MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent much of Friday’s episode of his show talking about the latest damning development in the continuing scandal involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
And the “All In” host had a big question on the whole discussion: “How much money has secretly flowed into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ home from right-wing donors and interests?”
For the past several weeks, Thomas has been dogged by an ever-increasing number of corruption allegations. It started with the revelation that he had received very expensive gifts from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crowe and only escalated from there. However the latest developments are particularly grim.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that right-wing judicial activist Leonard Leo, former vice-chair of the Conservative Federalist Society, paid Ginny Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, tens of thousands of dollars for unspecified consultations in 2012. Worse, Leo directed that Ginny Thomas’ name be removed from any records. Leo has accepted the payments but denied any evil intent behind them.
Leo, as Hayes noted in discussing this, spent decades as a member of the Federalist Society attempting to recruit conservative lawyers and then place them in the judiciary – in fact, all six members The current Republican majority on the court are either current or former Federalist Society members.
Hayes spent a lot of time explaining it all on his show, discussing Thomas. Leo, Hayes said, “is the most influential private citizen in the country when it comes to America’s courts.”
Hayes argued that Leo’s goal, in particular, is not only to recruit conservative judges, but also to ensure that they remain committed to the conservative movement once they become judges. According to the Washington Post, Hayes then made a connection between the reports of $100,000 funneling Leo to Ginny Thomas.
“In an effort to be fair here, there’s nothing wrong with one conservative organization sending money to another conservative organization … But here’s the thing: I don’t think it normally goes down like this when Len— The giving goes up and up.”
Hayes noted how Leo directed these payments through “a weird non-profit he’s not a part of,” and asked “how is he in a position to direct thousands of dollars to this group, to anyone?”
“The long and short of it is that a very influential conservative activist is leisurely, always quietly directing money to a consulting firm run by the wife of a Supreme Court judge,” adding, “It really looks like He didn’t want anyone to know about it.
Hayes described other suspicious things about this money, and “Who is putting money in the pockets of our judges?”
Watch the clip below:
The story of the money secretly paid to Ginny Thomas goes like this: ProPublica Report In which it is shown that Harlan Crowe paid school tuition for a close relative of Thomas.