Jane Mayer on Justice Clarence Thomas, and the Music Critic Hanif Abdurraqib on Concert Merch

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

The cascade of revelations published by ProPublica concerning Justice Clarence Thomas—the island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron, the undisclosed real estate transactions—raises questions about his proximity to power and money. “I think it stretches common sense,” Jane Mayer tells David Remnick, “to think that a judge could be independent when he takes that much money from one person.” Mayer notes that other Justices, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have accepted large gifts from politically connected donors. A deepening public distrust in the integrity of the Supreme Court, Mayer thinks, is dangerous for democracy. “The glue that holds us together is the rule of law in this country,” she says. “People have to believe when they go in front of a court, and in particular the Supreme Court, . . . that it’s justice that’s going to prevail.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:12.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:15.8	Compared to presidents and legislators, the justices of the Supreme Court are beholden to no one. Concerned only with
0:23.3	the law, with the Constitution, they pretend to sit majestically, serenely beyond grubby politics.
0:31.3	They have no campaigns to finance, no higher positions to angle for. This is the source of their integrity, or at least
0:39.6	that's the theory. But the cascade of revelations coming out about Justice Clarence Thomas
0:44.9	suggest something else, something far less high-flown. There's the glitzy vacations and
0:51.1	the island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron.
0:56.6	There's the undisclosed real estate deals. And then there's Thomas's wife, Ginny Thomas,
1:02.0	and her ties, financial and political, to various conservative groups, as well as her full-throated
1:07.9	support of Donald Trump and the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential
1:12.6	election. There are perhaps precedents for this kind of thing, but Thomas seems to have taken
1:18.0	matters to the next level. The New Yorkers Jane Mayer co-wrote the book Strange Justice
1:23.6	about Clarence Thomas almost 30 years ago. Last year, she reported on Ginny Thomas's
1:29.1	influence in Washington. And now Jane is working on a book about the conservative movement
1:34.4	to control the courts. Jane, you've been covering Clarence Thomas for a very long time,
1:40.9	right from the beginning. What stands out to you from these revelations that were first published in ProPublica?
1:47.8	I suppose one of the things that amazed me about the ProPublica story, which was really rigorously reported,
1:55.6	was the extent to which Clarence Thomas has been a repeat and kind of chronic offender when it comes to making public disclosures that Supreme Court justices are supposed to make about their finances.
2:10.6	This isn't the first time. This has been going on for years. It's just maybe the most egregious examples of it.
2:20.5	Well, what's the history? Let's go back and go through it.
2:24.1	Well, if you go back to 2004, the Los Angeles Times wrote a story at that point, saying that
	...

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