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‘Weren’t in a Fraternity Together’: Harlan Crow’s Relationship With Clarence Thomas Based on ‘Cozying Up’ Says Fallon
“Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow did not serve on a PTA board together. They weren’t in a fraternity in college together, didn’t grow up next door to each other’s houses.”
That’s what former top Clinton campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon, now the head of Demand Justice, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Thursday evening (video below).
Fallon was discussing news that billionaire GOP megadonor and right-wing activist Harlan Crow had paid the tuition of Justice Thomas’ grandnephew – which Thomas did not disclose.
He then referred to Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner host Roy Wood Jr.’s dig at the Supreme Court Justice:
“A billionaire named Harlan Crow is flying Clarence Thomas all over the world on unreported trips like a Instagram model taking Clarence to the Maldives and the beaches and all – paid for his momma’s house – a billionaire paid for Clarence Thomas momma’s house,” Wood told the audience as he pounded the podium. “This man bought a Supreme Court justice.”
Fallon observed, “As that Roy Wood monologue suggests, this is a comedic level of corruption at this point.”
Crow has paid for lavish, luxury travel and vacations at resorts for Clarence and Ginni Thomas nearly every year for over 20 years. Thomas did not disclose it, even the parts legal experts say he was required to disclose.
“We should be asking ourselves what isn’t Harlan Crow paying for when it comes to Clarence Thomas’ lifestyle? Is he paying for his grocery bills? Is he paying for his Comcast subscription?” Fallon asked.
“And let’s let’s do away with this sort of airbrushing of the nature of their relationship,” he reminded MSNBC viewers. “These statements that get released by Harlan Crow each time there is a new revelation from ProPublica suggests that he was extending all these kindnesses to a longtime friend.”
“Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow did not serve on a PTA board together,” Fallon said, mocking both the billionaire and the beneficiary of his wealth. “They weren’t in a fraternity in college together, didn’t grow up next door to each other’s houses. They met after Clarence Thomas was a Supreme Court Justice when Harlan Crow, by his own telling, decided to give him a ride on his private jet. That was the first time they met.”
Fallon is correct.
“In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crow recounted how he first met Thomas,” ProPublica reported. “In 1996, the justice was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas for an anti-regulation think tank. Crow offered to fly him there on his private jet.”
“So from the beginning,” Fallon continued, “before they had any sort of prior relationship, it was a relationship that was based on Harlan Crow cozying up to a sitting Supreme Court Justice and extending financial benefits to him.”
Fallon called for “Congress to get more significantly involved. We need an investigation here. We need a DOJ investigation, I think at this point, but if we’re not going to get it from Merrick Garland, if we’re not going to get it from Dick Durbin, maybe somebody like Dave Blumenthal, who you had on your air last week in his capacity as the chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, another panel that does have subpoena power, maybe he could get to the bottom of this.”
Watch Fallon below or at this link.
“This is a comedic level of corruption. At this point we should be asking ourselves what isn’t Harlan Crow paying for when it comes to Clarence Thomas’s lifestyle? Is he paying for his grocery bill? Is he paying for his Comcast subscription?” – @brianefallon w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/1SgR1QrwLh
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) May 4, 2023
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
