The Supreme Court reconvenes today with Clarence Thomas, the most corrupt justice in its history, unabashedly taking his seat on the bench. 

  As ProPublica has reported, Thomas over 20 years travelled on billionaire Harlan Crow’s private jet, luxuriated on his yacht, and stayed at his private resort in the Adirondacks. Crow also bought the two-bedroom house owned by the justice’s mother, Leola, which Crow’s company then renovated. Mrs. Thomas continues to live in the house in what is clearly a financial arrangement to benefit the Thomas family.

  Justice Thomas has accepted millions of dollars’ worth of travel and favors. He defended himself saying Crow and his wife are among his “dearest friends” and that he thought he didn’t have to report the trips for that same reason — it was merely largesse bestowed by a friend. Don’t believe it. He didn’t report all this because he knew he shouldn’t have accepted it.  And disclosing it would not have made it OK.

  Members of Congress, by comparison, are prohibited from accepting gifts worth more than $50.

  Thomas’s claim that Crow is a dear friend reveals that he’s not only corrupt, he thinks we are all fools. Crow would not know or care who Thomas is if he was a city court judge in Cleveland with the same views of the Constitution.

  The justice is also corrupted by the political activities of his wife, a right winger who espoused Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Ginni Thomas has made millions advising conservative action groups, but the justice claims he is not influenced by his wife. Judges are required to recuse themselves from cases in which their spouse is involved, but Thomas has not bowed out when litigation involves conservative pressure groups with which Ginni Thomas has association. Justice Thomas did not recuse himself in cases involving the 2020 election.

  Thomas is not alone in corruption. ProPublica documents that Justice Samuel Alito accepted a $1,000-a-day Alaska fishing trip from a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly had cases before the Court. In another instance, Alito laughably defended his use of a billionaire’s private jet because he took an otherwise empty seat and anyway, he barely knew the jet’s owner. 

  It’s not just the conservatives. Three months into her time on the bench, Biden appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signed a $3 million book deal, parlaying her position into wealth. Others have also accepted enriching book deals and that’s the heart of the corruption for all these justices … using their position to get rich.

  In Thomas’s case he has also allowed himself to be used for political influence. ProPublica reported that when Thomas was a guest in 2017 at Harlan Crow’s Adirondack estate, the other guests included “executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors, and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank.” 

  The NY Times reported that twice Thomas attended an annual donor summit organized by the Koch Network, the conservative political organization established by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch which has had cases before the Supreme Court. Thomas allowed himself to be used as a marquis guest to raise money for issues on which he stands in judgement. Just being there without saying a word was an act of corruption.

   Thomas also doesn’t have to sway decisions on specific cases in favor of benefactors to be corrupt. He is rewarded for the way he thinks and rules in general. To be corrupt, he only has to accept wealth offered for the sole reason that he is a member of the Supreme Court. 

  The court has failed to regulate itself and the result is that it’s on the take with Thomas in the lead. The justices are not paid enough, less than $300,000 a year, while wealth awaits them if they sell out. It’s up to Congress to pay them more, maybe even a million dollars, and forbid outside gifts and income.

  Back in 1969 Justice Abe Fortas resigned after being caught taking a $15,000 payment from his former law firm, and $20,000 from the family foundation of a man indicted for securities fraud. Fortas resigned, a quaint act of honor in today’s America in which government officials live for the sole purpose of clinging to power.

  What Fortas accepted wouldn’t pay the sales tax on what Clarence Thomas has taken. If a criminal defendant or civil litigant offered the same excuses Thomas has given for hiding the wealth he has accepted, he’d laugh at them.

 Clarence Thomas needs to resign and his failure to do so is his ultimate act of corruption. 

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