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‘GoFundMe’: Experts Say Clarence Thomas Being ‘Sponsored by Billionaires’ Is ‘Bribery’
Legal experts are stunned once again after the latest ProPublica bombshell investigation into U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. That deep-dive into the Justice’s financial history includes the written remarks of a U.S. Congressman and the head of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, focusing on the Thomas’ secret complaint about his salary and his thinly-veiled request – or, “threat” – to that lawmaker for a pay raise. Shortly after his remarks about his salary, Thomas was showered, for years, with big ticket vacations and other major financial benefits from billionaire conservatives who happen to also want a like-minded jurist on the nation’s highest court.
“I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court,” a January, 2000 letter from former U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) to Justice Thomas reads. “As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.”
ProPublica senior editor Jesse Eisinger posted the letter to social media as well.
NEW: In 2000, Clarence Thomas was deep in debt.
He met w/ a GOP Congressman & complained about his salary.
The GOP started to fear he’d leave the court.
In the years that followed, billionaires lavished him w/ secret gifts.https://t.co/uLSfv8rmnp pic.twitter.com/d44z1OwxV7
— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) December 18, 2023
“In early January 2000,” Propublica’s report published Monday begins, “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.”
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“After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.”
“Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told [Congressman Stearns]. If lawmakers didn’t act, ‘one or more justices will leave soon’ — maybe in the next year.”
“At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money,” ProPublica reported. It added, “in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court.”
Professor of law and former Bush White House ethics chief Richard Painter on Monday declared, “Supreme Court justices make $285,400 a year, a large sum of money for a public official. If he needs more he can resign.”
Justice Thomas’ comments to Congressman Stearm “set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill,” reported ProPublica.
“’His importance as a conservative was paramount,’ Stearns said in a recent interview. ‘We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.’”
While ProPublica calls it “an open question” as to “what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts,” some are calling it something else: “bribery.”
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Writer and attorney Jay Willis, the editor-in-chief at the legal news and commentary website Balls & Strikes, writes: “The new Clarence Thomas story in ProPublica is like the stuff of bad Mafia movies. Just sidling up to a Republican congressman like ‘I love taking away civil rights on the Supreme Court, but I suuuuure wish I could get paid more for doing so.'”
Civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger, founder and executive director of Zealous, a nonprofit that trains public defenders, called for some cases Justice Thomas decided to be “relitigated” in response to the ProPublica news.
“Clarence Thomas being allowed to remain on the Supreme Court should rightfully destroy the institution. How we can allow any case where he was a deciding vote not to be relitigated? His votes weren’t just bought. He demanded payment for his votes under threats & duress,” wrote Hechinger.
“Clarence Thomas in quid pro quo bribery,” declared international relations professor Nicholas Grossman. “Not that he was going to vote X on a case and interested parties paid him to vote Y. Rather, as many suspected, it’s that they know he’ll vote Y, and have been paying him off to stay on the Court so he doesn’t resign to pursue wealth.”
“Is it ok for supreme court justices who are deeply in debt to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from political activists,” posited attorney Andrew Fleischman.
Award-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, a Syracuse Law lecturer, observed: “Justice Thomas wanted to get rich AND be a Supreme Court Justice. He found a way. He privatized his jurisprudence to the benefit of Harlan Crow & friends, which was neither ethical nor prudent.”
Constitutional attorney John Bonifaz, founder of the nonprofit Free Speech For People, called for Thomas’ impeachment: “Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached. He has abused his power and must be removed from the Supreme Court.”
Attorney Max Kennerly said, “if Thomas was a judge on any court except SCOTUS, this would be a no-brainer. It’s bribery. He and everyone involved, like Harlan Crow, would be indicted. But we’re supposed to pretend it’s okay because it’s SCOTUS.”
NYU professor of law and MSNBC contributor Melissa Murray wrote, “some of Justice Thomas’s colleagues come from similarly modest backgrounds and were also appointed at young ages . . . and they aren’t (to our knowledge) sponsored by billionaires.”
Professor Murray summed it all up as, “Justice Thomas’s GoFundMe campaign.”
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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
