Unless Democrats win the trifecta in 2024, nothing at all will happen to rein in the Roberts Court corruption because Republicans have no shame. But damn, did Harlan pay for Clarence's groceries, too? Did he buy him bespoke suits? Decorate his house? The mind boggles! Via ProPublica:
In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”
Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.
Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, Christopher Grimwood, a former school administrator, told ProPublica. (Hidden Lake was a so-called "therapeutic boarding school" -- as in, for troubled teens who needed to be mistreated so they'd straighten out.)
Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.
ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.
Thomas's net worth is estimated at $24 million -- on a salary of $230,000 a year. And that's not including whatever Grifter Ginni brings in. Seems like they could have afforded to pay for that tuition.
Oh, and the lucky justice never reported Harlan's beneficence -- although he did disclose a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from yet another friend.
"It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s."
Oh, I think we know.
Keep up the good work, ProPublica!
