The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas must be investigated over allegations of corruption, his friend, the Fox News analyst Juan Williams, wrote on Monday.
Williams, who said he enjoyed a close multi-decade friendship with the controversial conservative justice, wrote that Thomas “always represented the best ideals of what Black men … could achieve in modern America” but that growing scandal over his relationship with the rightwing mega-donor Harlan Crow was worthy of investigation.
In a column for the Hill, Williams added: “There is an old Latin saying [corruptio optimi pessima] that translates into English as ‘Corruption of the best is worst of all’.
“That’s how I feel about my old friend.”
As reported by ProPublica, Thomas accepted from Crow – and largely failed to declare – lavish gifts including luxury travel and resort stays.
ProPublica also reported how Crow, a collector of far-right memorabilia including statues of dictators and paintings by Adolf Hitler, purchased property from Thomas, who did not disclose the sale.
Thomas issued a rare statement, saying he had followed advice about disclosure requirements but would follow guidelines in future.
CNN reported that a source close to Thomas said the justice would amend his financial disclosure forms to reflect the property sale to Crow, which happened in 2014. Thomas “believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal”, CNN said.
Crow denies wrongdoing, saying Thomas and his wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas (whose work Crow has funded), are close friends with whom he does not discuss politics or matters before the court.
Critics have doubted that – and said Thomas broke the law. A watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a criminal and civil complaint. Democrats demanded an investigation or threatened to pursue impeachment.
But though supreme court justices are subject to federal ethics regulations, they in effect govern themselves.
Furthermore, Thomas, the senior conservative on a court split 6-3 in favour of the right, has the protection of Republicans in Congress, who control the House of Representatives.
Williams, a registered Democrat and liberal voice on Fox News, said he had known Thomas 40 years.
“He has always been gracious to my children,” he wrote, “as a guest in my home and even at my birthday party.”
Citing Thomas’s rise from poverty in Georgia, Williams said the justice was “a man who can recite Malcolm X by heart and expresses Black nationalist positions on the depth of Black self-sufficiency when liberated from interference by white racism and white do-gooders.
“That’s why, to me, Justice Thomas has always represented the best ideals of what Black men – like the two of us – could achieve in modern America with hard work and thick skin.”
But, Williams said, “the smell of financial corruption around Thomas is now stronger than the longstanding fear that his votes on the high court are dictated by his hatred of the liberals who put him through painful nomination hearing[s] dominated by Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment” in 1991.
“There is no sign that Chief Justice John Roberts is going to step up to the damage being done to the court by Thomas’s lack of accountability,” Williams wrote, adding that “the facts now show Thomas has damaged the court”.
If the stories “about how he allowed himself to become captive of a far-right legal coterie” are true, Williams said, Thomas “must be sanctioned for the sake of the court’s reputation and, yes, for the good of the country”.
