Since July 1, 1991, the day he was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, the Left has ferociously — and baselessly — sought the scalp of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Leftists first accused Thomas of being a sexual deviant. He was disparaged as an "Uncle Tom" and a "traitor" to his race.
During his Senate confirmation hearing in 1991, Thomas stated: “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks, who in any way deign to think for themselves. And it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured, by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”
Now, the Left is back for another attempt at lynching the black Supreme Court justice.
"This time, the smear campaign is somehow even less convincing than their previous lines of attack," Aaron Flanigan wrote for the Association of Mature American Citizens (Amac) on Tuesday.
On April 6, ProPublica published a report accusing Thomas of “secretly accept[ing] luxury trips from a major Republican donor,” a real estate developer named Harlan Crow. By accepting these gifts, ProPublica alleges, Thomas “appears to have violated” Supreme Court disclosure obligations by not reporting his airline travel as “gifts” from Crow.
ProPublica, Flanigan pointed out, is "a non-profit with a history of promoting far-left radicalism."
Legal analyst Ed Whelan said that ProPublica’s entire case rests upon “cherry-picked little-known and unnamed ‘experts’” presenting “a false and damning clarity on the matter.”
The Wall Street Journal reported late last week, “it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month (emphasis added).”
Thomas has defended his actions and confirmed that he and Crow had been “dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years.. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”
“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”
Even after all of the above became clear, the drumbeat continued.
New York socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to call for Thomas’s impeachment, claiming the justice's “degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish.”
As Flanigan noted: "Never mind the fact that Ocasio-Cortez herself has a long history of far more credible corruption charges, including paying thousands in campaign cash to a Chinese foreign agent and stiffing vendors for her infamous 'tax the rich dress' that has earned her a congressional ethics review."
Right on cue, other members of the so-called “Squad” followed Ocasio-Cortez’s lead: “Thomas must be impeached and SCOTUS needs a binding code of ethics,” wrote Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was also the subject of a congressional ethics investigation for improperly paying herself from a campaign fund while she was not a candidate.
Rep. Ilhan Omar stated: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached.” Omar faced persistent allegations that she married her brother in order to skirt U.S. immigration law, and has faced other serious corruption charges.
When Thomas first took his seat on the high court it was clear that the Left was furious that he didn’t "conform to their vision of how a black American ought to think — and for that reason alone, the Left believes he must be discredited and destroyed by any means necessary," Flanigan wrote.
The latest assault on Thomas "is nothing more than the latest proof that, when leftists know they can’t win on the actual facts, they will concoct their own set of 'alternative facts' and abuse their positions of power to persecute their political opponents."
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