The case of Clarence Thomas’s new clerk taints the entire judiciary
Justice #Clarence#Thomas has hired #Crystal#Clanton to be one of his law clerks, the most elite assignment a young law school graduate can secure.
The shock is this:
In 2015, when Clanton was 20
and working for a conservative group allied with the justice’s wife, #Ginni Thomas,
Clanton apparently sent racist texts to a fellow employee:
“I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,”
one text read.
“Like f--- them all … I hate blacks. End of story.”
(In Clanton’s text, the expletive was spelled out.)
It is impossible to overstate the prestige that attaches to a Supreme Court clerkship.
The job is a golden ticket awarded to just 36 each year
— about 1 in 1,000 law graduates, the best of the best.
Major law firms lure Supreme Court clerks with signing bonuses of a half-million dollars.
Clanton, who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2022, will be the third high court clerk from that institution since 2021.
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer unearthed Clanton’s texts in 2017, in an article about 🔹 Turning Point USA🔹, the conservative youth organization run by #Charlie#Kirk.
Notably, 🔸Clanton, the group’s field director🔸, didn’t deny writing the texts.
“I have 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,” she wrote in an email to Mayer.