Does this make sense to you?
SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas has hired Crystal Clanton to be his law clerk beginning in the upcoming term. In 2015, when Clanton was 20 and working for Turning Point USA, she was accused of sending racist texts to a fellow employee. One alleged text read, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE…Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote about the texts in 2017 in an article about Turning Point USA, which is close with Thomas’s activist wife Ginni. Clanton wrote in an email to Mayer, “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” The first aspect of the story I don’t understand: I am reading everywhere that Clanton didn’t deny writing the texts, which points to her guilt. I would say that stating that you don’t recall sending a message and that it isn’t something you believe, believed or would ever say is the equivalent of a denial.
The second aspect of the story, which is being breathlessly covered by all the Thomas-haters, that I don’t understand is that nobody seems to have seen the texts. The Times article admits that they haven’t seen it. The Washington Post relies on the old New Yorker article, but that’s hearsay in my book. Without a reliable copy of the message at the heart of the accusation, the case against Clanton amounts to little more than rumor.
Then, of course, there is the little matter of Clarence Thomas’s race. I know the mainstream media and progressives like to claim that Thomas is really an anti-black racist, but that makes no sense. Clanton has had a many years long relationship with Justice Thomas and his wife, even living with them for a time. Ginni Thomas hired Clanton after the organization fired her as national field director in the wake of the racist texts claim. Justice Thomas has called the allegations against his new clerk unfounded, saying that he knows her well and she is not a racist. According to some sources, Turning Point learned that another employee was sending fake text messages under the names of other staffers, including Clanton.
That distraction aside, the fact that Clanton has been close friends with Clarence Thomas raises the rebuttable presumption that she does not, in fact, hate black people.
In one of her typical jelly-brained op-eds, the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, a lawyer incredibly enough, takes the position that the lower court judges who hired Clanton as their clerk (on Thomas’s recommendation) should have been sanctioned and that Thomas should not hire her now….based on a text message Marcus hasn’t seen and that apparently can’t be seen. Based on that, Marcus is indignant, and says that “[t]his episode is a stain — and not just on Clanton and Thomas. It taints the entire federal judiciary, which has proven itself institutionally incapable of and unwilling to enforce basic ethics rules.”
Wait, what ethics rules would those be? If it could be shown that Clanton had a history of unambiguous racist conduct and statements, a case could be made against a federal judge hiring her that doing so was a possible breach of Canon 1: A Judge Should Uphold the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary, Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All Activities, and Canon 3: A Judge Should Perform the Duties of the Office Fairly, Impartially and Diligently, in the Code of Conduct for the Federal Judiciary. Ending a young woman’s career, however, based on a single phantom text she supposedly sent when she was 20 and that Clanton disputes isn’t an ethical course of action for the federal judiciary or anyone else.
The only way I can comprehend this story is as another example of the mainstream media searching for ways to attack and embarrass Clarence Thomas. The Justice has already provided legitimate reasons to criticize him. This controversy says more about his critics than it does Thomas.
Ethics Alarms 
I assume that this is simply a story that is too good to fact check. The perfect irony of a clerk who expressed these sentiments working for a black Justice who also happens to be the most reviled member of the Supreme Court is simply irresistible to the New York Times and its ilk. This is another example of the culture war that is playing out in our mainstream media, revealed by the almost total disregard of journalistic standards in rushing to publish something harmful about your enemy. At this point it doesn’t even matter whether the story is true, the goal of these media outlets is to do damage, as much as possible, and then hide behind Sullivan to prevent the target from defending herself.
One thing I wonder is if we haven’t gone so far down the path of sensationalism, trying people in the court of public opinion, and attention spans only as deep as headlines that the media fully believes all they need to do is level an accusation. In many cases, it does seem that an accusation is sufficient. It doesn’t matter if the accuser can’t furnish any hard evidence, much less remember the year the event happened, much less provide any witnesses, or even present consistent corroborating evidence. The headlines will trumpet the accusation, and that’s enough for the majority of people to reach their conclusion. Yes, conclusion singular. And I do believe this is an effort to tar Clarence Thomas — look, he’s a traitor to his race, he hires people who explicitly state they hate black people! Shame!