Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign
www.propublica.org
Interviews and newly unearthed documents reveal that Thomas, facing financial strain, privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9726767

[A]round 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends. “It was clear he was unhappy with his financial situation and his salary,” one friend said.

…

During his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved. In 2003, he received the first payments of a $1.5 million advance for his memoir, a record-breaking sum for justices at the time. Ginni Thomas, who had been a congressional staffer, was by then working at the Heritage Foundation and was paid a salary in the low six figures.

Thomas also received dozens of expensive gifts throughout the 2000s, sometimes coming from people he’d met only shortly before. Thomas met Earl Dixon, the owner of a Florida pest control company, while getting his RV serviced outside Tampa in 2001, according to the Thomas biography “Supreme Discomfort.” The next year, Dixon gave Thomas $5,000 to put toward his grandnephew’s tuition. Thomas reported the payment in his annual disclosure filing.

Larger gifts went undisclosed. Crow paid for two years of private high school, which tuition rates indicate would’ve cost roughly $100,000. In 2008, another wealthy friend forgave “a substantial amount, or even all” of the principal on the loan Thomas had used to buy the quarter-million dollar RV, according to a recent Senate inquiry prompted by The New York Times’ reporting. Much of the Thomases’ leisure time was also paid for by a small set of billionaire businessmen, who brought the justice and his family on free vacations around the world. (Thomas has said he did not need to disclose the gifts of travel and his lawyer has disputed the Senate findings about the RV.)

By 2019, the justices’ pay hadn’t changed beyond keeping up with inflation. But Thomas’ views had apparently transformed from two decades before. That June, during a public appearance, Thomas was asked about salaries at the court. “Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas responded. “My wife and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”

A few weeks later, Thomas boarded Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162-foot yacht.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
    615·
    11 months ago

    Thomas has acted improperly and I’m not defending his misdeeds.

    However, I do think that the 2022 Supreme Court Justice pay of $286,700 is quite low. Paying judges and politicians a good or even generous salary goes a LONG ways towards preventing dishonesty. I’m not going to suggest a number for what that should be exactly but it is without a doubt in the public interest to pay supreme court justices enough so that they will not feel squeezed financially or that they think they have to do any other work outside the people’s work.

    • Can_you_change_your_username@kbin.social
      14·
      11 months ago

      It’s 3x the median household income for DC($93,547). Almost 4x the national median household income($74,580). And it’s just one salary, it’s not the Justice’s total household income. If that’s low pay then most of the country is living in abject poverty.

      • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
        23·
        11 months ago

        It is the most prestigious position in US law, though, and for good reason (despite some of the recent appointments being absolute clowns). It should probably be paid very highly, and it is unsurprising it is several times the median pay. That said, I don’t know if you could ever pay politicians, justices, etc. enough that they wouldn’t stoop to corruption. Maybe pay just sort of deters some of them.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      5·
      11 months ago

      Paying judges and politicians a good or even generous salary goes a LONG ways towards preventing dishonesty.

      If there’s too much of a difference between official incomes and common incomes, then it also goes a long way towards accustomating officials to seeing themselves as exceptional and deserving of more than the public. It also drives them to hold desperately onto status and power rather than yield it peacefully when they are voted out or losing their touch.

      The opportunity to serve is reward enough for our officials. If it’s not, if our officials have to seek out wealth or fear return to common life, then the system of government sucks and is doomed to deterioration without reform and overhaul.

      That is to say Thomas’s need for money beyond his station is a symptoms of the system collapsing from within. Not the only one, to be sure.