The MRC’s Summer Of Defending Clarence Thomas

Over the summer, the Media Research Center continued its aggressive defense of right-wing Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as ethical concerns continued to pile up. Alex Christy complained those ethical lapses were discussed in a June 7 post:

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested on Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be impeached for “selling too much of himself” to billionaire friend Harlan Crow. Later, during an interview with President and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, Michael Waldman, it was essentially admitted that their biggest problem with Thomas and the rest of the Court is that it rules in ways they do not like.

During a lengthy diatribe against Crow, O’Donnell reported that he has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but that his lawyer does not believe Congress has the authority to write an ethics policy for the Court. Towards the end of that rant, O’Donnell proclaimed, “The only disciplinary option that the Founders left us, in the Constitution, for dealing with a Supreme Court justice who gets caught selling too much of himself to a billionaire is impeachment in the House of Representatives, followed by trial, conviction, and removal from office by the United States Senate.”

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Neither Harlan Crow nor any of the lawyers placed by Jane Roberts has never had business before the Court, but that didn’t stop Waldman from claiming, “In some ways, this is new. In some ways, there is not much precedent for the level of, frankly, corruption that we’re seeing.”

Actually, Christy’s claim that Crow “never had business before the Court” is not quite true.

Rich Noyes helped Thomas play victim (and took yet another shot at Anita Hill)  in a July 1 “flashback” post:

Conservatives certainly remember the awful treatment Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced at his 1991 confirmation hearings, including the endless media coverage granted to utterly unproved charges of sexual harassment by a former employee, Anita Hill. At the time, Thomas referred to the televised hearings as a “high tech lynching” perpetrated by those who would torpedo the conservative jurist’s nomination.

But from the very moment President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the Court on July 1, 1991 — exactly 32 years ago today — journalists employed nasty and often racist language to denigrate Thomas as unfit to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, whose retirement had created the vacancy that needed to be filled.

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Given the media mindset of the moment, it was no surprise news organizations leaped to elevate Anita Hill’s harassment allegations, which appeared only after the confirmation hearings had officially ended and Thomas’s nomination had been sent to the Senate floor for what seemed like certain approval. Joe Biden’s Judiciary Committee quickly scheduled new hearings — a last gasp for liberals to try and torpedo the nomination.

Kevin Tober attempted yet another round of Sotomayor whataboutism in a July 11 post:

The Associated Press committed a random act of journalism Tuesday when they ran a story exposing how left-wing radical Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushed public institutions where she went to visit to purchase her memoirs or other books. Given the heavy interest given by the “big three” news networks on so-called conflicts of interest surrounding constitutionalist justices like Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas, the fact that the networks refused to report on this during their evening newscasts shows they were hypocrites. 

Instead, the evening newscasts ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News covered a disruptive passenger forcing a commercial plane to land (ABC), video of a volcano erupting in Iceland (CBS), and Leslie Van Houten’s release from prison (NBC).

Tober didn’t explain how Sotomayor is a “left-wing radical” or how this claim (which, appearances aside, is legal) eclipses Thomas’ ethical lapses, or even how it makes those calling for the Supreme Court to follow an ethics code look “hypocritical.”

A July 21 post by Tim Graham repeated an attack from another right-wing outlet on ProPublica, which exposed Thomas’ ethical conflicts:

The investigative reporting group “ProPublica” boasts it is an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest,” but the tilt of its targeting is hard to miss. Its most recent crusade has focused on the allegedly shabby ethics of conservative Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Katelynn Richardson at the Daily Caller reported seven of the nine ethics experts cited in ProPublica’s stories on Thomas and Alito have collectively given over $100,000 to Democratic campaigns and left-wing causes, FEC records show. Several also work for organizations calling for Thomas’ resignation that are backed by donors that also fund ProPublica, the Caller previously reported.

As you might expert, the ProPublica stories did not disclose these ethics experts’ donations or the fact it shares donors with groups pushing for Thomas to resign.

Graham failed to disclose that the Daily Caller is a biased right-wing website — ironic given how they attack the alleged bias of ProPublica. The next day, Graham complained that the right-wing obsession with turning Thomas into a hero and martyr was noticed (with lots of whatabouism, of course):

Friday’s Washington Post included no story on the House Weaponization Subcommittee’s hearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Breitbart’s Emma-Jo Morris on Big Tech censorship. But the front page had an obligatory front-page story on a grand jury investigating Donald Trump and this amazing scandal piece: “Federalist Society figure uses his sway before and after naming of justices.” 

It’s a scandal that Leonard Leo would organize positive publicity about a conservative Supreme Court justice. This is somehow…. unethical? Right under the “See more on A4” tag was a plug for the Senate Democrats passing a Supreme Court ethics bill.

In 2016, positive PR was organized around Justice Thomas serving 25 years on the court. But the year before, the Post was on the organized PR bandwagon celebrating the “Notorious RBG.” They were a part of that, so apparently it wasn’t scandalous. Maybe liberals don’t have to raise money for that when media outlets will do it for free. CNN made a gushy RBG documentary.

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A decent chunk of this article report on how Thomas friend Mark Paoletta was paid to attack anti-Thomas propaganda like the HBO film Confirmation, which celebrated Anita Hill. He worked with CRC Public Relations (disclosure: this is also the MRC’s PR firm) to — gasp! — create a pro-Thomas Internet page and they — gasp! — “bought ads from Google to boost favorable internet content about Thomas.”

Then the Thomas boosters organized a pro-Thomas documentary titled Created Equal, made by filmmaker Michael Pack. The Post acknowledges Leonard Leo’s counterpoint that CNN made their RBG film, and that “Participant Media, founded by businessman Jeff Skoll, whose foundation donated millions to left-leaning groups, later acquired and distributed the film.”

When conservative PR is a scandal and liberal PR is just PR, you get the distinct sense that the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” folks really don’t like people organizing an opposing pile of publicity. They called this “a more aggressive approach that sought to sway public opinion through mass media.” 

The Washington Post never attempts this?

Note that Graham made no effort to defend the right-wing lionization of Thomas — he sinply tries to distract from it. He did, however, make a rare disclosure of a conflict of interest in acknowledging that the MRC shares a PR firm with the Thomas promoters.

Nicholas Schau used a July 26 post to uncritically quote a Republican senator complaining that ProPublica reported things about  Thomas that right-wingers didn’t want people to know:

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) went scorched earth on the massive George Soros-affiliated machine that went after Justice Clarence Thomas.

Lee exposed the hypocrisy of the Democrats who complained about dark money while benefiting from it and the hypocrisy of the Clarence Thomas hit pieces by ProPublica. Lee noted that  many of the left-wing organizations connected to ProPublica–like the leftist Sandler Foundation and Soros’s Open Society Foundation–have used the outlet’s reporting to fund efforts to pack the Court and force Thomas to resign. He knocked ProPublica for “supporting this [court ethics] legislation; openly, actively, aggressively gunning for it” in its reporting. Soros’ Open Society Foundations funneled $1,625,008 into ProPublica between 2016 and 2021.

Hit pieces like those written by ProPublica come as Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), plot to advance an outrageous Supreme Court-related ethics bill that “would impose a code of conduct” for justices on the Court, despite the fact that there are “pre-existing ethics rules in places [sic] for the justices, governed by a separate body.”

Neither Schau nor Lee identified anything false or misleading in ProPublica’s “hit pieces” on Thomas. Schau also failed to explain why it’s so “outrageous” to make Supreme Court justices follow a code of ethics.