Funded by Harlan Crow, who was recently exposed for footing the bill for Ginni and Clarence Thomas’ lavish vacations and more, the Supreme Court justice’s wife worked with Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo to advance the conservative agenda
As the Supreme Court prepared to decide the Citizens United case that designated money as political speech, Ginni Thomas — wife of Justice Clarence Thomas — along with conservative activists quickly and quietly filed to create exactly the type of non-profit group that would benefit from the decision, Politico reports.
In the ensuing years, according to Politico, Thomas worked closely with Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo to build a conservative movement that would fuel changes to the judiciary and help overturn laws regarding abortion, affirmative action, and other issues important to the right wing.
“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” a source familiar with her thinking at that time told Politico. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.”
Much of this was made possible through funding from Nazi-obsessed billionaire Harlan Crow. Crow, who infamously collects Hitler paintings and Nazi memorabilia, has been in the news recently for giving grandiose favors to the Thomases, including footing the bill for their grand-nephew’s tuition, purchasing the house where Clarence Thomas’ mother lived, and paying for lavish vacations that the Thomases enjoyed. The justice has been under scrutiny for his relationship with Crow due to his failure to report the vacations and other gifts in his financial disclosures to the court.
Crow provided the initial donations for Liberty Central, the group Thomas and Leo created, that was among the first of what Politico describes as a “billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations.” Liberty Central’s goal was to combat a number of Obama era efforts, including health care reform. When the group and its leadership became public, Thomas was forced to sever her ties with the group. But she immediately created a for-profit consulting business with a similar name, Liberty Consulting. Leo then used a previously dormant tax-exempt group, Judicial Education Project (JEP), to pay Thomas a similar amount to what Liberty Central had paid her. JEP would later submit a number of amicus briefs to the Supreme Court advocating for conservative causes.
Although groups like JEP should mostly focus on charitable efforts, Politico reports that it is not clear what charitable services Thomas provided, whether she was paid a fair market value for her services or if she was qualified to provide those services.
“The real question then is, ‘what is Ginni Thomas qualified to do, what did they pay her to do, and was it fair market value?’” Laura Soloman, a Pennsylvania tax attorney who works with many tax-exempt charitable groups, told Politico.
The media outlet also uncovered discrepancies and irregularities in JEP’s financial reporting to the IRS, noting among other oddities that during a year that Wellspring Committee (a group Leo is involved with) claimed to have donated $136,000 to the organization, JEP reported receiving less than $50,000 in donations.
That’s how politics has devolved in the US. As long as you’re on the correct side, you can be as corrupt as you want and the people on that side will shrug and go “not a big deal.”
Note, please, that this problem is not the same with all political parties. For example, our House Speaker just announced an inquiry into impeachment proceedings for Joe Biden, apparently for governing while Democrat. The response from the left-wing is generally to roll our eyes and point out this is just political theater. If they actually find something actionable, then we’ll agree that he should be removed from office and thrown in jail. But in 2021 Republican leadership outright admitted that Trump was culpable for the Jan 6 insurrection riot at the capitol, but still refused to impeach because he’s a Republican.
This is how broken American politics have become. We’re trying to maintain our faith in the system and trust our leaders to do the right thing, but an entire faction of our leadership wants to break the government and replace it with private, profit-based solutions. So here we are. We ought to be marching, but the protests against racism and discrimination didn’t get us anywhere either. So we don’t know what else to do and we’re not eager for a second civil war.