Democrats Who Think They Can Run Clarence Thomas Off the Supreme Court Should Watch This Video from His 1991 Confirmation Hearing
Thursday was a day that ends in Y in a month where the name consists of letters, so of course there was a hue and cry for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign.
On this August Friday, however, there was a bit more ammunition for Democrats: another report, this one from ProPublica, that Thomas received gifts from wealthy friends. As Politico noted, this was “a higher number of billionaire benefactors than was previously reported.”
However, the evidence that this part of a pattern of influence-peddling is totally speculative — and not particularly good speculation at that. Nonetheless, this news is roiling a cohort of progressive legislators who have evinced no issues with the Biden family receiving millions of dollars from corrupt overseas billionaire oligarchs thus far.
“Unprecedented. Stunning. Disgusting. The height of hypocrisy to wear the robes of a #SCOTUS and take undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from your decisions,” Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said on Twitter.
Unprecedented. Stunning. Disgusting. The height of hypocrisy to wear the robes of a #SCOTUS and take undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from your decisions.
38 free vacations. Yachts. Luxury mansions. Skyboxes at events.
Resign.https://t.co/dX0FWXszIB
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) August 10, 2023
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois called the revelations proof of “a shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires,” which sounds a bit like projection when he’s saying it. Rep. Ted Lieu of California said that Thomas “has brought shame upon himself” and “should resign immediately”; again, the projection was heavy among Very Online Democrats:
Justices Thomas and Alito have made it clear that they’re oblivious to the embarrassment they’ve visited on the highest court in the land.
Now it’s up to Chief Justice Roberts and the other Justices to act on ethics reform to save their own reputations and the Court’s integrity.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) August 10, 2023
Justice Thomas has brought shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court with his acceptance of massive, repeated and undisclosed gifts. No government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately. https://t.co/RAda5Eke0h
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 10, 2023
Of course, the reason the left wants Justice Thomas off the Supreme Court is too transparent to even bother naming: The Democrats control the White House, the Democrats control the Senate, and they want to take the Supreme Court back via any means short of outright court-packing, which they lack the swing votes (i.e., Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona) to pull off.
Furthermore, ever since Thomas refused to let himself be torpedoed like Robert Bork during his 1991 confirmation hearings — where flimsy, unsupported charges of sexual harassment were the fodder used to try and keep a bona fide conservative off of the high bench — the left has had it out for him. Before it was the “billionaire donor” rigamarole, it was a #MeToo-era re-pillorying of Thomas over his confirmation testimony. The tactics may change, but the fear and loathing of Thomas from the left never will.
If the Democrats don’t have the votes to court-pack, they also don’t have the votes to impeach and oust Thomas. Mind you, they can throw a lot of mud and try to delegitimize his tenure on the court. Perhaps the Democrats feel that if they create enough smoke, the 75-year-old Thomas will get tired of it and retire.
However, one look back to his 1991 confirmation hearing — a process where he called the allegations against him “a high-tech lynching” — should throw cold water on that notion. It came after GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah asked whether or not Thomas was going to bow out of the process after Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment:
If you think Justice Clarence Thomas would ever bow to the left-wing mob targeting him, go back and watch this legendary clip of his 1991 confirmation hearing:
Senator Hatch: “What’s Clarence Thomas going to do?”
Justice Thomas: “I’d rather die than withdraw… not for the… pic.twitter.com/RNZyktNYpk
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) August 11, 2023
“I’d rather die than withdraw,” Thomas said. “If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me.”
“So you would still like to serve on the Supreme Court?” Hatch asked.
“I’d rather die than withdraw from the process,” Thomas said.
“Not for the purpose of serving on the Supreme Court, but for the purpose of not being driven out of this process.”
He went on to say — as then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware; later D-MBNA and D-Burisma) looked on — that he would “not be scared” by leftist smear tactics.
“I don’t like bullies,” Thomas said. “I’ve never run from bullies. I never cry ‘uncle,’ and I’m not going to cry ‘uncle’ today, whether I want to be on the Supreme Court or not.”
So, are the Democrats really under the impression that the latest smear tactic against Thomas is going to work?
I assume for many of them, just the mere act of trying is enough. It gets people’s minds off of their corrupt president via a claim that Thomas is corrupt. Again, they have no problems with shady deals with billionaires when it comes to the Biden family, but another ProPublica report that Clarence Thomas accepted gifts from friends and watch them shriek hysterically about how our politics are bought.
They don’t have the votes or the evidence to do anything about it, though — and, as Thomas noted in the clip, he’d likely rather die than be hounded from office by mud-slinging opportunists.
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