Now we know why Clarence Thomas didn't jump on John Oliver's offer of $1 million dollars a year to step down from his position on the Supreme Court: It might mean he would have to take a pay cut.
A new tabulation from Fix the Court shows the 17 justices who served on the court between 2004 and 2023 knocked down a staggering $4,755,147 in gifts. That’s an average of nearly $28,000 worth of freebies per justice per year.
Except it’s not. Because a jaw-dropping $4,042,286 of that total went into just one pocket. That’s right, America’s biggest fan of Walmart parking lots went home with over five times more money than everyone else on the court combined. That’s not the appearance of corruption. It is corruption.
Among those still in the land of the living, Thomas' haul is over 20 times greater than that of runner-up Samuel Alito. Expect Alito to have a chat with Trump’s collection of billionaire donors about that sad imbalance. Maybe they can subsidize his flag supply.
Even so, Alito went home with $170,095. That’s not bad.
It’s hard to think of any other job where such a level of perks is acceptable. Ask any salesperson or product rep what their company says about accepting gifts from clients. Many public school teachers are not allowed to accept gifts from students, no matter how small, to avoid any concern about preference. And every federal judge has to refuse any gift from someone with business before the court or from anyone who could be affected by the results of a court ruling.
Of course, that means every federal judge except those serving on the Supreme Court. That select group is guided only by unenforced ethical guidelines and a chief justice who refuses to meet with the little people in Congress.
But even in the supreme free-for-all, no one comes close to Thomas in soaking up that sweet graft. He seems to only finish behind his peers when it comes to reporting those hefty gifts. Just 8.5% of Thomas’ take appears on the what’s-the-point-anyway disclosure forms.
Fix the Court considers all of these numbers to be “on the low end.” Thanks to the lack of accurate disclosure, it could only guess how many times Thomas dropped in at mega-donor (and Nazi napkin owner) Harlan Crow’s Adirondack resort Topridge or danced around his idols at the all-male Bohemian Club. It also suspects that it missed some “free tickets to Dallas Cowboys and Florida Panthers games.”
It’s not that Republicans don’t recognize what these numbers show about Thomas’ level of corruption. It’s just that this is what they like about him.
*(Editor's note: For younger readers, here is an explanation of the Coke Can moniker we often include in reference to Clarence Thomas:
MSNBC host Tiffany Cross referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can" in a segment slamming him and his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, on the anniversary of the Justice’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The insult was a reference to an allegation that Anita Hill – the woman who accused Thomas of sexually harassing her while she worked for him – had made against him while he was being confirmed by the Senate to join the high court 31 years ago.
Hill had claimed that while she worked as legal adviser for Thomas, who was assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights at the time, Thomas had asked her "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?")
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