More revelations about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' ties to a right-wing club that connected him to the billionaires and power players that he needed.
Raw Story covered the bombshell report by ProPublica that the controversial jurist was facing scrutiny after being caught taking gifts and lavish vacations from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow. But a new report by the New York Times revealed Thomas was appointed as a member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, adding that he "entered a world whose defining ethos of meritocratic success."
The admission to the club is when the perks started rolling in, and it was long before he was put on the nation's High Court.
"Justice Thomas’s acceptance of such hospitality apparently predates his time on the court," the report said. "A former girlfriend said in an interview that 'a buddy' of Justice Thomas had paid for their vacation in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A longtime friend said he had paid for the justice’s 1987 wedding reception" when he wed his latest wife, Ginni Thomas.
The report reveals that the Thomas' omissions on their disclosure forms may come from a decades-long life of taking gifts from people in the "club" and considering it nothing more than "hospitality" that didn't need to be reported.
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