45:19
Speaker 2: he collects not see memorabilia. So Harlan's home is essentially
45:24
Speaker 2: a museum, and he hosts events in Dallas all the time.
45:28
Speaker 2: There are all sorts of public and community events there
45:30
Speaker 2: and he has hundreds, probably thousands of artifacts. He has
45:35
Speaker 2: lots of artifacts from World War Two. He has actually
45:38
Speaker 2: outside his home a whole series of statues that were
45:44
Speaker 2: erected to Communist leaders and that were toppled when those
45:47
Speaker 2: countries became liberated. They were statues that were toppled, and
45:52
Speaker 2: he's collected them and erected them not because he admires
45:55
Speaker 2: Communist leaders, but because he wants the world not to
45:59
Speaker 2: forget get their horrors. The same is true with his
46:03
Speaker 2: World War Two displays. He has lots of displays with
46:07
Speaker 2: with artifacts from the Allies, the American Armies, but he
46:11
Speaker 2: also has artifacts from the bad guys from the Nazis,
46:14
Speaker 2: not because he admires them, but the same reason that
46:17
Speaker 2: a museum displays what happens so that we remember our history.
46:21
Speaker 2: But the media doesn't want to tell you that. They
46:23
Speaker 2: want to paint him like some comic book villain twirling
46:27
Speaker 2: his mustache. And just remember, nobody in the media is
46:34
Speaker 2: engaged in any research trying to do an expose of
46:38
Speaker 2: any of the left wing justices. Clarence Thomas, as I said,
46:43
Speaker 2: has one hundred and nine reported trips. Justice Bryer had
46:49
Speaker 2: two hundred and thirty three reported trips, so nearly so
46:53
Speaker 2: more than twice as many. And it's worth noting if
46:57
Speaker 2: you say, well, okay, but but there's not the farious billionaire. Well, actually,
47:02
Speaker 2: Justice Brier had multiple trips that were supported by the
47:06
Speaker 2: Chicago based Pritzker family, very wealthy billionaires Democrats. Actually Pritzker
47:13
Speaker 2: is the sitting governor, the Democrat governor of Illinois, and
47:16
Speaker 2: Justice Pryor took multiple trips supported by the Pritzker family.
47:21
Speaker 2: Not only that, in twenty thirteen, Justice Brier flew on
47:25
Speaker 2: hedge Fund manager David Rubinstein's private jet to a wedding
47:30
Speaker 2: in Nantucket. Because they're trying to say, well, it's different
47:32
Speaker 2: because Justice Thomas went in a private jet, Well so
47:35
Speaker 2: did Justice Bryer. And let me be clear, because I
47:38
Speaker 2: don't want what I'm saying here to be misconstrued. I
47:42
Speaker 2: am not suggesting that any of the justices are corrupt.
47:46
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting Justice Brier is or Justice Ginsberg, or
47:49
Speaker 2: Justice Kagan or Justice sodamor all of them were following
47:53
Speaker 2: the rules that were in place, but so was Justice Thomas,
47:57
Speaker 2: and the left and their cronies in the media are
48:02
Speaker 2: happy to apply a standard to Justice Thomas that doesn't
48:06
Speaker 2: apply to any other justice. And if you want to
48:11
Speaker 2: have a rule, apply it to everyone, but don't make
48:14
Speaker 2: up a rule after the fact and then pretend the
48:18
Speaker 2: guy you hate is the only person that violated the
48:22
Speaker 2: rule that did not exist. That's what the Democrats are doing,
48:25
Speaker 2: that's what the media is doing. And so your question, Ben,
48:28
Speaker 2: what can you do make sure people know these facts?
48:32
Speaker 2: Because if you listen to the rhetoric today at the
48:35
Speaker 2: hearing and judiciary, Democrats are going to describe Justice Thomas
48:40
Speaker 2: as corrupt because he did the same things that the
48:46
Speaker 2: other justices have done over and over and over again,
48:50
Speaker 2: and that is fundamentally dishonest. Mark your thoughts.
48:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I completely agree the gas lighting and we saw
48:59
Speaker 3: this going back the last year with Justice Thomas and
49:02
Speaker 3: his wife, Jinny. Right, Jinny has her own career, He's
49:05
Speaker 3: been in the political square for many, many years, and
49:07
Speaker 3: yet when she speaks out on an issue, Justice Thomas
49:09
Speaker 3: has to has to accuse himself and he should be
49:13
Speaker 3: impeached if he doesn't do that when in fact, as
49:15
Speaker 3: you know, Ruth Vader Ginsburg's husband was at a firm
49:18
Speaker 3: and his firm appeared many times before the Supreme Court,
49:21
Speaker 3: and she never accused herself and nobody said a word.
49:24
Speaker 3: So there's all of these examples like that, Senator of
49:28
Speaker 3: you know, the double standard, as you said, you know,
49:31
Speaker 3: I'm at Mark Poleetta on Twitter. I write a lot.
49:34
Speaker 3: I have a lot of fact filled articles. I just
49:36
Speaker 3: wrote one today was published today in a National Review
49:41
Speaker 3: about the sale of Justice Thomas's mother's home to Harlan Crowe,
49:46
Speaker 3: which was a beautiful story actually that the vicious Meetia
49:50
Speaker 3: has turned into somehow Clarence Thomas being enriched at Harle.
49:54
Speaker 2: So tell us that story, because that's another attack that's
49:57
Speaker 2: out there, and tell people what happens so they can
49:59
Speaker 2: actually understand the fact.
50:02
Speaker 3: Sure. So Harlan Crowe, you know, has got this great
50:06
Speaker 3: friendship with Clarence Thomas, but he recognizes that this man
50:09
Speaker 3: is an American hero, that he represents the best of America.
50:12
Speaker 3: So over the years, Harlan's been down and he's gone
50:16
Speaker 3: down there. He's had dinner with Justice Thomas's family, with
50:20
Speaker 3: his mother in his mother's home. This is the home
50:22
Speaker 3: that she lives in, which is his grandfather's where Justice
50:25
Speaker 3: Thomas moved when he was seven and his life was
50:28
Speaker 3: transformed from this abject poverty of growing up in Pinpoint
50:32
Speaker 3: and then into Savannah with his mom and a one
50:35
Speaker 3: tenement into this this humble but solid home in Savannah,
50:41
Speaker 3: and she's living there now. But Harland renovated the Carnegie Library,
50:46
Speaker 3: which was that during segregation, the all black you know
50:49
Speaker 3: library in Savannah, where Thomas first learned to kind of
50:53
Speaker 3: love reading, and he gave a donation to renovate it
50:57
Speaker 3: and name a wing after Justice Thomas. Nothing ran to
50:59
Speaker 3: Justice time in that regard. There was a the Oyster
51:04
Speaker 3: and a crab factory which was in Pinpoint, which Clarence
51:08
Speaker 3: Thomas grew up right next to, and Harlan renovated that
51:13
Speaker 3: into a museum. So he's down there in twenty fourteen
51:17
Speaker 3: and he's near his mom's neighbor in the neighborhood, and
51:20
Speaker 3: he sees that it's it's it's a lot of drug
51:24
Speaker 3: dealers and just you know, just a bad place, not safe.
51:29
Speaker 3: And Harlane asked Justice Thomas, what are you going to
51:33
Speaker 3: do with his home when your mom passes and her
51:37
Speaker 3: his mom at the time was eighty five, and Justice
51:39
Speaker 3: Thomas says, I'm going to bulldoze it, and Harlan said
51:42
Speaker 3: that would be terrible, like this should be a museum.
51:46
Speaker 3: So he wanted to buy it in order to preserve it.
51:50
Speaker 3: And you know, at the time he talked to Justice
51:53
Speaker 3: Thomas by it, he didn't know that Justice Thomas even
51:55
Speaker 3: owned an interest in it. The house had passed from
51:57
Speaker 3: his grandfather when his grandfather died in eighty four, through
52:00
Speaker 3: his mother, his brother who passed away in two thousands,
52:03
Speaker 3: to his brother's estate. Now and his mother and Harlan
52:09
Speaker 3: Crowe's team. He's in real estate, he's a developer, looked
52:15
Speaker 3: at the fair market value and offered a price of
52:18
Speaker 3: one point thirty three for that home plus two other plots,
52:21
Speaker 3: lots that used to have homes on them that his
52:25
Speaker 3: grandfather owned their one one house over on the same street.
52:30
Speaker 3: So they entered into a you know, a contract and
52:34
Speaker 3: and in the and part of that contract was to
52:37
Speaker 3: give a life occumency agreement to Justice Thomas's mother so
52:42
Speaker 3: she could live there for the rest of her life. She's,
52:45
Speaker 3: you know, fortunately still living at ninety four, but at
52:48
Speaker 3: eighty five, had entered into this contract to purchase the home.
52:51
Speaker 3: This way he could own the property so that he
52:54
Speaker 3: could preserve it and it wouldn't be sold to somebody else.
52:56
Speaker 3: It wouldn't bulldoze. It was a beautiful story. When he
53:01
Speaker 3: bought the crab and oyster factory to the cannery several
53:07
Speaker 3: years earlier, the people who owned that, Harland wanted to
53:11
Speaker 3: buy that too to be able to preserve it, so
53:13
Speaker 3: he gave them a life occupancy agreement in that home.
53:18
Speaker 3: So it's the same thing people are saying, oh, you know,
53:21
Speaker 3: they're letting Harlan Crow was letting his mother live there
53:23
Speaker 3: rent free. There's nothing of the sort. It was an
53:25
Speaker 3: agreement that made a lot of sense. So Harlan could
53:28
Speaker 3: buy the property to preserve it and then allow his
53:31
Speaker 3: mom to live there. Because he's in no rush. He
53:33
Speaker 3: just wanted to have his home so that he could
53:36
Speaker 3: he you know, he can preserve it and make it
53:38
Speaker 3: into a museum at the appropriate time. Beautiful story. Now,
53:42
Speaker 3: when Justice Thomas had, you know, in supporting his mother
53:46
Speaker 3: and helping her with the homedown, and he had poured
53:49
Speaker 3: a lot of money into his home, and so his
53:51
Speaker 3: capital costs and the improvements to the home were such
53:54
Speaker 3: that one that when the transaction happened and Justice Thomas
53:57
Speaker 3: only got a third of that three so it's around
54:01
Speaker 3: forty four thousand dollars. His capital costs were above that.
54:07
Speaker 3: And so when he was doing the you know, thinking
54:10
Speaker 3: about this transaction, he thought it's a loss. That's not
54:13
Speaker 3: income for me, So I'm not reporting any income on it.
54:19
Speaker 3: But then there's this section that's called transaction. It's called
54:22
Speaker 3: it's called investments and trusts on the form, and I
54:26
Speaker 3: think he inherited this home many years ago, hadn't really
54:29
Speaker 3: thought of it as an investment or a trust, and
54:32
Speaker 3: didn't put down on that part of the format there's
54:35
Speaker 3: any transaction over a thousand dollars, So on that part
54:38
Speaker 3: he didn't put it down there because he thought I
54:40
Speaker 3: didn't make any money. I wasn't thinking of that section
54:42
Speaker 3: and didn't put it down. I think he's reviewing his
54:46
Speaker 3: forms and he's anticipated, I think, to amend that part
54:49
Speaker 3: of the form. But that's nothing. Amendments happened all the
54:53
Speaker 3: time right as you As you mentioned, Senator justices and
54:58
Speaker 3: mend their forms because they realized they did someth They
55:00
Speaker 3: need to amend it, just as Soda Mayor last year
55:05
Speaker 3: amended her twenty sixteen forms because she failed to list
55:09
Speaker 3: six trips that she had taken that were all paid for,
55:11
Speaker 3: you know, flights and accommodations. Justice Jackson forgot to mention
55:18
Speaker 3: got disclosed her husband's malpractice consultancies for many years on
55:23
Speaker 3: her form, and she put that down belatedly on her
55:27
Speaker 3: Supreme Court forms. Nothing unusual to do that. So again
55:33
Speaker 3: it was this transaction where you know Harlan Crowe because
55:37
Speaker 3: as you've described, and he's an incredible patriot, he is
55:40
Speaker 3: and sort of preserving the Clarence Thomas story. Right. This
55:45
Speaker 3: amazing and I won't go through it. You can did
55:47
Speaker 3: a beautiful job in the intro of where Justice Thomas
55:50
Speaker 3: was born and how he came you know, sort of
55:53
Speaker 3: came through life. Is just this inspiring story. And so
55:57
Speaker 3: Harlan has, over the years, long before he he purchased
56:00
Speaker 3: Justice Thomas's mother's home, had purchased several things in the
56:05
Speaker 3: Savannah Pinpoint area to preserve this heritage and the life
56:09
Speaker 3: story of Justice Thomas.
56:11
Speaker 2: So let me underscore two things you said, because I
56:13
Speaker 2: think that there was a lot of very important information.
56:16
Speaker 2: You said number one, that Harlan Crowe purchased this home
56:24
Speaker 2: in order to preserve it, in order to turn it
56:26
Speaker 2: into a museum. Now, if you think about it, there
56:29
Speaker 2: are museums to practically every former president of the United States.
56:35
Speaker 2: There are museums to Supreme Court justices. There are museums
56:39
Speaker 2: to senators and members of Congress. There are museums to governors.
56:43
Speaker 2: We normally think of erecting museums to recognize people who
56:47
Speaker 2: have been historically significant as a public service, as recognizing
56:52
Speaker 2: their impact by any measure, Clarence Thomas's life has been
56:56
Speaker 2: historically significant. You also take this home in the context.
57:00
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas's autobiography is entitled My Grandfather's Son. It's a
57:04
Speaker 2: beautiful autobiography. I have actually given Justice Thomas's autobiography UH
57:11
Speaker 2: to teenagers, in particular to to to African American teenagers,
57:17
Speaker 2: to inspire what is possible. The journey that he traveled,
57:24
Speaker 2: facing real and serious discrimination, facing real and serious hardship,
57:30
Speaker 2: and rising to the very pinnacle of of of the
57:33
Speaker 2: legal profession. UH is is powerful and inspiring. It's inspiring
57:38
Speaker 2: to all of us. And and so you know, I
57:41
Speaker 2: for one, am grateful that that Harlan is stepping forward
57:45
Speaker 2: to commemorate that history, to to to provide for a museum.
57:50
Speaker 2: But but it is a fairly bizarre concept that by
57:54
Speaker 2: by creating a museum there's somehow something untoward or corr
58:00
Speaker 2: on that, particularly a museum where Justice Thomas lost money,
58:04
Speaker 2: and the sort of related notion that well, but Harlan
58:08
Speaker 2: Crowe didn't evict his ninety four year old mother from
58:11
Speaker 2: the home. If you're going to turn it into a museum,
58:15
Speaker 2: you know what he might have been the mustache twirling
58:18
Speaker 2: villain if he'd thrown the ninety four year old out
58:20
Speaker 2: and said, sorry, you're on the street, lady. Good luck. Like,
58:24
Speaker 2: it's not a strange notion to say, we're going to
58:27
Speaker 2: buy this and turn it into a museum, but we're
58:29
Speaker 2: going to allow you to live in your home until
58:31
Speaker 2: the time comes that you pass. That is a normal step.
58:36
Speaker 2: And then so the one, the one little attack they
58:39
Speaker 2: have that has a tiny purchase is you said that
58:43
Speaker 2: that well, technically he should have reported it. Now I
58:47
Speaker 2: will note, as you did, Supreme Court justices amend their
58:51
Speaker 2: disclosures all the time. I will tell you, as a senator,
58:55
Speaker 2: I have to file a financial disclosure every year, every
58:58
Speaker 2: senator does, every house me does. The directions on those
59:02
Speaker 2: financial disclosures are complicated. There are Caine. There's a whole
59:06
Speaker 2: team of lawyers in the Senate who advise you, and
59:10
Speaker 2: so you'll have a question about a particular transaction, how
59:13
Speaker 2: do I record it? And by the way, that team
59:15
Speaker 2: of lawyers sometimes changes their mind. So one year they'll
59:18
Speaker 2: tell you to record a particular transaction one way, and
59:21
Speaker 2: the next year they say no, no, no, We've decided
59:23
Speaker 2: you record it another way. And so it it is
59:25
Speaker 2: our Caane. There's a lot of gray area, and so
59:29
Speaker 2: justices and justices also have lawyers at the Supreme Court
59:33
Speaker 2: who advise them on that Justice Thomas has said he
59:36
Speaker 2: relied on the advice of the lawyers at the Supreme
59:39
Speaker 2: Court for how to fill out his form. And if
59:44
Speaker 2: it is the argument of the left that amending your
59:46
Speaker 2: form shows aha, you did something wrong or corrupt, I'm
59:50
Speaker 2: willing to wager something. I can't prove this, but you
59:53
Speaker 2: could actually research it and find out the answer pretty quick.
59:56
Speaker 2: But I'll wager you twenty bucks. Ben At every single
1:00:02
Speaker 2: Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has been on the
1:00:05
Speaker 2: committee five years or more has amended their form at
1:00:08
Speaker 2: least once.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: I was gonna bet you that, but I was gonna
1:00:11
Speaker 1: go for one hundred because that's that's how certain I
1:00:14
Speaker 1: was that what you were about to say is absolutely right,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: because like, there's no way they haven't been amended yet.
1:00:18
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, maybe the brand new members haven't done
1:00:21
Speaker 2: it yet because they haven't been there long enough. But
1:00:23
Speaker 2: if you've been there five years, Look, amendments are just
1:00:26
Speaker 2: part of the process, and it's complicated, it's byzantine. And
1:00:29
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that the senators who've amended their forms
1:00:32
Speaker 2: are corrupt, but it is absurd to demonize Clarence Thomas
1:00:39
Speaker 2: because a museum is being erected in order to recognize
1:00:46
Speaker 2: his historical contribution. And if that's corrupt, you know, last
1:00:51
Speaker 2: I checked, there's an Obama museum. Last I checked, there's
1:00:55
Speaker 2: a Bill Clinton museum the state. By the way, Thurgood
1:01:02
Speaker 2: Marshall's childhood home is preserved as a museum. The standard
1:01:06
Speaker 2: ought to apply across the board fairly. And all of
1:01:11
Speaker 2: this attack is a nakedly hypocritical political attack. It is
1:01:16
Speaker 2: not a substantive criticism on the merits.
1:01:20
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. Don't forget. As the Senator mentioned earlier,
1:01:24
Speaker 1: we publish this on Tuesday. We will do it again
1:01:27
Speaker 1: on Friday and get you the latest news of the
1:01:30
Speaker 1: day there, but this was an important way, and with
1:01:31
Speaker 1: this issue up in Washington on Tuesday, that's why we
1:01:35
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1:01:44
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1:01:46
Speaker 1: to have you on as well. Thank you for joining,
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