Clarence Thomas Hires the Luckiest Clerk in Supreme Court History

The saga of Crystal Clanton, a rising star in the conservative movement who’s been credibly accused of extreme racism, continued last week with a new deep dive into Clanton’s close ties with Clarence and Ginni Thomas, courtesy of the New York Times. A “nearly adopted daughter” to the Thomases, Clanton has lined up a clerkship with the justice this fall and persuaded several high-profile jurists to vouch for her character as she rises through the ranks on the right. The Times report reveals how both Thomases spent years helping her rehabilitate her reputation following a racism scandal, bringing her into the couple’s closely guarded inner circle.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the latest drama around Clanton on the Slate Plus bonus segment of Saturday’s Amicus. Below is a preview of their conversation, which has been condensed and edited for clarity. To listen to the full episode of Amicus, join Slate Plus.

Dahlia Lithwick: Is Crystal Clanton just the luckiest Supreme Court clerk in the world? I mean, what are the chances that somebody who lives with Clarence and Ginni Thomas, and then gets into the Antonin Scalia School of Law—which got called that because of a $30 million deal with conservative donors—and then gets to clerk for Judge William Pryor … also gets to clerk for Clarence Thomas? All despite the fact that there’s pretty reliable evidence she sent incredibly racist texts? Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Mark Joseph Stern: Sheer luck. What else can explain it? She plucked a four-leaf clover as a toddler and never looked back. Unbelievable.

Listeners may remember that Crystal Clanton was a member of Turning Point USA, a far-right pro-Trump group. She was actually ejected for being too racist after she allegedly sent a text that said “I hate black people.” But she landed on her feet as an assistant to none other than Ginni Thomas, working as her right-hand woman, and got absorbed into the Thomas household. She actually lived with Clarence and Ginni Thomas for nearly a year. They helped set her up with a spot at Scalia Law School, a clerkship with Bill Pryor, and now the news has broken that, of course, she’ll be clerking for Clarence Thomas himself.

Clanton’s defenders claim she never sent these racist messages, that she was framed—just like, according to Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill framed him with her extraordinarily credible testimony about his sexual harassment. The explanation makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter: The Thomases plainly see her as a martyr, akin to how Justice Thomas sees himself. And now she has been elevated into one of the most prestigious jobs in the entire profession. Upon leaving this clerkship, she can take a $500,000 bonus at any law firm.

She’ll be on a fast track to a judgeship within the next, what, 10 years, right?

Of course, because that’s how Thomas operates. He picks the ideologically pure, loyal conservatives. And he puts them through a kind of clerk-training boot camp, where he indoctrinates them with this super-conservative MAGA vision of the law. Then he sends them on their way, and helps them climb up the ladder, and a few years down the road, they wind up on the bench themselves. Some of the absolute worst Trump judges got their start as Thomas clerks. Neomi Rao. David Stras. James Ho, the reigning troll of the judiciary. In a decade, Crystal Clanton will be among them.

I just don’t understand how Clarence and Ginni Thomas treat every component of the federal judiciary as though it’s like a brunch at their house and they’re just giving out cupcakes. Like, “Here, have a Diet Coke!” But instead it’s like, “Here, have a clerkship with a feeder judge, and another feeder judge, and then a clerkship with me!” It’s unbelievable. I thought these were the perks which were at least supposed to be reserved for the smartest law school graduates.

Well, Dahlia, she did reportedly do very well in Brett Kavanaugh’s summer course—top of the class, in fact.

I think my favorite part of this story is Mark Paoletta. You may remember him as Ginni Thomas’ lawyer and the Thomases’ ethics consultant. But the best part of this New York Times report is when Paoletta says: “Justice Thomas knows what a racist is. I will take his word and his judgment any day of the week.” Oh, OK, so he’s prepared to take Justice Thomas’ word about whether Crystal Clanton said super racist things in a text because … he knows what a racist is … and it’s racist to attack Clarence Thomas?

It drives me bananas because, believe it or not, we are having this serious legal conversation about whether Judge Juan Merchan needs to recuse from the New York prosecution of Donald Trump because of his daughter’s job. And meanwhile we have these sidebar conversations in, like, the lifestyle section about Clarence Thomas and the many, many, many people who feast on his prosciutto.

I’d like to add one footnote, which is: Yes, it’s in the lifestyle section, it’s ridiculous, but still—please pay attention to these people. This is where the power is disbursed. Let me add one more name to the nightmare list: Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. She was Trump’s youngest judicial appointee, 33 years old, a former Thomas clerk, a Federalist Society stalwart. She was slipped onto the bench at the end of Trump’s term. And what did she do next? Issued a nationwide bar against the mask mandate for airplane travel under Joe Biden. And the hits just keep coming—she recently held that the Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to carry guns into post offices. Because that’s what she was put there to do.

Did anyone pay attention when Kathryn Kimball Mizelle was confirmed? Of course not. But they sure sat up when she took away power from the CDC to limit the spread of COVID on planes. So when Crystal Clanton is some district court judge in Florida or Virginia or wherever, and she strikes down a mask mandate under the next plague, don’t say we didn’t warn you.