By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on February 26, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
Over the weekend, the New York Times and Vanity Fair reported that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas hired Crystal Clanton as one of his four law clerks for the upcoming term of the Court. This article is based upon these published reports and my independent news sources.
Clanton, a 2022 graduate of The Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, has an extensive history of writing and sending racist text messages. In 2017, Clanton was forced out of a conservative youth organization after a reporter uncovered virulently racist texts she sent to another employee.
The racist comments stem from Clanton’s work for Turning Point USA, where she served as national field director until the summer of 2017. At the end of that year, New Yorker investigative reporter Jane Mayer unearthed a text from Clanton to another TPUSA employee in which Clanton wrote, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.”
At the time, Clanton told the magazine that she had “no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.”
Clanton was about 20 years old when her racist texts were sent to her co-worker.
Jane Mayer also reported that, on one Martin Luther King Jr. Day during her tenure, Clanton fired a woman who claimed to be the organization’s only Black employee. On this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Turning Point founder and CEO Charlie Kirk, announced a campaign to discredit the “mythical sainthood” of Dr. King.
Clanton resigned from Turning Point. Kirk told Mayer that TPUSA “assessed the situation and took decisive action within 72 hours of being made aware of the issue.”
Crystal Clanton soon found new work assisting Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, in carrying out her right-wing political agenda. Ginni Thomas is also a conservative activist who played an essential behind-the-scenes role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Clanton’s Work for 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William H. Pryor, Jr.
Clanton’s closeness to the Thomas family received additional scrutiny after she was hired to clerk for Judge William H. Pryor Jr., a conservative judge who frequently sends clerks to the Supreme Court and was once on Donald Trump’s shortlist of SCOTUS picks. In response, seven members of Congress demanded an investigation into Clanton’s hiring, writing that her clerkship threatened “to undermine the public’s faith in the judiciary seriously” and called into question Pryor’s ability to rule impartially “in cases where race, religion or national origin plays a role.”
The federal appeals court appointed to look into the matter ultimately cleared Pryor -- and a lower court judge for whom Clanton also clerked -- of wrongdoing, after Pryor claimed he’d learned that Clanton had been the victim of a smear campaign. In its ruling, the appeals court panel said it did not need to consider “whether the information the [judges] elicited and received regarding their hiring decisions was accurate.”
This judicial response prompted a rebuke from then-House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, who penned a letter arguing that the decision ignored a well-documented record of Clanton’s bigotry and that the court’s refusal to investigate the substance of the allegations went against “the judicial misconduct statute’s core purposes of uncovering the truth.”
The appeals court’s investigation did, however, reveal some new details about Clanton’s relationship with the Thomases, courtesy of a letter Thomas submitted to the court that a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered.
According to Thomas, Clanton lived with the couple “for almost a year” after “her controversial and public departure from Turning Point USA.” His wife, Thomas wrote, “informed me of the horrible way in which she had been treated” at the conservative organization.
According to the letter, Thomas wrote a law school recommendation for Clanton. He also recommended her to Pryor for the clerkship, telling the judge that the allegations in Mayer’s reporting were “grossly out of character and unfounded.”
“I know Crystal Clanton, and I know bigotry,” Thomas wrote. “Bigotry is antithetical to her nature and character.”
Thomas concluded the letter by declaring his “intention to consider her for a clerkship should she perform as I expect and excel in her clerkships.”
Thomas’ Hatred for Black America is Legendary
In the 32 years Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court, he has reportedly hired White law clerks only – four each year. Thomas refers to these law clerks as his "extended family." Many of them are polished and sophisticated racists.
To me, Clarence Thomas has a deep-seated racial bias against Black people. Thomas gets away with his "in-your-face" bigotry because he is Black -- in skin color only.
I know of no case where Clarence Thomas ruled in favor of a Black plaintiff in a civil rights case or a Black criminal defendant during his 32 years on the federal bench. In his judicial rulings, Clarence Thomas has gone out of his way to inflict the maximum pain and suffering possible upon tens of millions of Black Americans and women.
Now, Thomas has hired a certified racist in Crystal Clanton to help him carry out his racist agenda.