The Thomas/Crow Affair [TEASER]

I want to thank you for joining us this evening.

And I think I'm sure you and all of us want to thank Harlan Crowe and his family for making this wonderful facility available.

I know Harlan hates that.

No, I knew we had to do it.

That's why I wouldn't say it.

I knew we had to do it.

I'd like to keep that friendship.

Hey, everyone.

This is Leon from Fiasco and Prologue Projects.

On this premium episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about Clarence Thomas.

Again, Thomas has been in the news after investigations by ProPublica reveal the depth of his financial entanglement with billionaire Harlan Crowe.

Crow, a major Republican donor, defends his relationship with Thomas as a friendship.

More concretely, Crowe is Thomas' mother's landlord, and he has hosted Thomas at his exclusive resorts and on his super yacht.

Thomas and Crowe claim there's nothing untoured about the relationship.

Crowe claims he has no business before the court, and Thomas claims he has not been influenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Crow has spent on him.

Thomas' failure to properly disclose it notwithstanding.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have left our civil rights in a state of disrepair, like a Supreme Court justice's childhood home, before a billionaire fixes it up for them.

I am Peter.

I'm here with Michael.

Hey, everybody.

And Rhiannon.

Hello.

Much to discuss.

No billionaire coming to fix up our civil liberties.

Nope.

George Soros.

He's on his way.

Today, we are talking about the ongoing controversies swirling around Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ginny's husband.

That's right.

Better known as the husband of Ginny Thomas.

Now, in recent years, there has been a lot of spotlight on Clarence Thomas and his ethically questionable conduct.

A little over a decade ago, reporting uncovered that Thomas had failed to disclose income paid to his wife, Ginny, by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank.

Then, of course, in the wake of January 6th, Ginny was revealed to be a QAnon-believing freak who was involved in state-level efforts to have the results of the 2020 election reversed and was, in fact, a subject of the January 6th congressional investigations.

And of course, despite that, Justice Thomas did not recuse himself from potentially related cases.

That's his girl.

That's his ride or die.

He's not recusing.

Okay.

That's right.

You got to stand by her.

And then over the past few weeks, reporting from ProPublica uncovered that Thomas was the recipient of numerous undisclosed gifts from the billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crowe.

And that is what we're going to talk about today.

Given how spicy things have gotten, we thought it would be useful for us to go over what we know, what the response has been, and what we think about all of this, all of this shit.

And so we'll start with the first ProPublica report, first of multiple.

Yeah.

Which Rhea, I'll hand to you.

Yeah, and we should just say ProPublica doing the Lord's work, right?

Absolutely.

This is really incredible reporting.

Hats off to them.

They are looking at tons of records.

They are talking to tons of witnesses.

Although I read in the Federalists, and this is true, that if they were serious, unbiased journalists, they would have looked into all of the Supreme Court justices.

So keep that in mind.

Okay.

Well, we're going to start with Clarence Thomas.

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